Happy Tuesday! To the powers that be at The Dispatch, consider this our official request to relocate the office to William F. Buckley’s eight-bedroom childhood home in Sharon, Connecticut, on the market for a cool $5.5 million. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday morning local time in a show of support for Ukraine as the country’s troops battle invading Russian forces on a new front in the northeast. According to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, Blinken will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss “battlefield updates, the impact of new U.S. security and economic assistance, long-term security and other commitments, and ongoing work to bolster Ukraine’s economic recovery.” 
• Prosecutors in the United Kingdom charged three men on Monday with spying on behalf of the Hong Kong intelligence service in violation of the U.K.’s National Security Act, alleging the men broke into a U.K. residence on May 1. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, and Chinese authorities have denied any involvement on the part of Hong Kong’s intelligence agency. Last week, U.K. officials expelled a Russian diplomat accused of spying, though the cases are not believed to be related.
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees interstate electricity transmission, issued two new rules on Monday aimed at expanding green energy. One requires utility companies to make plans for energy supply and demand—including planning for potential disruptions due to extreme weather—over at least two decades, and another gives FERC the authority to grant permits to long-distance power lines, which could allow wind and solar energy produced primarily in the Southwest to move efficiently to urban areas. 
• Several major U.S. airlines sued the Department of Transportation on Monday over a rule that requires greater transparency from airlines about the fees they charge passengers. The airlines, including United, Delta, and American Airlines, say the Biden administration is overstepping its authority with the rule and that it “will greatly confuse consumers who will be inundated with information that will only serve to complicate the buying process.”
• Michael Cohen, once a fixer for former President Donald Trump, took the stand on Monday in Trump’s New York criminal trial. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, directly implicated Trump in his payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and others and testified that the then-presidential candidate was primarily concerned about how news of his affair with Daniels would affect his electoral prospects. Cohen testified that Trump wanted the relationship kept quiet until after the 2016 election. “If I win, it will have no relevance because I’m president,” Cohen recalled Trump saying. “And if I lose, I don’t even care.” Cohen will retake the stand Tuesday for the prosecution before facing cross-examination from Trump’s lawyers, who are likely to try to impugn his credibility.

Russia Goes on the Offensive in Kharkiv

When Russia opened a new front in northeastern Ukraine on Friday, thousands of Ukrainians were faced with a wrenching choice: Leave, or risk their lives to stay in their homes. “If I am needed here, then may God protect me here,” one resident told the Kyiv Independent. “And [if] he needs me up there, let him take me as long as it doesn’t hurt.”

Some 6,000 civilians have made the choice to flee as their villages were, in the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “turned from a gray zone into a combat zone.” Russian attacks on the Kharkiv region continued through the weekend, opening another front in the war and potentially marking the start of a large Russian summer offensive against Ukraine. The new front, though not yet the site of a major incursion, will stretch Ukrainian forces as the country waits for U.S. aid to catch up after a months-long pause in arms shipments.

The northern part of the front has remained more or less stable since Ukraine’s counteroffensive began in the fall of 2022, with fighting instead concentrated in eastern and southeastern Ukraine. But over the weekend, Russia launched a cross-border attack in northern Kharkiv, opening up a new combat line separated from the rest of the fighting.