Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Ukrainian troops fire thousands of explosive shells at Russian targets every day, using high-tech cannons supplied by the United States and its allies. But those weapons are burning out after months of overuse, or being damaged or destroyed in combat, and dozens have been taken off the battlefield for repairs, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. A third of the roughly 350 Western-made howitzers donated to Kyiv are out of action at any given time,…

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Janine di Giovanni writes: Earlier last month, I was sitting in a bomb shelter in Kyiv with dozens of civilians as we were pounded by missiles. Putin intended his bombs to do more than punish. He wanted them to destroy the power grids and heating facilities that keep Ukraine warm during the nation’s brutal winters. I direct a war crimes unit in Ukraine called The Reckoning Project. Our job is to gather human testimonies during wartime which we then verify,…

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Politico reports: The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because of Moscow’s strikes on civilian targets, at the same time as Kyiv’s military administration reported three people were killed and half a dozen injured in a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s capital. “The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian authorities worked to bring back electricity supplies in several cities including Kyiv, as they confront a deepening humanitarian crisis after Russian missile barrages damaged critical infrastructure across the country as part of what the U.S. called a campaign by Moscow to freeze Ukraine into submission. As winter sets in, Russia’s strikes are taking a toll on civilians across Ukraine, forcing them to cook on gas camping stoves, store water in baths in case of…

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The Guardian reports: Ukraine’s top security official has confirmed that Iranian military advisers have been killed in Crimea, and warned that any other Iranians on occupied Ukrainian territory in support of Moscow’s invasion would also be targeted. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, said Iranians were present in Crimea to help Russia pilot the Shahed-136 armed drones supplied by the Tehran government, but did not say how many Ukraine had killed. Reports in the Israeli press…

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David Sanger writes: Over the past few days, Iran has told international inspectors that it plans to begin making near bomb-grade nuclear fuel deep inside a mountain that is hard to bomb, and dramatically expand its nuclear fuel production at a plant that Israel and the United States have repeatedly sabotaged. Iranian forces have shot or locked up antigovernment protesters, provided Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine and, some Western intelligence agencies suspect, may be negotiating to produce…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Hours after the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Russia unleashed its latest barrage of missiles aimed at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure — and its civilians. Russia’s military bombed a maternity ward in Vilniansk, a small city in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing a 2-day old baby and injuring doctors and medics. The newborn’s mother survived the attack. The capital city of Kyiv was plunged into darkness,…

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Oz Katerji writes: Ukraine’s liberation of Kherson and the jubilant scenes of celebration on the streets of the newly freed territory have rightly dominated headlines across the world. Visiting Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine’s victory over Russia in the region represents “the beginning of the end of the war.” Zelensky’s elation is understandable, but also premature. Despite battlefield successes and Ukraine retaking more than half the territory that Russia had captured since it invaded in February, the…

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The Washington Post reports: When Matthias Warnig, chief executive of the company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, arrived for a meeting at the historic lakeside state chancellery building here, he carried a bright bouquet of flowers. It was August 2020 and Trump administration sanctions on the nearly constructed pipeline under the Baltic Sea had caused final work on the project to grind to a halt. Warnig, a former officer in the Stasi, East…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine’s military said it launched an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the country’s Black Sea coast, as Kyiv looks to open up its besieged ports and build on significant gains through the country’s south. Ukrainian forces have begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit, a strip of land jutting into the sea south of Mykolaiv, that has been occupied for months by Russian forces cutting off access to the port…

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The Washington Post reports: Not far from this village on the east bank of the Oskil River, Ukrainian forces have hit a wall of Russian resistance as they try to extend a counteroffensive that just two months ago was sweeping across nearby lands at a stunning clip. Andriy, a soldier with Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, was not sure what to say on a recent day, when a group of Ukrainian intelligence officers showed up and asked about his unit’s push…

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The Washington Post reports: After weeks of savaging Ukrainian cities with Iranian-made drones, Moscow has quietly reached an agreement with Tehran to begin manufacturing hundreds of unmanned weaponized aircraft on Russian soil, according to new intelligence seen by U.S. and other Western security agencies. Russian and Iranian officials finalized the deal during a meeting in Iran in early November, and the two countries are moving rapidly to transfer designs and key components that could allow production to begin within months,…

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The Washington Post reports: Ihor didn’t even know the first name of the person who contacted him. The man said he was a member of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and wanted to know if Ihor was interested in helping fight the Russians occupying his city of Kherson. “Sign me up,” Ihor responded. For months, the two kept up a coded communication over the Telegram messaging app. Sometimes Ihor would be asked to help pinpoint locations from which the Russians were…

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Michael Weiss reports: “The Russians have no idea,” Alexander Toots, the head of Estonian counterintelligence, tells me, laughing. “They have absolutely no idea he is here. You can be the one to tell them.” Toots was referring to the defection of a Russian spy to Estonia. But Artem Zinchenko isn’t just any spy. He was the first agent of Russia’s military intelligence arrested by Estonia, in 2017, then traded back to Moscow a year later for an Estonian citizen in…

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James Rushton and Michael Weiss report: The road to Kherson, scattered with burned-out tanks and vehicles, at one point stops being functional due to a collapsed bridge, requiring a hastily constructed dirt track. The postapocalyptic scenery around Ukraine’s recently liberated city is unsurprising, considering that until about a week ago this area of otherwise unremarkable countryside was among the most fiercely contested pieces of land on Earth. Almost every building on both sides of the road shows some sign of…

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