Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is primarily Vladimir Putin’s war, but if there is a second man whose name and reputation will be tied to the devastation unleashed by Moscow it is Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. His fighters were part of the first wave assault on the country, and died in large numbers around the Hostomel airbase, with one key commander among those killed. Elite Chechen squads were also reportedly recruited for failed attempts to assassinate key Ukrainian…

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Anne Applebaum writes: The war in Ukraine has reached a turning point. The Russian troops that invaded the country from the north, south, and east are now scarcely moving. They have targeted schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and a theater sheltering children, but they are not yet in control even of the places they occupy. And no wonder: Few Ukrainians are willing to collaborate with the occupiers. The overwhelming majority, more than 90 percent, believe they will defeat them. The Ukrainian…

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Tom Mutch reports: “Russian terrorists did this. … And my father is Russian, from Belgorod!” Galina, a 63-year-old cashier, says as she pulls her belongings from the wreckage of what used to be her apartment. As she gestures at the rubble behind her, she tells us, “They dumped an enormous bomb from a plane over there, at what used to be our flat.” Galina and her husband, Sergey, also 63, have not left the city because they have nowhere to…

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The Guardian reports: It has been three weeks since Russia updated the official death toll to its invasion in Ukraine, leaving open the question of how many of its soldiers have been killed or wounded in the chaotic opening stages of its war. In early March, the Russian defence ministry admitted that 498 Russian soldiers had been killed in action and 1,500 wounded, a large number after just 10 days of fighting that pointed to the danger of its attempts…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Over the past 120 years, a Beirut bakery has survived civil war, Lebanon’s financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Fighting in Ukraine, disrupting food and energy supplies world-wide, may soon put it out of business. Zouhair Khafiyeh’s storefront is empty of the pastries and meat-stuffed pies he has sold for years, which helped put his children through college. The cost of a bag of flour on the black market has gone up more than 1000%…

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Andriy Yermak writes: Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s horrific invasion has exceeded every outside prediction. Many in the West did not understand Ukrainians’ love for their freedom, for their democracy. For us, losing our country would be worse than death. And that’s why we fight — because defeat is not an option. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered this message to a joint session of the U.S. Congress and to parliaments across Europe. He also pleaded for greater military assistance and the establishment…

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The Times of Israel reports: The Jewish president of a country fighting for its very survival addressed the lawmakers of the perenially threatened Jewish state on Sunday evening. One might have expected the event to be stirring and electrifying. Instead, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech was angry, accusatory, despairing, and brief — lasting less than 10 minutes. He used it to make clear his belief that the Israeli government’s refusal to provide arms and fully open its doors to Ukrainian…

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Mstyslav Chernov reports: I knew Russian forces would see the eastern port city of Mariupol as a strategic prize because of its location on the Sea of Azov. So on the evening of Feb. 23, I headed there with my long-time colleague Evgeniy Maloletka, a Ukrainian photographer for The Associated Press, in his white Volkswagen van. On the way, we started worrying about spare tires, and found online a man nearby willing to sell to us in the middle of…

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Eliot A. Cohen writes: The evidence that Ukraine is winning this war is abundant, if one only looks closely at the available data. The absence of Russian progress on the front lines is just half the picture, obscured though it is by maps showing big red blobs, which reflect not what the Russians control but the areas through which they have driven. The failure of almost all of Russia’s airborne assaults, its inability to destroy the Ukrainian air force and…

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Nataliya Bugayova writes: The U.S. has routinely attempted to reset relations with Russia since the rise to power of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000. The Soviet Union’s collapse led legions of scholars and policy-makers to pivot towards the new issues of a post-Soviet Middle East, Europe, and Asia. An entire generation of Americans hardly thought about Russia. The Russian Federation was seen as a former foe that could be integrated – albeit uneasily – into the international system led…

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