Attention to the Unseen

Michael Hirsh writes: As Russian President Vladimir Putin readies a new offensive in his stalled war with Ukraine, strategists still talk of some form of Ukraine’s “Finlandization”—a kind of cowed neutrality—as a possible negotiated solution. But Finland itself may be about to tilt the balance dramatically the other way—and perhaps hand Putin his biggest defeat yet. On Wednesday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin at a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said a decision whether to discard…

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Reuters reports: One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland joined the U.S.-led military alliance then Russia would have to bolster its defences in the region, including by deploying nuclear weapons. Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining the NATO alliance. Finland will make a decision in the next few weeks, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Wednesday. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s…

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Ishaan Tharoor writes: As the war drags on, the parallels deepen. The Russian invasion has already spawned an enormous refugee crisis, hollowed out many Ukrainian cities and towns, and led to the suffering of countless Ukrainian civilians. The conflict, a growing body of analysts contend, ought to be seen in a continuum with Russia’s 2015 intervention in the Syrian civil war, which played a key role in turning the tide of battle in favor of embattled Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad….

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Yahoo News reports: A trillion dollars: That’s how much money famed investor Bill Browder believes Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs have stolen from the Russian people since the fall of the Soviet Union. “And that was money that was supposed to be spent on health care and education, roads and services,” Browder said at a Manhattan event to celebrate the publication of his second book, “Freezing Order,” which chronicles how he became a Putin nemesis as a result of his…

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Cathy Young writes: Pundits skeptical of or even hostile to Ukraine’s cause in its defensive war against Russia have different reasons, or rationalizations, for their views and hail from different points on the political spectrum. But there is one belief that unites nearly all of them: the conviction that Ukraine is not a democracy fighting for its survival but an American “Deep State” project, with a regime installed by a 2014 coup that was led by Ukrainian far-right extremists and…

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Meduza reports: On March 18, Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon published a video message addressed to Ukrainians living in territories occupied or surrounded by Russian troops. He warned that there are “two types of humanitarian corridors” — those organized by Ukraine and those organized by Russia, and urged people not to use the latter. “According to our information, Ukrainians who leave through the humanitarian corridors organized by the Russian authorities go through severe tests. And they end up in so-called filtration…

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