Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Biden administration is seeking to ease oil sanctions on Venezuela as part of a broader U.S. strategy to temper oil prices that have skyrocketed because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. officials began rare face-to-face meetings with Venezuelan officials in Caracas over the weekend, with a view to allowing Venezuelan crude oil back on to the open international market, these people said. The administration also wants to…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. is exploring a deal in which Poland would send Soviet-era aircraft to Ukraine in return for American F-16 jet fighters, U.S. officials said Saturday, in the latest bid to help Ukraine respond to Russia’s invasion. The deal would require White House approval and congressional action, U.S. officials said. The disclosure of a possible deal followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s impassioned plea to Capitol Hill for assistance in obtaining more lethal military aid, especially…

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The New York Times reports: The day after Russian tanks and troops poured across the Ukrainian border on Feb. 24, NATO leaders received a deeply frightening message. The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, opened an emergency video summit by warning that President Vladimir V. Putin had “shattered peace in Europe” and that from now on, he would openly contest the continent’s security order. However unlikely, Mr. Stoltenberg told the leaders, it was no longer unthinkable that Mr. Putin would attack…

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Masha Gessen writes: Pushkin Square, in the center of Moscow, is a traditional site of protest. Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on February 24th, most of the square has been cordoned off, with police in riot gear and National Guard soldiers in full combat gear stationed around its perimeter most of the day. On the first day of the war, police made hundreds of arrests in Pushkin Square; on most nights since, they have netted only a…

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Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes: In the week since Russia’s invasion began, Syrians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad might come second only to Ukrainians themselves in following every horror of the war that Vladimir Putin’s regime is waging in Ukraine. The reason behind this curious situation, of course, should be quite apparent. Russia has been occupying part of Syria since late September 2015, brutally supporting Assad’s regime, whose highest priority is to stay in power forever, even if he has to…

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Politico reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored U.S. lawmakers on Saturday to do more to force Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and end the war on his country — including the establishment of a no-fly zone, additional direct aid and a ban on oil imports from Moscow. In a private Zoom call with Senate and House members, Zelenskyy expressed appreciation for the actions taken so far by the U.S. and NATO allies as Russia continues assaulting Ukraine,…

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The Hill reports: Former national security adviser John Bolton said on Friday that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was “waiting” for a possible United States withdrawal from NATO, claiming former President Trump would have likely made such a move had he been reelected. Bolton, during a Washington Post Live event, was asked about his memoir, in which he claimed that Trump wanted to leave the military alliance in 2018. The newspaper’s Opinions Editor-at-Large Michael Duffy asked him how close…

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David Ignatius writes: Javelin antitank missiles, the American-made weapons that can destroy Russian tanks, are stacked in steel racks awaiting quick shipment into Ukraine. A giant C-17 transport is parked on a nearby runway. This is what American and NATO support for Ukraine looks like. Every day, 14 widebody jets are landing here to deliver Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft missiles and other weapons for the Ukrainians. A half-dozen of these daily arrivals are American planes. Watching the Javelins move toward the…

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Markos Kounalakis writes: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is criminal on multiple counts, but some of them should be leveled at one of his main accomplices: Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Russia’s military is executing an unprovoked and unprecedented attack on a peaceful neighbor on many fronts, from the air and sea. The land war, however, would not be as effective or lethal were it not for Lukashenko providing a front along Belarus’s southern border, not far from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv….

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The Guardian reports: Happiness lies in ruins. This small town – Schastia in Ukrainian – has been out of the headlines since Moscow took its brutal war against civilians to the country’s biggest cities. But it is here, and in nearby Volnovakha, that the illegal tactics of terrorising civilians for military aims, honed in Syria and then brought back so close to home, have reached a grim high point. There have been terrible strikes on homes, schools and hospitals around…

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The New York Times reports: Ukraine has succeeded in slowing the Russian advance, but has not been able to stop it, nor is the resistance strong enough to shift Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s war aims. Over the long term, U.S. officials said, it will be difficult for Ukraine to continue to frustrate the Russian advance. In the meantime, though, Ukrainians are turning into a nation at arms. “In combat, it’s always different than what you thought it’d be, and…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian shelling in southern Ukraine caused a fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant before Russian troops took control of the area, according to local authorities and international observers, raising fears that Moscow’s increasingly indiscriminate war could cause a global environmental disaster. The fire, extinguished Friday morning, erupted at the Zaporizhzhia power plant’s training facility, Ukraine’s emergency service said. None of the plant’s six reactors, one of which is currently operational, were affected and there…

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Vanity Fair reports: As the war in Ukraine was about to drag into its second weekend, rightly dominating news coverage, I found myself craving perspective about that coverage from an expert on Russia and Ukraine. For that I turned to Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British journalist, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and author of two books about Russian disinformation and propaganda. Pomerantsev was born in Kyiv, spent years living in Moscow, and has friends…

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The Associated Press reports: As the West condemns Russia, President Vladimir Putin has vocal supporters in China, where the ruling Communist Party tells its people they are fellow targets of U.S.-led harassment. “If Russia is destroyed, we will be next. This is for sure,” said Wang Yongchun, a retiree in Beijing. “The United States wants to dominate the world.” Such comments reflect the stance of a ruling party that is the closest thing Putin has to a major ally: The…

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