Attention to the Unseen

“Nothing with Russia is as it seems,” warns fmr. NATO deputy commander @RichardShirreff about the apparent drone strikes on the Kremlin. “Of course Russia would like to portray it is an attack on President Putin… it’s a way of causing division between” Ukraine and its allies. pic.twitter.com/uEQY0qo8iW — Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) May 3, 2023 On Vladimir Solovyov's show, Biden was blamed for an alleged Kremlin drone attack, which is being used to justify pulling out of the grain deal, reneging…

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Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg write: In March 1774, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the favorite general and sometime lover of Catherine the Great, took control of the anarchic southern frontier of her empire, a region previously ruled by the Mongol Khans, the Cossack hosts, and the Ottoman Turks, among others. As viceroy, Potemkin waged war and founded cities, among them Kherson, the first home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 1783, he annexed Crimea and became an avatar of imperial glory….

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Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: In the first few days of October 2022, a group of Russians and Belarusians gathered in the Kaliningrad resort town of Svetlogorsk. The politicians, academics and activists discussed how the two countries, “truly striving for stability across the planet,” might resist the suite of international sanctions hitting both Russia and Belarus after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. One of the Svetlogorsk event’s most authoritative speakers was Alexander Dynkin, president of the prestigious Primakov National Research…

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CNN reports: Russian pilots tried to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, according to a spokesman for US Central Command, part of a recent pattern of more aggressive behavior. The attempts have happened in several of the most recent instances of aggressive behavior from Russian pilots, Col. Joe Buccino said. The Russian pilots do not appear to be trying to shoot down American jets, a US official told CNN, but they may be trying to “provoke” the US and “draw us…

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Yahoo News reports: At a time when many Americans, and some of the legislators who represent them in Washington, are growing weary of supporting the defense of Ukraine, a new bipartisan House resolution introduced Tuesday calls on the United States to support an outright victory over Russia. “We must not repeat the error of Sept. 1, 1939,” the resolution’s chief sponsor, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., told Yahoo News, referencing Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which followed desperate efforts to appease…

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NPR reports: Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, over a month after Xi’s summit in Moscow with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin. Xi made the call to Zelenskyy after weeks of intensifying pressure from Western leaders to use his influence with Putin to broker a deal toward ending the war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s invasion in late February 2022. It was the first call between Xi and Zelenskyy since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government said….

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VOA reports: In the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year, global attitudes toward Russia’s leadership have shifted dramatically, with large majorities of the population in dozens of countries reporting disapproval of the Kremlin. Data compiled from surveys of thousands of people in 137 countries and regions showed a marked decline in approval of the Kremlin, according to a report released by the Gallup organization on Tuesday. Globally, 57% of respondents reported that they disapprove of…

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The Washington Post reports: In February, with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine days away, officials in Kyiv were busy making plans to attack Moscow. Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the country’s military intelligence directorate, the HUR, instructed one of his officers “to get ready for mass strikes on 24 February … with everything the HUR had,” according to a classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency. Officials even mused about a sea-based strike using…

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Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports: The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender. US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 per cent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender. The 0.7 per cent real-terms increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981. ‘The…

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Richard Ovenden writes: Librarians and archivists in Ukraine today are fighting to retain control of the country’s institutional repositories of memory. The bodies of knowledge for which they are responsible are under attack from Russian forces. According to the Ukrainian Library Association, three national and state libraries, including the National Scientific Medical Library of Ukraine, as well as some 25 university libraries, have been severely damaged or destroyed. The most shocking statistics relate to public libraries: 47 have been completely…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: France and countries across Eastern Europe condemned remarks by China’s ambassador in Paris claiming that post-Soviet states lack a firm basis for their sovereignty under international law. Ambassador Lu Shaye made the comments during an interview late Friday on French TV, in which he was asked whether he considered the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, part of Ukraine under international law. “Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective…

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The New York Times reports: As war consumes Sudan, nations from around the world have mobilized swiftly. Egypt scrambled to bring home 27 of its soldiers, who had been seized by one of Sudan’s warring parties. A Libyan warlord offered weapons to his favored side, American officials said. Diplomats from Africa, the Middle East and the West have appealed for a halt to the fighting that has reduced parts of the capital, Khartoum, to a smoking battlefield. Even the leader…

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The Washington Post reports: Less than two years after President Biden withdrew U.S. personnel from Afghanistan, the country has become a significant coordination site for the Islamic State as the terrorist group plans attacks across Europe and Asia, and conducts “aspirational plotting” against the United States, according to a classified Pentagon assessment that portrays the threat as a growing security concern. The attack planning, detailed in U.S. intelligence findings leaked on the Discord messaging platform and obtained by The Washington…

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The New York Times reports: In Russian prisons, they said they were deprived of effective treatments for their H.I.V. On the battlefield in Ukraine, they were offered hope, with the promise of anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight. It was a recruiting pitch that worked for many Russian prisoners. About 20 percent of recruits in Russian prisoner units are H.I.V. positive, Ukrainian authorities estimate based on infection rates in captured soldiers. Serving on the front lines seemed less risky…

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