Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Poland is offering to transfer all of its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets “immediately and free of charge” to a U.S. air base in Germany, a likely precursor to the jets being delivered to Ukraine. The announcement Tuesday came after a week of back-and-forth negotiations between the U.S. and Warsaw about the transfer, and amid Russian warnings that delivering the jets to Ukraine would be seen as a provocation. In a statement, the Polish Foreign Ministry said Warsaw “requests…

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Shadi Hamid writes: If there was any doubt before, the answer is now clear. Vladimir Putin is showing that a world without American power—or, for that matter, Western power—is not a better world. For the generation of Americans who came of age in the shadow of the September 11 attacks, the world America had made came with a question mark. Their formative experiences were the ones in which American power had been used for ill, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s nuclear forces to go on high alert last week, he looked down a long table at his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who nodded in assent. In his decade at the head of the Russian military, Mr. Shoigu, who has never been a professional soldier but holds the rank of general of the army, has worked to modernize and professionalize the armed forces, and build their image as…

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Putin has kept most oligarchs at a distance – literally and figuratively. Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images By Stanislav Markus, University of South Carolina U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders are setting their sights on Russia’s oligarchs as they seek new ways to punish Vladimir Putin – and those who have enabled him and profited from his reign – for waging war in Ukraine. Biden singled out wealthy oligarchs in his State of the Union address, promising to…

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Russian police have detained thousands of Russians who have taken to the streets to protest the invasion of Ukraine. AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky By Brian Grodsky, University of Maryland, Baltimore County The West has responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by imposing harsh economic sanctions. Most consequentially, key Russian banks have been cut out of the SWIFT payments messaging system, making financial transactions much more difficult. The United States, European Union and others also moved to freeze Russian Central Bank reserves….

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Literary Hub: Writer and translator Artem Chapeye sent the following earlier this week in response to recently resurfaced comments by Noam Chomsky about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Chomsky has been a clear and much-needed critic of American imperialism over the last 50 years, his reluctance to recognize similarly imperialistic inclinations in Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been frustrating to many of his admirers. This includes Chapeye, who has in the past translated much of Chomsky’s writing into Ukrainian. A…

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been lauded for his resistance to the Russian invasion. Photo by Laurent Van der Stockt for Le Monde/Getty Images By Michael Blake, University of Washington Whatever happens in the coming weeks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will go down as the face of Ukrainian resilience during the Russian invasion of his country. His response to the Russian invasion of his country has been widely praised, both at home and abroad. His speech to the European Parliament in early March…

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John Harwood writes: Americans rarely pay much attention to international events. Busy lives leave little time for distant events with unfamiliar protagonists. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has become a rare exception, its butchery in plain view via saturation coverage for anyone with a video screen. But Americans may not yet have absorbed this disturbing reality: The American president who left office just 14 months ago sided with the butcher. That’s right: In the struggle now uniting the…

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Matt Lewis writes: National populists—the same people who are dogmatic about protecting national borders—are in a tough spot right now, thanks to Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression on Ukraine. The same ultra-nationalists passionate about building a wall on the U.S.’ southern border, or obliterating the EU and returning to hard borders among European nation states—seemed utterly unconcerned about Ukraine’s borders during the run-up to war. These folks are also known for the fetishization of masculinity and toughness, and yet they…

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The Guardian reports: “Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” asked Nick Fuentes, on stage last week at a white nationalist event. Amid a roar of applause for the Russian president, just days after he invaded Ukraine, many attendees responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!” Conservative activists and elected officials from across United States attend CPAC 2022, in OrlandoGreg Aselbekian, supporter of former President Trump, sells hats as he attends the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida,…

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The New York Times reports: Despite the threat of yearslong prison terms, thousands of Russians joined antiwar rallies across the country on Sunday in a striking show of the pent-up anger in Russian society about President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The police reported more than 3,000 arrests across the country — the highest nationwide total officially reported in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests, OVD-Info, reported detentions in 49 different…

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The New York Times reports: With hands still dirty from the battlefield, a dozen Russian prisoners of war sat, stony-faced, in a conference room of a Ukrainian news agency on Saturday and described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed. Lt. Dmitry Kovalensky, who had fought in a Russian tank unit and spoke at the behest of his Ukrainian captors, said he recently came under fire from an armed drone and shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles on a road near Sumy,…

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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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