Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: Six months after invading Ukraine, Russia is bogged down in a war of attrition it didn’t anticipate but it is having success on another front — its oil-dependent economy is in a deep recession but proving far more resilient than expected. “I’m driving through Moscow and the same traffic jams are there as before,” says Andrey Nechaev, who was Russia’s economy minister in the early 1990s. The readiness of China and India to snap up cheap Russian oil…

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The Guardian reports: Russia has blocked an agreement at the United Nations that was aimed at bolstering the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) because Moscow objected to a clause about control over the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine. The failure to agree to a joint statement after four weeks of debate and negotiation among 151 countries at the UN in New York is the latest blow to hopes of maintaining an arms control regime and keeping a lid on a rekindled…

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Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, writes: August 24 was Ukrainian Independence Day. For the first time in three decades since Ukraine regained its independence, there was a real danger this year that the holiday would not take place at all. Exactly six months earlier on February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country with the aim of crushing Ukrainian statehood and extinguishing the Ukrainian nation. The genocidal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in early 2022 is unparalleled…

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Michael Schaffer writes: The mysterious death last week of a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in Washington’s West End neighborhood is drawing fury from some of the Kremlin’s best-known global detractors — but scant notice in Washington, where police say they don’t suspect foul play was behind Dan Rapoport’s fall from a luxury apartment building on the night of Aug. 14. “I think the circumstances of his death are extremely suspicious,” says Bill Browder, the formerly Moscow-based…

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Fiona Hill and Angela Stent write: Vladimir Putin is determined to shape the future to look like his version of the past. Russia’s president invaded Ukraine not because he felt threatened by NATO expansion or by Western “provocations.” He ordered his “special military operation” because he believes that it is Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, to wipe out the country’s national identity, and to integrate its people into a Greater Russia. He laid out this mission in a 5,000-word…

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The Guardian reports: A detailed plan has been drawn up by Russia to disconnect Europe’s largest nuclear plant from Ukraine’s power grid, risking a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems, the Guardian has been told. World leaders have called for the Zaporizhzhia site to be demilitarised after footage emerged of Russian army vehicles inside the plant, and have previously warned Russia against cutting it off from the Ukrainian grid and connecting it up to the Russian power network. But Petro…

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The New York Times reports: “Vesti Nedeli,” the flagship weekly roundup of Kremlin-controlled television news, recently portrayed a long history of predatory Western powers coming to grief when they invaded Russia: Sweden in the 18th century, France in the 19th, Germany in the 20th. Enemies now seek to reverse those losses, said Dmitry Kiselyov, the show’s host, blaming the West for the war that Russia instigated in Ukraine. The goal to finish off Russia is “centuries old and unchanging,” he…

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The New York Times reports: Nearly six months into the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still refers to its invasion as a “special military operation” while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy at home. But a series of Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is puncturing that narrative. And as Ukrainian attacks mount in the strategically and symbolically important territory, the damage is beginning to put…

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BBC News reports: The daughter of a close ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been killed in a suspected car bombing. Darya Dugina, 29, died after an explosion on a road outside Moscow, Russia’s investigative committee said. It is thought her father, the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who is known as “Putin’s brain”, may have been the intended target of the attack. Mr Dugin is a prominent ultra-nationalist ideologue who is believed to be close to the Russian president….

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NBC News reports: Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs were involved in the recent spate of explosions at Russian military sites in Crimea, a Ukrainian government official told NBC News. The series of blasts hit military depots and airbases in the annexed peninsula over the past week, hinting at a growing ability by Ukraine’s military or its backers to strike deep behind enemy lines, a development that could shift the dynamics of the war. Kyiv has stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the…

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Anne Applebaum writes: History has turning points, moments when events shift and the future seems suddenly clear. But history also has in-between points, days and weeks when everything seems impermanent and nobody knows what will happen next. Odesa in the summer of 2022 is like that—a city suspended between great events. The panic that swept the city in February, when it seemed the Russian invaders might win quickly, already feels like a long time ago. Now the city is hot,…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Until recently, Russian artillery pounded Ukrainian forces on the front lines of the war in the south. But today, just 3 miles from the Russian line, incoming shells have become far less frequent since Ukrainian forces started taking out Russian ammunition depots and bridges in the Kherson region and Crimea. “There’s about half as much incoming as three or four weeks ago,” says Yevhen, a Ukrainian infantry squad commander, who hasn’t fired his rifle in…

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The Guardian reports: Pavel Filatyev knew the consequences of what he was saying. The ex-paratrooper understood he was risking prison, that he would be called a traitor and would be shunned by his former comrades-in-arms. His own mother had urged him to flee Russia while he still could. He said it anyway. “I don’t see justice in this war. I don’t see truth here,” he said over a tucked-away cafe table in the Moscow financial district. It was his first…

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The Washington Post reports: Ukrainian forces are pursuing a new strategy of attacking key military targets deep inside Russian-occupied territory in hopes of undermining Moscow’s ability to hold the front lines ahead of an eventual Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim territory, Ukraine’s defense minister said Wednesday. Ukraine’s conventional forces lack the weapons and ammunition needed to launch a full-scale ground offensive to retake territory from the Russians, Oleksii Reznikov said in an interview. He said he expects that sufficient quantities will…

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