Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, top government leaders in Moscow are making explicit nuclear threats and officials in Washington are gaming out scenarios should President Vladimir V. Putin decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon to make up for the failings of Russian troops in Ukraine. In a speech on Friday, Mr. Putin raised the prospect anew, calling the United States and NATO enemies seeking Russia’s collapse and…

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The Guardian reports: A defiant Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced that Ukraine is officially applying for membership of Nato, hours after Vladimir Putin said in a Kremlin ceremony that he was annexing four Ukrainian provinces. In a speech filmed outside his presidential office in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he was taking this “decisive step” in order to protect “the entire community” of Ukrainians. He promised the application would happen in an “expedited manner”. “De facto, we have already made our way to…

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Amie Ferris-Rotman writes: Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his mobilization order on Sept. 21, the country’s first military draft since World War II, protests have erupted across Russia. From the glittering Russian capital to army recruitment offices in Siberia to impoverished fishing villages in the Far East, thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to express opposition to fighting Moscow’s war in Ukraine. They have also staged a wave of arson attacks on conscription offices and even shot…

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Politico reports: Russia withdrew its troops from the strategic city of Lyman in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Saturday, a day after President Vladimir Putin hailed the annexation of Donetsk. The retreat, announced by the Defense Ministry in Moscow, comes as Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion makes further gains and presents a big setback for Putin. Due to “a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn” from Lyman “to more advantageous lines,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday in…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Even by his own fire-and-brimstone standards, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed angry on Friday as he addressed hundreds of Russian parliamentarians and governors in St. George Hall in the Kremlin. The event had been called so that Putin could triumphantly announce his latest gambit in Ukraine, the annexation of four regions of that country into the Russian Federation. But as he rattled off a litany of reasons as to why this land grab was…

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Alexei Navalny writes: The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endlessly self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target. This self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of…

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Susan B Glasser writes: Over the weekend, Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, promised a “catastrophic” response if Putin were to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine. American military officials have no doubt produced many serious options for the United States to consider in such a scenario, including directly entering the war on Ukraine’s side—just the Third World War scenario that Biden has been so determined to avoid. Watching all of this, it’s hard not to think of how often over…

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Moscow Times reports: A clear indication the Kremlin is preparing for a protracted war is the draft budget for 2023-2025. This shows that spending on the Russian army this year will amount to almost 5 trillion rubles ($86.2 billion), not the 3.5 trillion originally planned. In subsequent years spending will also exceed forecasts. At the same time, the Kremlin is increasing expenditures on the police, apparently fearing opposition protests. “We are transitioning into a wartime economy. Everything related to development…

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Anne Applebaum writes: Vladimir Putin today announced his annexation of four provinces of Ukraine—four provinces that he does not fully control, that did not vote to join Russia, that have been the site of mass murder and mass deportation since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. With this statement, the Russian president is also declaring war. But this is not merely a war on Ukraine. Putin’s war—Russia’s war—is also a war on a particular idea of world order and international law,…

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James Kirchick writes: In 1942, answering a pacifist opponent of British involvement in the Second World War, George Orwell replied that “pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.” There have of course been many times in human history when opposition to war has been morally justified, intellectually coherent, and, in the end, vindicated. But the war to defeat fascism during the middle part of the past century was simply not one of them. “This is elementary common sense,” Orwell wrote at the time….

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The Wall Street Journal reports: NATO said that a series of leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Europe were the result of sabotage and that attacks on its members’ infrastructure would be met with a collective response from the military alliance. The statement, from the North Atlantic Council, the decision-making body of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, didn’t provide details or evidence. It also noted that the damage to the pipelines occurred in international waters. But it…

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