Attention to the Unseen

David Ignatius writes: Many Ukrainians repeated the same defiant message during a two-day visit here last weekend: We’re not afraid of Russian nuclear threats; we’ve suffered too much to make concessions; we want the world’s help in ensuring the defeat of Putin. A wall mural downtown summarized the public mood: “Be brave like Ukraine.” What became clear after several dozen conversations here is that for Ukraine, there’s no middle ground. The resiliency and resolve I heard reminded me of Londoners…

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Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Ukrainians across the country awoke Monday morning to a barrage of Russian missile and kamikaze drone attacks on civilian infrastructure in cities stretching from Kharkiv in the east to Lviv in the west. Kyiv, for the first time since the Russian invasion began in late February, took the brunt of the assault, with almost all confirmed impact targets being civilian, not military, in nature. According to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed…

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Bloomberg reports: Russia has lost three-fifths of its seaborne crude sales in Europe since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February. That market is going to vanish almost completely eight weeks from now and the latest sanctions will make it very difficult to divert flows elsewhere. Crude shipments to Europe averaged 630,000 barrels a day in the four weeks to Oct. 7, down from 1.62 million before the invasion. Tankers carrying Russia’s oil are now forced to spend four times…

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Julia Davis reports: Russia experienced a number of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, but none of them were as humiliating as an explosion that rocked the Crimean Bridge, also known as Kerch Strait Bridge or Kerch Bridge, early Saturday morning. During his Saturday broadcast on Solovyov Live, Russian state TV host Sergey Mardan opened his show with heavy sighs. He noted, “All day long we’ll be talking about how this happened and what will come of it. I…

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Michael Weiss reports: “Early retirement” is a strange way to describe a 44-year-old’s acceptance of a new government role, but for Mikk Marran, Estonia’s spymaster, it feels a lot like that. As of next month he will no longer helm Välisluureamet, the Baltic state’s foreign intelligence service, which, long before Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, was at the forefront of assessing the threats and capabilities of a resurgent and revanchist Russia. “Seven years, it’s a long time,” Marran tells…

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The Associated Press reports: Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw his weight behind Spain’s far-right Sunday in a video shown at a rally in Madrid that also featured messages by the leading stars of Europe’s populist right like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. In a recording that lasted under 40 seconds made while Trump was on a plane, Trump thanked Spain’s far-right Vox party and its leader Santiago Abascal for what he called the “great job” they do….

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The Guardian reports: Russia has appointed a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin struggles to halt a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray. The appointment of Gen Sergei Surovikin came on the same day as Vladimir Putin was dealt a humiliating blow after an explosion on the Kerch bridge sank a section of the motorway into the Kerch Strait…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: A major explosion on Saturday severely damaged the bridge connecting Russia’s mainland to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, disrupting traffic on a crucial artery for the supply of fuel, military equipment and food to Russian troops fighting to hold ground in southern Ukraine. The bridge, opened by President Vladimir Putin to great fanfare in 2018, was meant to symbolize the might of the Russian state and the permanence of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula four years…

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The Washington Post reports: Russian Ground Forces Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who over a 44-year military career was best-known for scorched-earth tactics in campaigns he led in Syria and Chechnya, was named overall operational commander of the war in Ukraine in April. He lasted about seven weeks before being dismissed as part of what appeared to be a wider shake-up in response to heavy losses and strategic failures. Around the same time, Col. Gen. Andrey Serdyukov, another four-decade serviceman, the commander…

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CNN reports: The Ukrainians’ bodies lay side-by-side on the grass, the earth beside them splayed open by a crater. Dragged to the spot by Russian mercenaries, the victims’ arms pointed to where they had died. “Let’s plant a grenade on them,” a voice says in husky Russian, in what appears to be a plan to booby-trap the bodies. “There is no need for a grenade, we will just bash them in,” another says of the Ukrainian soldiers who will come…

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The Washington Post reports: When President Vladimir Putin yelled, “We will win!” at a Red Square concert to celebrate his illegal annexation of Ukrainian lands on Friday, he projected the hubris of a man who cannot accept defeat. Putin has said Russia will not lose in Ukraine. But multiple battlefield defeats and national fury over a botched military mobilization have broken a taboo in Moscow on discussions about what would happen if Putin did lose — not just the war,…

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The Washington Post reports: A member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle has voiced disagreement directly to the Russian president in recent weeks over his handling of the war in Ukraine, according to information obtained by U.S. intelligence. The criticism marks the clearest indication yet of turmoil within Russia’s leadership over the stewardship of a war that has gone disastrously wrong for Moscow, forcing Putin last month to order the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops in a desperate bid…

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Politico reports: The Pentagon said Friday that it still has seen no indications that Vladimir Putin is planning to launch nuclear weapons after President Joe Biden warned of the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon.” Biden’s comments show how seriously the U.S. is taking Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement to POLITICO. “However — and to be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture…

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