Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey threatened this month to block NATO membership for Finland and Sweden, Western officials were exasperated — but not shocked. Within an alliance that operates by consensus, the Turkish strongman has come to be seen as something of a stickup artist. In 2009, he blocked the appointment of a new NATO chief from Denmark, complaining that the country was too tolerant of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and too…

Read More Read More

In an editorial, the Washington Post says: Wars end. Many, if not most, end with negotiation. That might be what happens with the war Russia launched against Ukraine on Feb. 24, too, though one former Moscow regime member warns against urging Ukraine to negotiate while President Vladimir Putin is still bent on more conquest. “You just can’t make peace now,” Boris Bondarev, who recently resigned from his mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry post to protest the war, said in an interview…

Read More Read More

Giles Harvey writes: On the morning of Feb. 25, the day after Russian bombs began falling on his country, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine’s most famous living writer, received a phone call at his home near Independence Square in central Kyiv. The call was from an old friend, a businessman with close ties to the government, who had just got hold of some privileged information: Kurkov, a longtime critic of Vladimir Putin, was on a list of “pro-Ukrainian activists” drawn up by…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Accusations of broken promises and spreading fake news. Criticism from within the government coalition’s own ranks. And a chancellor defending his course with references to Emperor Wilhelm II. In other words: Just another week of Olaf Scholz’s wavering policy on military support for Ukraine. The German chancellor, who has steadfastly refused to visit Kyiv or even say he wants Ukraine to “win” the war, has been under heavy fire since March for hesitating on delivery of tanks to…

Read More Read More

The Observer reports: On the ninth day of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, editor-in-chief Viktor Muchnik gathered the staff of TV2 for a meeting at their small newsroom in the Siberian city of Tomsk. New wartime laws meant the whole newsroom risked jailtime for reporting on the conflict, Muchnik told them, and TV2 had just been officially blocked by Russia’s communications watchdog, along with many other independent media outlets. “All of us who wanted to change things for the better…

Read More Read More

Natalia Antonova writes: The companies that have already left have tended—with good reason—to emphasize the moral risks. McDonalds, for instance, stated, “[O]ur values mean we cannot ignore the needless human suffering unfolding in Ukraine.” And that hasn’t meant abandoning Russian staff; many firms have been providing salary continuations or directly evacuating personnel. The businesses that are staying might think—or at least tell Western governments—that they can remain separate from Russia’s increasingly unhinged political system. But if they really think that,…

Read More Read More

The Observer reports: Ukraine is in a race against time to save the eastern Donbas region as relentless Russian artillery and air strikes threaten to turn the tide of the war, and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping. Ukrainian officials say they urgently need advanced US-made mobile multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to halt Russian advances in Luhansk and Donetsk. The rockets would be capable of striking Russian firing positions, military bases,…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: The besieged Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appears to be almost completely surrounded by attacking Russian forces, as the Kremlin continued to make incremental gains in its offensive in the Donbas region, backed by withering shell fire. “The Russians are pounding residential neighbourhoods relentlessly,” regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, wrote in a Telegram post on Friday. “The residents of Sievierodonetsk have forgotten when was the last time there was silence in the city for at least half an hour.”…

Read More Read More

CNN reports: Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been processed through a series of Russian “filtration camps” in Eastern Ukraine and sent into Russia as part of a systemized program of forced removal, according to four sources familiar with the latest Western intelligence — an estimate far higher than US officials have publicly disclosed. After being detained in camps operated by Russian intelligence officials, many Ukrainians are then forcibly relocated to economically depressed areas in Russia, in some cases thousands…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Three months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America and its allies are quietly debating the inevitable question: How does this end? In recent days, presidents and prime ministers as well as the Democratic and Republican Party leaders in the United States have called for victory in Ukraine. But just beneath the surface are real divisions about what that would look like — and whether “victory” has the same definition in the United States, in Europe…

Read More Read More

David Ignatius writes: The first instruction that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got from President Biden was to “reset” America’s alliances and partnerships abroad so that the United States could deal with the challenges ahead. That strategy would prove decisive in combating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Blinken and other officials gave me new details this week, describing a series of behind-the-scenes meetings over the past year that helped forge the U.S.-led coalition to support Ukraine. His narrative validates President Dwight…

Read More Read More

Paul Starr writes: What stake do we have in the Russia-Ukraine War? I would put it this way: This is a war to prevent the realities of the 20th century from becoming our future in the 21st century. Russia today is an Orwellian nightmare, a dictatorship directly descended from the Soviet KGB that takes brutal retribution against its critics and hardly bothers to conceal it, the better to instill fear in others. It commits war crimes with the same moral…

Read More Read More

Laura Wellesley writes: The blockade of Ukraine’s ports is choking critical supplies of crops to the world and risks tipping vulnerable populations in developing countries closer to famine. Before the invasion, Ukraine and Russia were together supplying 100 per cent of Somalia’s wheat imports, 80 per cent of Egypt’s and 75 per cent of Sudan’s. Global food prices have reached all-time highs since Russia’s invasion and households in countries across the world are suffering the consequences. Humanitarian agencies are struggling…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: In an unnamed basement bar in central Kyiv, Ukrainian anarchists have created a headquarters where they gather supplies to send to their peers on the frontlines and welcome anarchists from abroad who have come to fight. It is unusual to see anarchists supporting state structures, but they say taking action against Russia is necessary for their survival. “We are fighting to protect the more or less free society that exists in Ukraine,” said an activist, Dmytro. “Without…

Read More Read More