Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Jack Hanick spent years openly helping a Russian mogul who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014 set up a pro-Kremlin TV empire, raising suspicions about whether the American was violating U.S. law. And yet, for most of the past decade, the Justice Department didn’t appear to consider the ex-Fox News staffer too important a target, at least not enough to indict him. But Hanick’s luck — and that of numerous other people suspected for years of violating U.S….

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Politico reports: Ukraine has not changed its plans for the return of territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea. “Ukraine will choose the way to bring Crimea back, using political and military means,” Tamila Tasheva, the Ukrainian president’s envoy on Crimea, told POLITICO. “To minimize Ukrainian military losses, minimize threats to civilians who live in occupied territories, as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure, Ukraine plans to give Russia a choice on how to leave Crimea. If they don’t agree…

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The New York Times reports: A trove of leaked Pentagon documents reveals how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States, demonstrating Washington’s ability to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and providing an assessment of the strength of Moscow’s war machine. The documents portray a battered Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and a military apparatus that is deeply compromised. They contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the…

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Reuters reports: Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak of several classified U.S. military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak. The documents appear to have been altered to lower the number of casualties suffered by Russian forces, the U.S. officials said, adding their assessments were informal and separate from the…

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The New York Times reports: After months of pouring soldiers into eastern Ukraine, Russia’s progress essentially adds up to this: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a high-profile battlefield with limited strategic value. Compare that with what Moscow had hoped to achieve from its winter offensive by now: to seize the entire Donbas region — which contains dozens more settlements, some of them much larger than Bakhmut. To do that, Russia would have to recreate and…

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The Associated Press reports: On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart. But this was no ordinary Russian defector. Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin’s secretive elite personal security service — one of the few Russians to…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: As Moscow prosecutors prepare an espionage case against jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, lawyers with experience in the Russian judicial process predict a journey through a justice system with the familiar features of Western courts but little of their substance. Like in the U.S. and other Western legal systems, Mr. Gershkovich is guaranteed a defense lawyer in Russia. But in practice, there is no promise of when his lawyer will be allowed to…

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Reuters reports: Finland will join NATO on Tuesday, marking the completion of a swift journey into the military alliance for the Nordic nation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials said. Finland has a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, meaning NATO’s frontier with Russia will roughly double in length, and the move drew a pledge from Moscow that it will beef up its forces in border regions. “Tomorrow we will welcome Finland as the 31st member of NATO making Finland safer…

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“You have access to sensitive information for the motherland, so we want to control your movements.” Russia is taking away senior officials’ and executives’ passports, fearful a disloyal elite could defect.https://t.co/caCbW44dfj — max seddon (@maxseddon) April 3, 2023

Josh Rogin writes: The Biden administration seems to have forgotten about Syria these days. The only moves it has made recently were responses to February’s devastating earthquake or a recent attack on U.S. troops by an apparent Iranian drone. The administration has abdicated diplomatic leadership to Moscow and is turning a blind eye as Gulf states welcome the Assad regime back into the diplomatic fold. Privately, many Biden officials tell me they just don’t see any good U.S. policy options….

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Mikhail Shishkin writes: My dearest one, They stole the language from us. We spoke and corresponded with you in the language of great Russian literature. Now, for the whole world, Russian is the language of those who bomb Ukrainian cities and kill children, the language of war criminals, the language of murderers. They will be tried for crimes against humanity. I would like to believe that all those who prepared and participated in this war, who supported it in one…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton write: An infamous pro-Russian combatant turned propagandist, known by the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday, in an explosion that injured at least 25 others, according to the Russian government. Footage captured on a cellphone just before the explosion showed Tatarsky examining a statuette of a miner. Tatarsky was himself formerly a miner, and his Ukrainian hometown is in a region known for its coal mining and heavy industry….

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