Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The startling clash between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which threatens to become a regional conflict, jeopardizes the months-long effort by President Biden and his top aides to push Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Even before the assault by Palestinian militants of Hamas on Israeli towns on Saturday morning, American officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, had warned that the complex diplomacy over normalization might not bear fruit. On Saturday, Mr….

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Politico reports: After a year and a half of war, Ukraine’s leaders now have a new reason to worry: Mounting political chaos in America is threatening to derail their supply of money and weapons. Days after lawmakers shelved a vital U.S. plan to send billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own Republican Party colleagues. Aid to Ukraine was named as one of the reasons. In Kyiv, officials are at a…

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Peter Dickinson writes: Russia has reportedly withdrawn most of its Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea in recent weeks following a series of successful Ukrainian attacks. The retreat of the Russian fleet is a serious setback for Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion and the latest indication that Ukraine is winning the Battle of the Black Sea. Satellite footage from early October indicates that Russian vessels including three Kilo-class submarines, two guided missile frigates, and a patrol ship have all been hastily…

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CNN reports: The US will transfer thousands of seized Iranian weapons and rounds of ammunition to Ukraine, in a move that could help to alleviate some of the critical shortages facing the Ukrainian military as it awaits more money and equipment from the US and its allies, US officials said. US Central Command has already transferred over one million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces, it announced on Wednesday. The transfer was conducted on Monday, CENTCOM…

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Reuters reports: Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts. They’re among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who’ve been pressed into Russian penal units known as “Storm-Z” squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units. Few live to tell their tale, the people said. “Storm fighters, they’re just meat,” said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested…

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The New York Times reports: Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West. But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that? American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies. The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with…

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Politico reports: From Mitch McConnell on down, the Senate’s pro-Ukraine coalition is trying to reassure the U.S. ally that help will soon be on the way — even after a bruising GOP confrontation over keeping the government open snuffed out billions in immediate new aid. But for that bipartisan group — which has served as a bulwark against growing House Republican opposition to continued aid — the past week has been a rude awakening. Not until now has the depth…

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Politico reports: Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests. The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft…

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Patrick Wintour writes: “The EU has changed. There is no turning back. We have turned out the lights behind us and there is basically only one way.” The words of the Danish politician and EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager at a conference in May neatly reflect the mood among the Brussels elite, taken aback at their own ability to shed EU bureaucratic torpor, defend Ukraine, embrace enlargement and move closer to fulfilling Ursula von der Leyen’s ambition for the EU to…

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Michael Schuman writes: By Beijing’s reckoning, the U.S.-led global order is in turmoil, and a Washington in decline has no answers to the world’s mounting problems. Fortunately for the future of humanity, however, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping does. He would like to replace Washington’s “rules-based” world order with a framework of his own—one whose most sacred principle is national sovereignty, or the right of states to govern themselves, free from outside interference. In the world Xi envisions, nations will…

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NPR reports: On a day when Russian missiles struck energy infrastructure across his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, D.C., to make his renewed case for American aid to Ukraine to a deeply divided Congress preoccupied with a looming government shutdown. Zelenskyy’s reception in Congress was emblematic of the division between the two chambers as an end-of-the-month deadline to pass a government spending bill approaches — with a $24 billion White House request for funding to Ukraine hanging…

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Timothy Snyder writes: The Silicon Valley oligarch, perhaps the richest man in the world, extends a hand to his fellow oligarch, the man who has his finger on Russia’s nuclear button. They share a secret about the foolishness of the masses, and take action to save us all from ourselves. Thanks to the two of them, the world is saved from Armageddon. Not the precis of a favourably reviewed work of dystopian fiction but a scenario presented as though it…

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