Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine ordered its troops to withdraw from their remaining foothold in the city of Severodonetsk to avoid encirclement, the regional governor said, ending a battle that lasted nearly two months and giving Russia a small but symbolically important victory in the grinding war for control of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area. Hard to defend and separated from the rest of Ukrainian-held territory by a river, Severodonetsk, a city of just over 100,000 people before the war,…

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The Guardian reports: European leaders have granted Ukraine candidate status, in a historic decision that opens the door to EU membership for the war-torn country and deals a blow to Vladimir Putin. EU leaders meeting in Brussels approved Ukraine’s candidate status on Thursday night, nearly four months after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion. Moldova was also given candidate status. Zelenskiy immediately welcomed the move,…

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Slavoj Žižek writes: For me, John Lennon’s mega-hit Imagine was always a song popular for the wrong reasons. Imagine that “the world will live as one” is the best way to end in hell. Those who cling to pacifism in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine remain caught in their own version of “imagine”. Imagine a world in which tensions are no longer resolved through armed conflicts … Europe persisted in this world of “imagine”, ignoring the brutal…

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Steven Erlanger writes: Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied last month to join NATO, anticipating swift and smooth entry into the alliance. Instead they are in a bind, their path blocked by the unpredictable Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With NATO’s annual summit beginning on June 29 in Madrid, their expectations to be greeted as fast-track applicants are quickly fading, after Mr. Erdogan backtracked on earlier promises not to put obstacles in their way. Ibrahim Kalin,…

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CBS News reports: Lithuania’s decision to ban the transit of certain goods between Russia and its isolated exclave of Kaliningrad has provoked wrath among top officials in Moscow, and even a threat of retaliation against the European nation. Kaliningrad shares land borders with two NATO nations, Lithuania and Poland, but not Russia. Captured from Nazi Germany by the Soviet Red Army in 1945 and later ceded to the Soviet Union, the Russian territory is home to about 500,000 people. While…

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The New York Times reports: When the United States and European Union moved to curtail purchases of Russian fossil fuels this year, they hoped it would help make the Russian invasion of Ukraine so economically painful for Moscow that President Vladimir V. Putin would be forced to abandon it. That prospect now seems remote at best. China and India, the world’s most populous countries, have swooped in to buy roughly the same volume of Russian oil that would have gone…

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CNBC reports: Germany has said the deteriorating gas market situation means Europe’s largest economy must limit the use of natural gas for electricity production and burn more coal for a “transitional period.” Economy Minister Robert Habeck on Sunday warned that the situation is going to be “really tight in winter” without precautionary measures to prevent a supply shortage. As a result, Germany will seek to compensate for a cut in Russian gas supplies by increasing the burning of coal —…

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The Irish Times reports: Ireland is a potential “weak link” and “soft touch” for Russian money, according to the anti-corruption campaigner who has helped change laws in 34 countries to target human rights abuses. US-born financier and political activist Bill Browder, who has campaigned for 12 years for countries to introduce “Magnitsky” legislation allowing them to sanction people involved in human rights abuses or corruption, is pushing Ireland to introduce its own legislation. Mr Browder, once Russia’s largest foreign investor,…

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Kseniya Kirillova writes: Russia is now the world leader in the number of sanctions imposed (more than 5,500 measures), overtaking even Iran. While the Kremlin insists that the only party affected by these measures is the West itself, economic experts and even its propagandists now struggle to deny the effects on key sectors of the economy, following the unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. During a summit on economic issues on June 17, Vladimir Putin said that the “blitzkrieg” of…

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The New York Times reports: The ruble cemented its unlikely status as the world’s best-performing currency, rising to new multiyear highs this week. Since collapsing in the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which triggered sweeping international sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy, the ruble has come roaring back. On Tuesday, it traded at its strongest level against the U.S. dollar since June 2015. It has gained about 35 percent so far this year, beating every major currency, and…

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James M. Dubik writes: For Ukraine’s president, fighting forces and citizenry, this war is existential, and every phase has been critical. Now, especially so. Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought a lightning end to the Zelensky government, but he’ll settle for a slow death if that’s all he can get. Unless the United States, NATO and other allies up their acknowledged generous support, a slow death is likely where the Ukraine war is heading. Ukraine forces, with allied aid, stopped Putin’s initial…

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Eric Schlosser writes: The 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. According to Pavel Podvig, the director…

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