Attention to the Unseen

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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Lawrence Freedman writes: The Russo-Ukrainian War is all about territory. Russia wants to complete its occupation of the oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson; Ukraine seeks to liberate all occupied territories, including Crimea. This is what the game theorists call a “zero-sum game” – what one wins the others must lose. This feature of the war explains why a negotiated outcome is so difficult to achieve, why the current battles matter so much, and why those commenting on the…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkey’s president gave his approval for Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the alliance’s secretary general said, paving the way for NATO to complete a notable expansion launched in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed to forward Sweden’s accession to the Turkish parliament “as soon as possible.” Erdogan had blocked Sweden’s NATO bid for more than a year but told…

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Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin has held Kremlin talks with Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his commanders to discuss the armed mutiny Wagner attempted to mount against the army’s top brass, Putin’s spokesman said on Monday. The meeting was first reported by French newspaper Liberation, which said Prigozhin had met Putin and the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and SVR Foreign Intelligence boss Sergei Naryshkin. The meeting, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was held on…

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Reuters reports: As rebellious Wagner forces drove north toward Moscow on June 24, a contingent of military vehicles diverted east on a highway in the direction of a fortified Russian army base that holds nuclear weapons, according to videos posted online and interviews with local residents. Once the Wagner fighters reach more rural regions, the surveillance trail goes cold – about 100 km from the nuclear base, Voronezh-45. Reuters could not confirm what happened next, and Western officials have repeatedly…

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