Attention to the Unseen

NBC News reports: NATO ally Norway has announced that it is boosting the number of naval patrols near vital undersea gas pipelines off its coast, and released a trove of videos exclusively to NBC News illustrating what it sees as a growing Russian threat in the Arctic. The videos provided by the Royal Norwegian Air Force capture the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game between the two militaries, with Russian attack submarines patrolling near a maze of undersea pipelines carrying vast amounts of…

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Kyiv Post reports: A trainload of obsolete, museum-grade T-54 tanks was spotted on a transport train heading west from a Russian military repair base, news reports said on Thursday. Still images and videos geolocated to Russia’s far-eastern Primorsky region showed at least 14 outdated combat vehicles aboard flatcars rolling past a rail crossing. Screen grabs by the Georgia-based Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) showed some clearly identifiable as the T-54B model. The shipment most likely departed from the 1295th Central Tank…

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Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate Bill Clinton distinguished himself from the Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush with regard to Bosnia by supporting a “lift and strike” policy. Armed with weapons from the old Yugoslav Army, Bosnian Serbs were on a rampage, and a United Nations embargo was preventing Muslim Bosniaks from being able to defend themselves, even as the Bush administration looked on. Clinton’s proposal would lift the arms blockade and…

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The Washington Post reports: In a dimly lit room, a dozen or so men in Russian military uniforms, their faces concealed by dark balaclavas, stood around a man reading out a letter addressed to President Vladimir Putin. “As of today, we still have not received weapons and ammo,” the man said, identifying his group as soldiers from the 580th Separate howitzer Artillery Division from Serpukhov, a city 62 miles south of Moscow — a unit he said is now stationed…

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David Ignatius writes: Pentagon strategists have always divided the world into East and West, with U.S. regional forces under European Command or Indo-Pacific Command. But looking at the embrace of Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin this week, you wonder whether we may need a single “Eurasian Command” to handle an integrated threat. A strong China is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week between the two countries’ leaders. The…

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The Associated Press reports: Like a salesman buttering up his best customer, President Vladimir Putin gushed about China’s economic success as he welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the Kremlin. “We even feel a bit envious,” Putin said Monday as Xi grinned. That was more than idle flattery. China isn’t just Moscow’s diplomatic partner in opposing what they see as U.S. domination of global affairs. Its thriving economy is the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas exports, pumping billions…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Ukraine is now getting warplanes, although not the coveted U.S.-made F-16s it has been pushing for. In what counts as another milestone in the West’s willingness to increase security assistance to the war-ravaged nation, Poland and Slovakia, both NATO members, announced last week they will jointly be donating their entire inventory of Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine. Speaking alongside newly elected Czech President Petr Pavel in a press conference in Warsaw on Thursday, Polish President…

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