Attention to the Unseen

The Kremlin has exerted tight control over news and social media in an effort to control the information Russians receive about the Ukraine war. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images By Cynthia Hooper, College of the Holy Cross Russian President Vladimir Putin is locked in a vicious struggle not only to subjugate Ukraine, but also to keep his own citizens united in support of Kremlin policy. But as Ukrainian fighters capture the admiration of the world in Twitter posts and TikTok…

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Masha Gessen writes: Take a walk through Moscow these days, and you will see giant, gaudy light displays—entire galleries and faux building façades composed of light bulbs. You will see gleaming arrays of luxury goods, messengers scurrying with cubic backpacks, and restaurants that fill up late in the day and stay full well into the night. Some of those restaurants have giant televisions, and you may see sports competitions, music videos, and news channels on them, but what you will…

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Daniel W. Drezner writes: Sanctions should be a means to achieving a larger end. Maybe the goal is to nudge Putin’s elite coalition — you know, the guys sitting at the other end of the long table — into forcing him out. Maybe it is to delegitimize Putin in the eyes of a country that remembers the pre-Putin 1990s as a time of humiliation. If the goal is to compel, then the sanctioners need to be explicit about what Russia…

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Fiona Hill: We first have to think about what Vladimir Putin has done and the nature of what we’re facing. People don’t want to talk about Adolf Hitler and World War II, but I’m going to talk about it. Obviously the major element when you talk about World War II, which is overwhelming, is the Holocaust and the absolute decimation of the Jewish population of Europe, as well as the Roma-Sinti people. But let’s focus here on the territorial expansionism…

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Vice News reports: Former President Trump’s top national security adviser thinks his old boss did “a lot of damage” to U.S.-Ukraine relations during his time in office—and emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Trump’s delay of military aid to Ukraine in 2019, as he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, made clear to Putin exactly how little Trump cared about Ukraine. “He obviously saw that Trump had contempt…

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The Times of Israel reports: A group of Chechen assassins sent to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “eliminated” after their plot was foiled, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said Tuesday. The announcement from Oleksiy Danilov came days after Ukraine’s military reportedly destroyed a column of Chechen tanks controlled by Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov near Hostomel, a key battleground outside Kyiv. “The Kadyrov forces unit, which came to kill our President, was eliminated,” Danilov told Ukraine…

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Bloomberg reports: The invasion of Ukraine is causing a mass exodus of companies from Russia, reversing three decades of investment by Western and other foreign businesses there following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The list of those cutting ties or reviewing their operations is growing by the hour as foreign governments ratchet up sanctions against Russia, close airspace to its aircraft and lock some banks out of the SWIFT money messaging system. With the ruble plunging and…

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Ilya Marritz writes: Though Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just days old, Russia has been working for years to influence and undermine the independence of its smaller neighbor. As it happens, some Americans have played a role in that effort. One was former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Another was Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani. It’s all detailed in a wide array of public documents, particularly a bipartisan 2020 Senate report on Trump and Russia. I was one…

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Politico reports: Vladimir Putin just achieved the impossible: genuine European unity. The Russian president’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has united Europe and the transatlantic sphere like nothing since the fall of the Berlin Wall, as even his erstwhile allies on the Continent abandoned him over the weekend. From Sofia to Stockholm, Europe’s internal divisions over how to react to Putin’s aggression have melted away in recent days as the historic dimensions of the invasion — the greatest challenge to the…

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Inna Sovsun writes: Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a terrible miscalculation. When he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin apparently thought it would be possible to wage war specifically against the country’s political leadership. He appears to have fallen into the trap of believing his own propaganda and assuming today’s Ukraine was just like modern Russia, with its largely passive and apolitical population. Based on his own experience of dictatorial government, Putin thought it would…

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Dr Joanna Szostek writes: The most obvious miscalculation which Putin has made relates to public opinion in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians in recent years have felt disillusioned about their government but that does not mean they are in any way apathetic about Ukraine’s statehood or about their own Ukrainian identity. Putin seems to be operating on the assumption that significant numbers of ‘pro-Russian’, anti-Western, Russian-speaking Ukrainians will tolerate and even welcome Russian forces as they attempt regime change at gunpoint. But…

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The New York Times reports: By targeting Russia’s central bank with sanctions, experts said, American and European leaders have taken aim at what could be one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s greatest weaknesses: the country’s currency. In Russian cities, anxious customers started lining up on Sunday in front of A.T.M.s, hoping to withdraw the money they had deposited in banks, fearful it would run out. The panic spread on Monday. To try to restore calm, the Bank of Russia posted…

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The Guardian reports: Switzerland, a bastion of neutrality through two world wars, has decided to adopt wholesale swingeing EU sanctions against the Russian central bank, freezing as much as billions of dollars in assets and massively increasing the pressure on the Russian economy. The government also announced it had banned five oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin from entering the country. Flights from Russia are being banned, although this will not apply to flights carrying diplomats. Switzerland had until now adopted…

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The Guardian reports: Belarus may be preparing to send its soldiers into Ukraine in support of the Russian invasion, perhaps as soon as this week, according to a US defence official, amid mounting concern about Minsk’s military preparations. Belarus has already been used as a staging post by Russian forces, who gathered there on the pretext of joint military exercises before last week’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now there is increasing evidence that Minsk may be moving towards becoming an…

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