Attention to the Unseen

Andrew A. Michta writes: Today, Europe is at an inflection point because it remains wedded to “institutional thinking” that is increasingly divorced from hard-power realities on the ground. At the same time, the Continent’s political leaders sense that what happens in Ukraine — and, ultimately, where it ends up on Europe’s political map — will define the course of Europe’s evolution and, by extension, transatlantic relations. No matter what, one thing is certain, though: There will be real and enduring…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia on Tuesday banned the sale of its oil and petroleum products to countries that put a cap on their sales price, in a move that threatened more uncertainty ahead for global energy markets. The Kremlin’s action is an attempt to undermine a plan by the U.S. and its allies to bar the shipping, financing or insuring of seaborne Russian crude unless it is sold for $60 a barrel or less—a sanction leveled in response…

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The New York Times reports: In early March, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its third week, a Russian diplomat nearly 3,000 miles away in the Central African Republic paid an unusual visit to the head of this country’s top court. His message was blunt: The country’s pro-Kremlin president must remain in office, indefinitely. To do this, the diplomat, Yevgeny Migunov, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, argued that the court should abolish the constitutional restriction limiting a president…

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The New York Times reports: On a foggy morning a few months ago, Valentyn Dmytrovych Yermolenko, an aging Ukrainian fisherman with a bad back and horrible knees, puttered down a narrow channel off the Dnipro River, his inflatable dinghy cutting through the mist. His city, Kherson, had been taken over by the Russian Army, and on the floor of his boat, concealed under a fishing net in a black plastic tub, Mr. Yermolenko had hidden three disassembled automatic rifles. As…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian troops were losing the battle for Lyman, a small city in eastern Ukraine, in late September when a call came in for the commanding officer on the front line, over an encrypted line from Moscow. It was Vladimir Putin, ordering them not to retreat. The president seemed to have limited understanding of the reality of the situation, according to current and former U.S. and European officials and a former senior Russian intelligence officer briefed…

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The Washington Post reports: Virtually every day, a line of 18-wheel trucks loaded with weapons or ammunition pulls up to a sprawling warehouse here nestled near an asphalt runway stretching nearly two miles. Drawn from U.S. military depots around the country, the lethal cargo is unloaded onto pallets that will be packed aboard cargo planes bound for Europe, the next stop on its journey to the front lines in Ukraine. The constant tempo has evolved from choppy beginnings into precision…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: North Korea has sent a large arms delivery to the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force whose influence and operations in Ukraine are growing, according to the Biden administration. North Korea last month shipped infantry rockets and missiles to the Wagner Group, which paid for the weaponry, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said Thursday. The shipment comes as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters another critical stage, with…

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Anne Applebaum writes: Had the Russian plan been carried out as it was written, Kyiv would have been conquered in just a few days. Zelensky, his wife, and his children would have been murdered by one of the hit squads that roamed the capital city. The Ukrainian state would have been taken over by the collaborators who had already chosen their Kyiv apartments. Then, city by city, region by region, the Russian army would have fought the remnants of the…

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  Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Traveling the 4,880 miles from Kyiv to Washington may be a shorter distance than Zelensky has journeyed from just another faltering Ukrainian leader to Time magazine’s Person of the Year. In December 2021, his domestic approval rating was 31%, an anemic figure but by no means uncharacteristic for a Ukrainian incumbent during peacetime. Olga Rudenko, editor of the Kyiv Independent, wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 21 that three days before…

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The Associated Press reports: Three days after the first Russian bombs struck Ukraine, Andrii Kuprash, the head of a village north of Kyiv, walked into a forest near his home and began to dig. He didn’t stop until he had carved out a shallow pit, big enough for a man like him. It was his just-in-case, a place to lie low if he needed. He covered it with branches and went back home. A week later, Kuprash got a call…

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The Associated Press reports: The U.S. will send $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine in a massive package that will for the first time include a Patriot missile battery and precision guided bombs for their fighter jets, U.S. officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration prepares to welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington. U.S. officials described details of the aid on condition of anonymity because it has not yet been announced. The aid signals an expansion by the…

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Politico reports: The White House is steeling itself for new challenges posed by a winter of war in Ukraine and an incoming Republican House majority promising to curb funding to Kyiv. Though Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s brutal invasion continue to exceed expectations, President Joe Biden has been warily watching developments on both sides of the Atlantic. Ukraine remains standing as fighting enters its tenth month, but new tests for the Biden administration, at home and abroad, are rising just…

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The Washington Post reports: When Russia invaded Ukraine, the homeland of his parents and grandparents, David felt obligated to leave Israel and fight against Vladimir Putin, the man he views as a modern Hitler. After praying on a recent Shabbat in Kyiv’s oldest synagogue, David, 56, said he was proud to have spent most of the past nine months on the front lines, where he took fire from artillery and drones while fighting in Ukraine’s eastern offensive in Kharkiv. Are…

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The New York Times reports: They never had a chance. Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training. Now, they…

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