Attention to the Unseen

Michael Weiss reports: For Russian spies and soldiers, the biggest shock from last month’s abortive coup in Russia is that Yevegeny Prigozhin didn’t succeed in overthrowing a regime that they say curries little devotion. The Insider has spoken with several sources in Russia’s special services. Prigozhin, the rogue catering magnate turned mercenary financier, they insist, faced little resistance because he enjoys widespread support within the ranks of the very institutions meant to safeguard the state and Vladimir Putin. To most…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles. Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time. “We’ve got…

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The Washington Post reports: In a painstakingly slow process that has come to define the speed of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, small groups of sappers on the front lines are crawling across minefields — sometimes literally on their stomachs — to detonate Russia’s defenses and clear a path for troops to advance. The long buildup to the counteroffensive, which began about a month ago across multiple segments of the battlefield in the country’s east and south, gave the Russians time to…

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Insider reports: Russian tourists are snarling up crucial military supply routes as the Kremlin continues to encourage civilians to visit the occupied Crimea peninsula despite it being a war zone, a report says. The traffic jams caused by tourists were made worse this week after an explosion tore through the Kerch road bridge on Sunday, with Russia blaming the attack on drones launched by Ukraine. Ukraine Monday claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack forced the temporary closure of the…

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Reuters reports: Russia halted participation on Monday in the year-old U.N.-brokered deal that lets Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea, spreading fear in poorer countries that price rises will put food out of reach. Hours earlier, a blast knocked out Russia’s bridge to Crimea in what Moscow called a strike by Ukrainian sea drones, killing two people in what Moscow cast as a terrorist attack on the road bridge, a major artery for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. The…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: A Ukrainian strike disabled the only road bridge connecting Russia with the occupied Crimean Peninsula, hitting once again a major symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s rule and constricting Russian supplies to the front lines in southern Ukraine. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said it would likely take until mid-September to restore partial two-way cargo traffic on the bridge, and until November to fully rebuild the 12-mile-long structure. According to Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee, Kyiv…

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Amanda Kadlec writes: When South Africa’s defense force disbanded in 1994, tens of thousands of military personnel found themselves out of work. The state’s massive security infrastructure — independently built with advanced capabilities relative to the country’s size and geopolitical importance — employed the force to keep an inhumane system in place. Suddenly jobless and pension-less with the fall of the apartheid state, some of the elite officers turned to Eben Barlow, the special forces lieutenant colonel who resigned just…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Last week’s NATO summit revealed a major realignment within the U.S.-led trans-Atlantic alliance. European nations, once seen as less steadfast in their support for Kyiv and more vulnerable to Russian pressure, are determined to help Ukraine win an unambiguous victory. At the same time, the Biden administration, which orchestrated a unified Western response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year, is increasingly cautious—constrained by domestic politics and a fear of direct confrontation with Moscow….

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CNN reports: The US will allow European countries to train Ukrainians on F-16 fighter jets, a top Biden administration official confirmed Sunday, a potential boon for Ukraine’s efforts to counter Russia’s air superiority. “The president has given a green light and we will allow, permit, support, facilitate and in fact provide the necessary tools for Ukrainians to begin being trained on F-16s, as soon as the Europeans are prepared,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State…

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Anne Applebaum writes: In 1978, Bohdan Klymchak walked out of the Soviet Union and asked for political asylum in Iran. Klymchak was Ukrainian, born near Lviv. In 1949, his family had been deported to Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, after the arrest of his brother as a “Ukrainian nationalist.” In 1957, Klymchak himself was arrested for “anti-Soviet agitation”; even after his release, he remained under constant surveillance. After he escaped across the border, and after the Iranians sent him…

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The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has said that he sought and failed to have Yevgeny Prigozhin replaced as the leader of Wagner’s fighters in Ukraine after the mercenary chief rebuffed his proposal during a meeting at the Kremlin this month. Putin’s version of events, which appeared in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper, was a surprise admission that the Russian president was still negotiating a takeover of the Wagner mercenary group. Analysts have suggested that last month’s short-lived Wagner rebellion…

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CNN reports: To lose one general during a war that’s going badly might be seen as unfortunate; to lose two within 24 hours looks careless. But that is what’s happened to the Russian command in southern Ukraine – and the two cases illustrate further deficiencies and dissent among Russia’s military leadership. Early Tuesday, a Ukrainian missile slammed into a hotel in the coastal town of Berdyansk that had been taken over by the Russian military. One of many reported Russian…

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Garry Kasparov writes: Last week, an opinion article in Foreign Affairs argued for locking Ukraine out of NATO. The authors, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson of the Cato Institute, offered five claims to support their arguments. But as is typical of the genre, their article is long on opinion and short on facts. Because articles like this are so useful in Kremlin propagandists’ disinformation campaigns, it is worth refuting Logan and Shifrinson’s five claims one by one. Claim 1: Russia…

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