Attention to the Unseen

Peter Beaumont writes: War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are “White Angels” and “Dark Angels”, the “road of life” (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the “Invincibility Centre”. The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly. Their counterparts, the Dark Angels, take…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The EU is seeking countries outside the bloc to join its efforts to collectively provide ammunition, with at least Norway already expressing interest, according to one EU official and two diplomats. The push is part of an EU plan to help provide larger quantities of lower-cost ammunition for Ukraine, while also boosting Europe’s capacity to produce and resupply its own dwindling stocks. Canada could also be included in the scheme, added a second EU official, who, like the…

Read More Read More

NBC News reports: Initial U.S. intelligence suggesting that China is considering supplying lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine was gleaned from Russian government officials, according to one current and one former U.S. official familiar with the intelligence. U.S. officials then spent weeks corroborating the information from other sources of intelligence, the current and former officials said, and with allies who also brought additional streams of information. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: The oligarch Oleg Deripaska has said Russia could run out of money by next year unless the country secures investment from “friendly” countries as western sanctions bite. Deripaska, an energy and metals tycoon who was once Russia’s richest person, told an investment conference in Siberia on Thursday: “There will be no money already next year. We will need foreign investors.” Deripaska, who is subject to UK, US and EU sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said funds…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: Finland’s parliament has overwhelmingly approved legislation allowing the country to join Nato, increasing the chances of it becoming a member of the transatlantic defensive alliance before its Nordic neighbour Sweden. Both countries last year abandoned decades of military non-alignment in a historic policy shift triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, submitting simultaneous Nato membership applications and pledging to complete the process “hand-in-hand”. However, new entrants must be approved by all 30 existing members and while both applications still await…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Republicans in Congress sharply questioned senior Pentagon officials on Tuesday about the tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid the United States has sent to Ukraine, casting fresh doubt on whether they would embrace future spending as Democrats pleaded for a cleareyed assessment of how much more money would be needed. The exchanges at two House committee hearings, coming just days after the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, highlighted how concerns…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The images tell the story. In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense. Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing…

Read More Read More

The Associated Press reports: U.S. intelligence shows that China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan though he may be currently harboring doubts about his ability to do so given Russia’s experience in its war with Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns said. Burns, in a television interview that aired Sunday, stressed that the United States must take “very seriously” Xi’s desire to ultimately control Taiwan even if military conflict is not…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people – and said he was forced to take into account NATO’s nuclear capabilities. A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history – and saying that he believes the very future of Russia and its people is in peril. “They…

Read More Read More

Yaroslav Trofimov writes: Two days before the Russian invasion of his country, on Feb. 22, 2022, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was welcomed to the White House. As he greeted President Biden and senior administration officials, Mr. Kuleba later recalled, he felt like a patient surrounded by doctors presenting him with a diagnosis of stage-four cancer. The consensus among the U.S. and its European allies was that there was nothing they could do to prevent the inevitable. Their intelligence services…

Read More Read More

Mariia Shuvalova writes: At 5 a.m. on February 24, 2022, my husband woke me up in our Kyiv apartment. He had heard explosions. In complete darkness, I tried to dress and pack documents, a laptop, and cash into a backpack. Immediately I started experiencing nausea, diarrhea, and pain in the bottom of my stomach. My period began three weeks earlier than it normally would (something that also happened to many Ukrainian women with whom I’ve spoken). And I also had…

Read More Read More