Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: Russia’s military is divided over how best to counter Ukraine’s unexpected battlefield advances this month, according to multiple sources familiar with US intelligence, as Moscow has found itself on the defensive in both the east and the south. Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself giving directions directly to generals in the field, two sources familiar with US and western intelligence said– a highly unusual management tactic in a modern military that these sources said hints at the dysfunctional…

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New Lines reports: The blood of Ukrainian detainees is still visible on the floor and on the wooden batons Russian forces used to beat them. Ukrainians were tied to metal-framed chairs before being electrocuted with cables or choked with a length of rope. Proof of the horrors to which local residents were subjected during more than six months of occupation was revealed on Sept. 19 in a dark and dust-filled basement under the police station in Izium, a strategic city…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the threat of a nuclear response in the conflict and ordered reservists to mobilize, escalating the war in Ukraine following stinging losses on the battlefield and drawing harsh criticism from President Biden. “Russia will use all the instruments at its disposal to counter a threat against its territorial integrity—this is not a bluff,” Mr. Putin said in a national address that blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine, where…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: President Vladimir Putin’s moves to mobilize as many as 300,000 reservists, threaten nuclear strikes and annex occupied parts of Ukraine show how badly the war has gone for Russia, military and political analysts say, and are unlikely to stop the Ukrainian advance or reverse the battlefield situation in the immediate future. Mr. Putin made these announcements a day after snap referendums on joining Russia were called for Friday in the Russian-occupied parts of the Donetsk,…

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Politico reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Russian President Vladimir Putin must return all land that Russia has occupied, including Crimea. The Black Sea peninsula should be returned to its “rightful owners,” Erdoğan told PBS NewsHour on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in comments likely to provoke ire in Moscow. Asked whether Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea in a negotiated end to the war, Erdoğan said, “These are our descendants…

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NBC News reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin has a problem. For more than two decades now, Putin’s expanding grip on power has been predicated on his portrayed strength and justified as essential to Russia’s existence. Over time, as the political opposition and the independent media were gradually whittled away, Kremlin propagandists fostered a sense of inevitability underpinning his continued stewardship. “Russian society, just as the Russian army, is decaying and falling apart because of corruption.” From the start, Putin’s invasion…

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