Attention to the Unseen

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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The Washington Post reports: Like anyone who gets into his dream college, Victor Muller Ferreira was ecstatic when he was admitted to Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in Washington in 2018. “Today we made the future — we managed to get in one of the top schools in the world,” he wrote in an email to those who had helped him gain entry to the elite master’s program in international relations. “This is the victory that belongs to all of…

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Michael Weiss reports: At first, the Russian pilots all thought it was a scam. But they agreed to go along with it anyway, especially after the initial payments came through. Last summer, a group of Ukrainian volunteers, working closely with their country’s intelligence service, apparently came close to persuading three Russian aviators who were in the midst of bombing Ukraine to defect with their warplanes in exchange for $1 million a piece. It was a bold, months-long operation, “like a…

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The New York Times reports: Hidden in the bowels of an unmarked building, set well back from the fighting, a command center directing operations in the city of Bakhmut was high-tech and humming. Soldiers monitored video screens with live feeds of destroyed buildings and a cratered battlefield. Six weeks after coming to help defend Bakhmut, the men of the Adam Tactical Group, one of Ukraine’s most effective battle units, were quietly confident they had turned the tide against Russian troops…

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The Washington Post reports: Russian intelligence agencies worked with a Moscow-based defense contractor to strengthen their ability to launch cyberattacks, sow disinformation and surveil sections of the internet, according to thousands of pages of confidential corporate documents. The documents detail a suite of computer programs and databases that would allow Russia’s intelligence agencies and hacking groups to better find vulnerabilities, coordinate attacks and control online activity. The documents suggest the firm was supporting operations including both social media disinformation and…

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An editorial in the Washington Post says: Information is the world’s lifeblood. It pulsates in torrents of facts and images. We are swamped with it. But information can be poison, a dangerous weapon. Disinformation, or organized lying, can be used to wage political warfare. As the historian Thomas Rid wrote in “Active Measures,” his book on the subject, disinformation can weaken a political system that places its trust in truth. “Disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundations of open…

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David J. Kramer, John Herbst, and William Taylor write: Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last year and, for that matter, its first invasion of its neighbor eight years before are impossible to justify. Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to convince his public that this war is existential, but with little success. Russia’s existence as a strong, sovereign state is not dependent on its control of Ukraine or even parts of the Donbas or Crimea. That’s why, since Putin implemented…

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