Attention to the Unseen

Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev, and Mark Leonard write: A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is little doubt the war is a turning point in world history. The conflict has challenged Europeans’ most basic assumptions about their security, brought the spectre of nuclear confrontation back to their continent, and disrupted the global economy, leaving energy and food crises in its wake. Yet while Russia’s aggression is an event of global significance, people in different parts of the world…

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NBC News reports: A flurry of European diplomatic activity over Russia’s war in Ukraine has offered a stark contrast this week: While President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, one of China’s most senior diplomats was heading to Moscow. Wang Yi, Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s senior foreign policy adviser, gave one of the strongest indications yet of Russia and China’s strengthening ties on Wednesday. “We are ready to deepen our strategic partnership,” he said according to Reuters. “Other…

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The New York Times reports: The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group accused the country’s defense minister and its most senior general of treason on Tuesday, intensifying the most high-profile dispute in the Russian forces since the invasion of Ukraine began. Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been taking aim at military leaders in a series of increasingly hostile audio messages on social media this week, accused the “chief of the general staff and minister of defense” of withholding ammunition…

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Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries. The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state…

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  BBC News reports: Beneath Moldova’s soaring parliament building, a parade of its most precarious file slowly past – bussed in by the thousand from across the country, each with their private tale of poverty and frustration. “We’re a laughing stock – the government is mocking us,” Ala tells me. Capped in a blue woollen hat, she thrusts her wide pale face close to mine, and says: “There are people with four or five children who literally have nothing to…

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In a ten-tweet thread, Joe Cirincione explores the implications of Putin’s announcement: Let’s break down what Putin’s announcement that he is “suspending” compliance with the New START treaty means. The accord limits the US and Russia to 1,550 operationally deployed strategic weapons. It runs thru 2026 and is the last remaining strategic arms control treaty.  First, this is a major violation of the treaty. There is no provision for “suspending” compliance with the treaty. It formalizes Russia’s existing noncompliance with…

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David Rothkopf writes: Biden, in going to Kyiv, offered the clearest possible reminder of his stance against Russian aggression from the first moments of his presidency. It illustrated that he did not hesitate to support Ukraine when it was imperiled and that his leadership among our allies worldwide has been one of the signature triumphs of his first term in office. NATO, recently adrift and doubted by other U.S. political leaders, was stronger than ever, on the verge of expanding….

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Anne Applebaum writes: An American AWACS began patrolling the skies west of Ukraine last night; Kyiv was locked down this morning. Motorcades crisscrossed the city and rumors began to spread. But although it was clear someone important was about to arrive, the first photographs of President Joe Biden—with President Volodymyr Zelensky, with air-raid sirens blaring, with St. Michael’s Square in the background—had exactly the impact they were intended to have: surprise, amazement, respect. He’s the American president. He made an…

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Eliot A. Cohen writes: Symbols matter: a Kennedy or a Reagan at the Berlin Wall, a Churchill with a cigar and a bowler, for that matter a green-clad Zelensky growling, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Simply by taking the hazardous trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance. While the president clearly intended to bolster the confidence of Ukraine, and the commitment of ambivalent Europeans and neo-isolationist Americans, his real audiences lay elsewhere, as his remarks…

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The New York Times reports: The grievances, paranoia and imperialist mind-set that drove President Vladimir V. Putin to invade Ukraine have seeped deep into Russian life after a year of war — a broad, if uneven, societal upheaval that has left the Russian leader more dominant than ever at home. Schoolchildren collect empty cans to make candles for soldiers in the trenches, while learning in a new weekly class that the Russian military has always liberated humanity from “aggressors who…

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The Washington Post reports: President Vladimir Putin likes to portray himself as a new czar like Peter the Great or Ivan III, the 15th-century grand prince known as the “gatherer of the Russian lands.” But Putin’s year-long war in Ukraine has failed so far to secure the lands he aims to seize, and in Russia, there is fear that he is leading his nation into a dark period of strife and stagnation — or worse. Some in the elite also…

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