Attention to the Unseen

Janine di Giovanni writes: Earlier last month, I was sitting in a bomb shelter in Kyiv with dozens of civilians as we were pounded by missiles. Putin intended his bombs to do more than punish. He wanted them to destroy the power grids and heating facilities that keep Ukraine warm during the nation’s brutal winters. I direct a war crimes unit in Ukraine called The Reckoning Project. Our job is to gather human testimonies during wartime which we then verify,…

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Politico reports: The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because of Moscow’s strikes on civilian targets, at the same time as Kyiv’s military administration reported three people were killed and half a dozen injured in a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s capital. “The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian authorities worked to bring back electricity supplies in several cities including Kyiv, as they confront a deepening humanitarian crisis after Russian missile barrages damaged critical infrastructure across the country as part of what the U.S. called a campaign by Moscow to freeze Ukraine into submission. As winter sets in, Russia’s strikes are taking a toll on civilians across Ukraine, forcing them to cook on gas camping stoves, store water in baths in case of…

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The Guardian reports: Ukraine’s top security official has confirmed that Iranian military advisers have been killed in Crimea, and warned that any other Iranians on occupied Ukrainian territory in support of Moscow’s invasion would also be targeted. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, said Iranians were present in Crimea to help Russia pilot the Shahed-136 armed drones supplied by the Tehran government, but did not say how many Ukraine had killed. Reports in the Israeli press…

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David Sanger writes: Over the past few days, Iran has told international inspectors that it plans to begin making near bomb-grade nuclear fuel deep inside a mountain that is hard to bomb, and dramatically expand its nuclear fuel production at a plant that Israel and the United States have repeatedly sabotaged. Iranian forces have shot or locked up antigovernment protesters, provided Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine and, some Western intelligence agencies suspect, may be negotiating to produce…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Hours after the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Russia unleashed its latest barrage of missiles aimed at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure — and its civilians. Russia’s military bombed a maternity ward in Vilniansk, a small city in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing a 2-day old baby and injuring doctors and medics. The newborn’s mother survived the attack. The capital city of Kyiv was plunged into darkness,…

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Oz Katerji writes: Ukraine’s liberation of Kherson and the jubilant scenes of celebration on the streets of the newly freed territory have rightly dominated headlines across the world. Visiting Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine’s victory over Russia in the region represents “the beginning of the end of the war.” Zelensky’s elation is understandable, but also premature. Despite battlefield successes and Ukraine retaking more than half the territory that Russia had captured since it invaded in February, the…

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The Washington Post reports: When Matthias Warnig, chief executive of the company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, arrived for a meeting at the historic lakeside state chancellery building here, he carried a bright bouquet of flowers. It was August 2020 and Trump administration sanctions on the nearly constructed pipeline under the Baltic Sea had caused final work on the project to grind to a halt. Warnig, a former officer in the Stasi, East…

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