Happy Monday! We were prepared to consider that sorting U.S. presidents into Hogwarts houses might be a more valuable way to judge presidential records than the typical historian rankings. But they lost us when they put Woodrow Wilson in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Russian forces opened up a new front in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv on Friday, advancing toward villages and cities just across the border and forcing more than 4,000 Ukrainians to flee the fighting. Vovchansk, a city just a few miles from the Russian border, has been the site of constant fighting over the weekend, along with several other towns and villages in the northeast. The Russian military claimed that it had taken control of nine villages, but those claims have not yet been independently confirmed. “There are villages that have transformed from ‘a grey zone’ into a zone of fighting and invaders are attempting to dig in in several of them, while others serve for their further advance,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on Sunday night. The city of Kharkiv, which is some 20 miles from the Russian border, remains under Ukrainian control.
• Meanwhile, 15 people were killed and 20 injured in the partial collapse of an apartment building on Sunday in Belgorod, a Russian city near the border with Ukraine, according to local authorities. Russian law enforcement officials said the building had been struck by Ukrainian artillery, but the Russian Defense Ministry later claimed the damage came from fragments of a Ukrainian missile that Russian forces had shot down. 
• Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, on Sunday, marking the most significant military leadership reshuffling since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Shoigu, who had been defense minister since 2012 and faced increasing criticism from Russian military officials for how he’s conducted the war, will be replaced by Andrei Belousov—an economist who most recently served as deputy prime minister. Shoigu will become the head of Russia’s National Security Council. 
• Some 300,000 people have left Rafah in the last week, according to the United Nations, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) expanded its operations and evacuation warnings in parts of the southernmost city in Gaza over the weekend. The Biden administration has reportedly offered Israel intelligence to help locate Hamas leaders and tunnels, as well as humanitarian aid for people in Gaza, in exchange for Israel forgoing a large-scale attack on Rafah. Meanwhile, fighting between the IDF and Hamas resumed over the weekend in previously cleared areas of northern Gaza, including in Jabalia and Gaza City. 
• The State Department—in a report shared with Congress on Friday—suggested that Israel may have violated international law in its use of American-made weapons in Gaza. “It is difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,” the report noted. “Nevertheless, given Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles … have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its [international humanitarian law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.” On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered some of his sharpest criticisms of the war effort, saying that Israel has not shared any plans for rebuilding or securing Gaza after the war and is “on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy, and probably refilled by Hamas.”
• Tens of thousands of demonstrators protested in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi overnight as the ruling party, Georgian Dream, prepares to pass a Russia-inspired foreign agents law that critics say will squash civil society and independent media in Georgia. The Legal Affairs Committee of the Georgian Parliament voted to approve the law on Monday in the legislation’s third hearing, meaning just one parliamentary vote remains before final passage.
• Canadian authorities charged another Indian national with murder over the weekend in connection to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar—a Sikh nationalist and Canadian citizen—last June in British Columbia that sparked a diplomatic rift between Canada and India. Canada alleges the shooting was potentially ordered by the Indian government, and Singh’s arrest follows the arrest of three other Indian nationals earlier this month who were charged with murdering Nijjar.
• Flash floods across Afghanistan on Friday killed more than 300 people, mostly women and children, according to the United Nations and local authorities. Some 2,000 homes were destroyed by the heavy rainfall, and hundreds of people remain missing. 
• A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Steve Bannon’s 2022 contempt of Congress conviction on Friday, paving the way for Bannon to serve his four-month prison sentence. However, he can still appeal the ruling to the full bench or the Supreme Court. Bannon, a close adviser to former President Donald Trump and former White House official, was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee.

Biden Dangles Carrots and Sticks 

As the sun set in Israel on Sunday evening, the country marked its first Memorial Day since Hamas’ October 7 attack, when terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200 others. About a quarter of those killed on October 7 are estimated to have been soldiers, and 272 Israel Defense Force (IDF) troops have died in the subsequent war against Hamas—now in its eighth month. There were soldiers among those Hamas kidnapped, too, including some who have been killed in captivity and whose remains are being held hostage. 

“Where are we supposed to go?” said the father of one deceased soldier whose body is being held by Hamas in Gaza. “There is no burial site for us to go to.”

As Israel remembers its war dead, the IDF has continued its “precision” strikes against Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza and perhaps the last stronghold of Hamas in the enclave. But the operation has faced sharp pushback from its most important ally in recent days as President Joe Biden suggested he’d suspend certain weapons shipments to Israel if the targeted offensive turned into a full-scale invasion. On Friday, a State Department report called into question Israel’s adherence to international humanitarian law.