Attention to the Unseen

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: On a slab of concrete in the rubble of northwest Syria appears a new graffiti. “We are dead,” it reads, “Thanks for letting us down.” The graffiti speaks for the many who were trapped under fallen structures in the wake of last week’s earthquake, whose lives could have been saved, yet whose voices have since fallen silent. Two days after the disaster struck, the United Nations’ Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths tweeted, “The first 72 hrs…

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Brian Whitaker writes: In a long-awaited report, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has blamed the Syrian regime’s air force for a chemical attack in 2018 that killed at least 43 people in Douma, near Damascus. The international watchdog’s findings are not a surprise — it had previously reached the same conclusion about two other attacks involving the same substance. Yet the report is highly significant nonetheless, because the OPCW’s efforts to investigate the Douma attack became…

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Anne Applebaum and Nataliya Gumenyuk write: On the night of February 24, 2022, the sound of missiles jolted Viktor Marunyak awake. He saw flashes in the sky and billowing black smoke; then he got dressed and went to work. Marunyak is the mayor of Stara Zburjivka, a village just across the Dnipro River from Kherson, and he headed immediately to an emergency meeting with leaders of other nearby villages to discuss their options. They quickly realized that they were already…

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The Washington Post reports: As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears, U.S. officials are telling Ukrainian leaders they face a critical moment to change the trajectory of the war, raising the pressure on Kyiv to make significant gains on the battlefield while weapons and aid from the United States and its allies are surging. Despite promises to back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress and America’s allies represent Kyiv’s…

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The New York Times reports: Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire. His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei. One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!” the private said, though no help arrived. Eight…

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The Washington Post reports: As Russian troops stormed into Ukraine last February, sending millions of Ukrainians fleeing for their lives, thousands of Russians also raced to pack their bags and leave home, fearing the Kremlin would shut the borders and impose martial law. Some had long opposed rising authoritarianism, and the invasion was a last straw. Others were driven by economic interest, to preserve livelihoods or escape the bite of sanctions. Then, last autumn, a military mobilization spurred hundreds of…

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The Associated Press reports: Moldova’s President outlined Monday what she described as a plot by Moscow to use external saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, put the nation “at the disposal of Russia” and derail its aspirations to one day join the European Union. President Maia Sandu’s briefing comes a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova, claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials. “The plan…

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The Washington Post reports: It took four days and nights after the earthquake for the rubble to fall silent here. The strongest voices belonged to the women, residents said. Parted from their children, or fighting to save them, they screamed until their lungs gave out. In this forgotten pocket of rebel-held northwest Syria, there were no international rescue workers to save them. No aid shipments brought painkillers to the survivors when stocks ran low. Just six miles away, across the…

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The New York Times reports: The soldier knelt in the snow, aimed a rocket launcher and fired in the direction of Russian troops positioned about a mile away. He was set up at a Ukrainian firing position, and looked just like the other Ukrainian troops fighting south of the city of Bakhmut in one of the most brutal theaters of the war. But he and his comrades are not Ukrainian. They are soldiers in a Ukrainian military unit made up…

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NPR reports: Russia appears to be draining an enormous reservoir in Ukraine, imperiling drinking water, agricultural production and safety at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, according to satellite data obtained by NPR. Since early November 2022, water has been gushing out of the Kakhovka Reservoir, in Southern Ukraine, through sluice gates at a critical hydroelectric power plant controlled by Russian forces. As a result, satellite data shows that the water level at the reservoir has plummeted to its lowest point in…

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Politico reports: Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Friday nominated a new prime minister to keep her country on a pro-EU trajectory after the previous government fell earlier in the day, following months of rising Russian pressure amid the war in Ukraine. She named Dorin Recean, a noted pro-EU figure and current national security adviser, to replace Natalia Gavrilița, as the new head of government. The Moldovan parliament, where Sandu’s party holds a comfortable majority with 63 out of 101 seats,…

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Mark Galeotti writes: Does Vladimir Putin face a challenge, not from cuddly, West-looking liberals, but from even sharper-toothed nationalists? Certainly this is suddenly the message coming from loyalists. Oleg Matveychev, a parliamentarian and spin doctor, who also has a widely-read blog, has made waves by claiming in an online video that ‘2023 will be very dangerous,’ because of the threat of so-called ‘turbo-patriots.’ Discounting the liberals (who ‘have all run away’), he warned that the turbo-patriots had become ‘the only…

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Dara Massicot writes: Three months before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns and U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan met in Moscow with Nikolai Patrushev, an ultra-hawkish adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Burns and Sullivan informed Patrushev that they knew of Russia’s invasion plans and that the West would respond with severe consequences if Russia proceeded. According to Burns, Patrushev said nothing about the invasion. Instead, he looked them in the eye, conveying what Burns took…

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