Outside of the United Nations, on the corner of First Avenue and 39th Street in New York City, Benjamin Netanyahu was nowhere to be seen.
“Ne-tan-ya-hu, you can’t hide!” the protesters chanted. “You are wanted for gen-o-cide!”
Inside, the Israeli prime minister was preparing to speak to the United Nations, the international body that had, at least on paper, agrees with the protesters’ claims, with a 2025 commission finding that the nation is committing genocide in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
On the asphalt in the intersection of 39th and First, the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace had assembled a cultural moment: over a hundred protesters, many of whom were bold-face names that usually find their way into this magazine and others for their work onscreen or onstage. In the front row: the actress Hannah Einbinder, musicians Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and the comedian Mary Beth Barone, as well as presumptive incoming Congresswomen Darializa Avila Chevalier and Melat Kiros, and New York City Councilmember Chi Osse. Susan Sarandon floated around the crowd. Cynthia Nixon was sitting a few rows back in the middle. On one edge, comedian Caleb Hearon and actor Elliott Page chanted along, with incoming Congressman Brad Lander standing, hands in his pockets, a little ways behind. There were more, too — candidates for Congress and state legislatures, entertainers, musicians, and actors, all alongside the everyday activist core of JVP’s membership.
I joined the scrum of press jockeying to get a picture of the front of the crowd, the United Nations building in the background. Everyone seated in the street planned to be arrested. The cops planned to arrest them. But neither party was in any hurry. Prison buses made their way up First Avenue. The long-time activist Chelsea Manning walked up, dressed in a sharp blue slim-cut pantsuit. I asked her why she was there, on the street, at a protest that would and could not actually disrupt Netanyahu’s speech.
“This is a way that we, as people, outside of these institutions can show a rejection of the policies of empire, of ethnic cleansing, of genocide,” she said. “We can’t be in there. This is the closest that we can get.”
The tactics of Thursday’s protest were familiar: a kind of civil disobedience flash-mob, matching T-shirts and a single act of peaceful resistance that gets everyone involved arrested and booked on a misdemeanor charge. I’ve seen them many times before. It’s cynical to call it a photo-op, but in some ways that is this kind of demonstration’s most tangible benefit to a movement that has spread across basically the entire world. Already, photos of Einbinder and Sarandon being led away in zip ties are flying around social media. The celebrities present in the crowd — some who were arrested, some who were not — were there to be recognized.
As the police started to move closer, I caught the singers Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus moving through the crowd. Both Baker and Dacus have been outspoken about the Palestinian cause, often on far bigger stages than the corner of 39th and First, but here they were, on the asphalt.
“We have a history of protesting even before anyone was listening to us,” Dacus said.
A line of police officers pushed in behind us, a loudspeaker blaring out a repeated warning: leave the street or be arrested for disorderly conduct. “No matter what level you’re at — direct action is possible,” Baker said, as the loudspeaker drowned us both out.
NYPD officers detain Susan Sarandon and pro-Palestinian demonstrators near the United Nations, ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address, on Sept. 24, 2026.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty ImagesThere’s little chance Netanyahu had any knowledge of the protest on the street, but the heavily secured United Nations building didn’t offer protection from the sentiment driving the opposition to his war in Gaza.
As Netanyahu began his speech, a massive group of delegates walked out of the building in protest, while others booed. He then launched into a defiant address full of grievance and denials.
“To all those who are spreading these lies, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic Mayor of New York, I say shame on you,” Netanyahu thundered from the lectern. “Mr. Mamdani … you count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. Your wife liked a post praising the October 7 massacre. You tried to stop me from coming here, you tried to silence me — well you can’t silence me. You can’t silence the truth. Israel didn’t commit genocide, Israel prevented genocide.”
Mamdani did not attend the protest, nor did Piker, but it’s clear that they have become proxies, in Netanyahu’s mind, for the cultural forces outside. In the intersection, an hour before Netanyahu’s speech, police officers got off a set of prison buses and walked up with stacks of flexible zip-ties. Detectives walked around the crowd, politely warning everyone still sitting in the road that they were about to be arrested. For almost everyone involved, it was a familiar dance – thrilling, in a way, for the participants voluntarily taking a criminal charge, but not of any real interest or threat to the police. The press snapped away, news got made.
Underneath some scaffolding near 38th Street, a clean-cut elderly man with two prosthetic legs stopped his mobility scooter and frowned at the crowd. “FUCK HAMAS!” he yelled, until one of JVP’s organizers wandered over and engaged him in a seemingly polite discussion. The only other counter-protester was a man in a pink jacket that read “PROUD INFIDEL” above a graphic of two crossed rifles. He wore a “TRUMP 2020” MAGA hat and was carrying an extremely offensive sign bearing a photo of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a pig.
For those protesting Netanyahu, the demonstration represented one of the few times that months of work on policy and messaging can feel like it’s actually making an impact.
“It feels deeply incoherent to try to live a normal life — making dinner with a full fridge, while aid trucks are stopped at the Gazan border,” Stefanie Fox, the executive director of JVP told me on the sidewalk, as a line of bicycle cops made a ring around the knot of protesters still sitting in the street. “Being here feels like the only coherent place to be.”
Netanyahu, for his part, did not stay in the city long. He made his speech to the UN, and was reportedly planning to fly out immediately after, unwilling to tarry long in a city that did its best to make him feel unwelcome.
“There’s always the next thing,” Manning told me, before she was arrested and led away. “We have a vision of a better world. Sometimes we take small steps, sometimes big steps, but we’re always moving forward, moving towards that better world.”
Vladimir Putin addressing the audience during the Valdai Discussion Club meeting on Oct. 1
As Trump Dithers, Ukraine War Is Approaching a ‘Fatal Point of No Return’
The war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly dangerous, with the risk of escalation spilling further into Europe. As Russia and European governments trade explicit warnings that the conflict is spreading, the United States is pursuing diplomacy aimed less at stopping the carnage than restoring ties with Moscow.
With the Russian military making little progress on the ground in eastern Ukraine despite nearly five years of war and more than a million casualties, the Kremlin is intensifying aerial attacks. Ukraine, which has been the target of Russian missiles and drones since the war began in February 2022, is now experiencing a sharp uptick in attacks on infrastructure and populated areas that threaten to plunge parts of the country into cold and darkness over the winter.
The aerial blitzkrieg is intended to destroy Ukraine’s morale, infrastructure, and economy, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently told the Financial Times, citing intelligence intercepted by his country’s security services.
Zelenskyy told the paper that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in discussions with top Kremlin officials, had removed constraints on the bombardment campaign: “He said there are no rules now.”
U.S. disengagement from the conflict during Trump’s second term, coupled with the American president’s animosity toward Zelenskyy and Ukraine more generally, has only emboldened Putin. After promising he would stop the war “within 24 hours” after reelection, Trump’s tepid support for Ukraine and its European allies has increasingly convinced the Kremlin it has a chance to permanently rupture the NATO alliance.
At the Valdai Discussion Club on Thursday — an annual high-profile international summit in St. Petersburg — Putin said that continued European support for Ukraine was pushing the conflict toward a “fatal point of no return.”
The Kremlin has long described the war as an extension of a confrontation with the collective West. With more than 1.5 million active service members in the Russian military, about 44 percent of Moscow’s budget for 2027 is dedicated to defense and security spending. Around 700,000 Russian soldiers are serving on the front lines in Ukraine, where casualties remain staggeringly high.
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Meanwhile, Moscow is conducting a campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” — with officials in multiple countries alleging that a series of drone attacks, arsons, and sabotage originated with Russian intelligence services. The Kremlin also continues to carry out targeted killings on European soil — and has even attempted to assassinate political dissidents in the United States, according to the FBI.
Russia’s belligerent activity has set alarm bells ringing across Europe.
Speaking at a NATO event on Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the continent must brace for “severe hybrid attacks,” as Russia targets production facilities and logistics hubs by which Ukraine’s allies supply the beleaguered country with arms. Europe must be prepared to “respond quickly and very clearly” to Russian provocations, Merz said.
For its part, Moscow asserts that NATO is provoking conflict, citing recent unannounced military exercises near Kaliningrad — a Russian exclave on the Baltic coast. In a communiqué to NATO this week, Russian officials warned that action against Kaliningrad would initiate a serious response, “including nuclear weapons” in order to defend its territory, and “Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance’s member states.”
“This is a war that Europe is waging against us,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at the Valdai forum. When asked about hybrid attacks outside Ukraine that European leaders have attributed to Russia, he said his country was only targeting support for what it dubs the “Nazi regime” in Kyiv.
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As the sabers rattle louder, American engagement with Moscow and Kyiv comes in fits and starts, with no apparent overarching strategy.
Critics of the White House’s approach point to a recent trip by Trump’s friend and special envoy to the Middle East, real estate attorney Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to Moscow and Kyiv. Their tour yielded headlines, but little progress toward negotiations between the warring parties — let alone toward ending the conflict.
“I hope they had a great discussion about opening a hotel or something,” one European official told Rolling Stone. “Because it was useless otherwise.”
Diplomacy via haphazard tête-à-têtes with the president’s personal envoys is almost certainly viewed as a sign of weakness by Putin, who is well aware that Trump hopes to claim normalized ties between the United States and Russia as a crowning foreign policy achievement.
The White House is considering a range of unprecedented diplomatic deals that would help keep Russia’s economy functioning while doing little to benefit Ukraine.
These proposals reportedly include an easing of economic sanctions if Putin agrees to release some political prisoners, and a potential multibillion-dollar oil deal ostensibly aimed at stabilizing energy markets and reducing gas prices.
With gas prices rising amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and midterm elections around the corner, Trump has made energy central to his Russia policy. Washington has called for an “energy ceasefire” — while Trump has blamed Kyiv for rising diesel prices in the United States.
While high oil prices are the result of a concatenation of crises, Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil refineries, producing fuel shortages and long queues for gasoline — in one of the world’s largest oil producers — over the summer.
Ukraine is also developing its own domestically produced tactical ballistic missiles. Ukrainian officials said Friday that one type of missile, the FP-7, had been successfully used in combat for the first time. But whether Kyiv can produce enough of them to create a meaningful deterrent is unclear.
As winter nears, the outlook for Ukraine is bleak. A recent attack on Kyiv consisted of nearly a dozen ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones in a single night. That many munitions slip through highlights the dire situation faced by Ukrainian defenders, who are running out of advanced missile interceptors. They also struggle to shoot down drones that are becoming increasingly numerous, sophisticated, and effective as the war drags on.
In recent months, Russia has adopted widespread use of an advanced drone, the Geran-5 — a jet-powered drone that bears an uncanny resemblance to the V-1 “buzz bombs” used by the Nazis to bombard London toward the end of World War II.
As with the German V-1 campaign against London 80 years ago, the targets are often indiscriminate. Even before the ramping-up of attacks this fall, 2026 was on track to be the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the early months of the full-scale war in 2022.
The proliferation of Russian attack drones and ballistic missiles means that cities like Kyiv now spend much of each day under air alert. Even aside from the human toll and physical damage that the weapons inflict, officials estimate that the disruptions to daily life are costing the country as much as $45 million per hour in lost economic activity.
Since Friday, a series of drone attacks has targeted two of Kyiv’s major bridges spanning the Dnieper River. The damage has disrupted traffic between the capital’s “Right Bank” — with its historic core and city center — and its “Left Bank,” with its sprawling Soviet-era industrial and residential developments.
Ukraine is already experiencing a severe financial squeeze. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi says the country is facing a $27 billion “funding gap” before the end of the year.
Ukrainian lawmakers warn the government could even run out of funds to pay soldiers. One serving member of the Ukrainian military, who spoke to Rolling Stone on background, said by the end of the summer, members of his unit had already begun experiencing “delays” in receiving their pay.
The Ministry of Defense disputes that soldier’s salaries could go unpaid, but acknowledges that “technical issues” had caused some delays.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy is under pressure from corruption scandals and resignations involving members of his inner circle. Polls show him potentially losing hypothetical match-ups against rivals, including former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Valerii Zaluzhny. The country’s “long-admired cohesion” has begun to crack — an outcome that aligns with Russia’s strategic objectives.
But after nearly five years of war, both combatants are showing signs of political and economic strain.
Russia’s regular military conscription process — 120,000 new recruits are expected over the next three months — barely offsets the grievous casualties its military is experiencing at the Ukrainian front, with high estimates exceeding 1,000 casualties per day.
Some analysts believe the Kremlin is considering a massive mobilization in the wake of parliamentary elections. But Putin so far has merely called for an increase in the total number of active-duty military members by a little more than 15,000. Russia’s president remains wary of generating a meaningful anti-war movement inside Russia, while also facing pressure from hard-line nationalists expecting him to deliver victory.
Across Europe, governments are no longer treating a direct confrontation with Russia as a remote possibility. They are preparing for worst-case scenarios, particularly in the Baltic states and other countries that experienced Russian rule under the Soviets. Meanwhile, NATO insists that all members — including the United States — have an “ironclad commitment” to collective defense.
In 1914, at the outset of the First World War, few leaders understood how faulty strategic assumptions, entangling alliances, and lethal technologies were pushing the continent toward cataclysm.
But some did. On the eve of war, U.K. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey famously wrote that “The lamps are going out all over Europe.”
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Across Ukraine, darkness will again become a feature of daily wartime life amid rolling blackouts as a hard winter looms. And the shadows are lengthening, far beyond its borders.
But in America, the White House dithers as the president has his attention elsewhere. Perhaps Trump’s new ballroom, at least, should be well lit.