Attention to the Unseen

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Large parts of the Ukrainian capital have been experiencing rolling blackouts in recent weeks, after increased Russian attacks over the past month that have destroyed an estimated 30% of Ukraine’s power and heating generation capacity. Kyiv has accused Russia, which continues to suffer a string of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield, of pursuing a determined strategy of targeting such facilities in order both to increase Ukrainian refugee flows into Europe and to freeze the…

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The Washington Post reports: When Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer began escalating his threat of using nuclear weapons over the United States’ aid to Ukraine, the Congressional Progressive Caucus wanted to respond. A two-page letter to President Biden, drafted in July, was meant to reaffirm House liberals’ belief that diplomatic engagement is critical at such points of escalation to avoid nuclear war. It was not meant to push the administration to take a radically different approach to foreign policy,…

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Jeff Stein writes: Of all the post-invasion excuses given for the Russian army’s failures in Ukraine—corruption, bad logistics, poor execution of a bad idea—the most obvious one, to me, has gotten short shrift: The Russian army has virtually no sergeants— or as retired Army Gen. Mark Hertling put it to me recently, “no functioning NCO corps.” U.S. veterans have to be gobsmacked as I was hearing this for the first time. From the moment screaming drill instructors “welcomed” us to…

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Reuters reports: The Russian soldiers had fled weeks before. But they left their traces everywhere. Concrete steps led into the basement of their hastily abandoned headquarters in this small riverside town in eastern Ukraine. A bunker smelling of damp lay behind a steel door marked “Command Group.” Papers, some charred, were stuffed into a furnace. Others were scattered across the floor. In a floral notebook, an unnamed staff officer left a sketch of a cartoon soldier and mused about going…

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Lynne O’Donnell writes: Members of Afghanistan’s elite National Army Commando Corps, who were abandoned by the United States and Western allies when the country fell to the Taliban last year, say they are being contacted with offers to join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine. Multiple Afghan military and security sources say the U.S.-trained light infantry force, which fought alongside U.S. and other allied special forces for almost 20 years, could make the difference Russia needs on the Ukrainian…

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