Attention to the Unseen

Fred Kaplan writes: The fact that Finland and Sweden are about to join NATO is even more remarkable than many media accounts portray. Not only have both countries maintained a studied neutrality for many decades, they—especially Finland—have done so under the thumb of pressure from Moscow. During the Cold War, the term Finlandization was coined to describe a nominally independent country whose foreign (and, to some extent, domestic) policies were dictated by a neighboring great power. In the 1970s, when…

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The New York Times reports: Army vehicles were so decrepit that repair crews were stationed roughly every 15 miles. Some officers were so out of shape that the military budgeted $1.5 million to re-size standard uniforms. That was the Russian military more than a decade ago when the country invaded Georgia, according to the defense minister at the time. The shortcomings, big and small, were glaring enough that the Kremlin announced a complete overhaul of the military to build a…

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Politico reports: The Republican establishment is striking back against a right flank attempt to turn its opposition to Ukraine aid into an “America First” talking point. Congress’ nearly $40 billion package of help for the war-torn nation is taking heat from a growing number of conservative lawmakers, candidates, activists and even former President Donald Trump. Their case against spending on Ukraine’s battle against Russia is all about redirecting taxpayer money to domestic problems — but it’s alarming fellow Republicans who…

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Alar Karis, President of Estonia, writes: The peace that had reigned in Europe since the end of the Balkan wars seemed to many to be permanent. The prevailing mindset was that conflict between nations which in the 20th century would have culminated in war could now be resolved diplomatically. Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008, its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its overt support for separatists in Donbas were not enough to shake this faith in peace. Russia’s aggressive…

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The Guardian reports: The satellite and drone imagery from above Bilohorivka tells a tale of folly and destruction. Dozens of Russian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and trucks lay destroyed, some sinking into the waters of the Donets River by a broken pontoon bridge, pointing to the latest disaster in Russia’s three-month war in Ukraine. The toll of Russia’s attempts to cross the river, part of its costly offensive in the east, are staggering: more than 485 killed and as many…

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The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has become so personally involved in the Ukraine war that he is making operational and tactical decisions “at the level of a colonel or brigadier”, according to western military sources. The Russian president is helping determine the movement of forces in the Donbas, they added, where last week the invaders suffered a bloody defeat as they tried on multiple occasions to cross a strategic river in the east of Ukraine. The sources added that Putin…

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  The BBC’s Francis Scarr: “In an extremely rare moment of candour on Russian state TV today, defence columnist Mikhail Khodaryonok gave a damning assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine and his country’s international isolation. It’s fairly long but worth your time so I’ve added subtitles.”

Joshua Yaffa writes: It was still dark on the morning of February 24th when Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, a midsize city in southern Ukraine, awoke to the sound of explosions. He thought it was a thunderstorm and went back to sleep. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that in the twenty-first century some sick mind would think to start firing missiles in the center of Europe,” he said. A duty officer called, waking him again, and…

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Matti Maasikas, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, writes: Many things have changed since 24 February this year. European leaders are no longer just talking about the need for dialogue (dialogue with an aggressor is, in any case, questionable) and are not refraining from action just out of a fear of ‘provoking Russia’. The cliche that there is no military solution to the conflict, which is at best ignorant and at worst only serves to stoke…

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The New York Times reports: The destruction wreaked on a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week is emerging as among the deadliest engagements of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded. And as the scale of what happened comes into sharper focus, the disaster appears to be breaking through the Kremlin’s tightly controlled information bubble. Perhaps most striking,…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: North of Donbas, a string of Ukrainian military victories in recent days pushed Russian forces outside of field artillery range of the city of Kharkiv, where more than 2,000 residential apartment buildings have been destroyed in more than two months of pounding. In a sign of relative normalcy returning to Kharkiv, the municipality said public-transport services would resume Monday. It will initially be free of charge given that so many city residents have lost their…

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  Michael Weiss reports: Is Vladimir Putin sick or even dying? The tabloid press, bolstered by a sudden efflorescence of Twitter diagnosticians, certainly seems to think so. Since his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine got underway, the 69-year-old Russian president’s deteriorating health has been a subject of frenzied speculation — speculation that press secretary Dmitry Peskov has downplayed, citing Putin’s “excellent” health. Boris Karpichkov, a KGB defector to Britain (and formerly an officer of the Second Chief Directorate, specializing in…

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Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogana write: Russians are fleeing their country in droves. Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan; Estonia, Latvia, Montenegro. In the first two weeks of the war alone, Georgia took in 25,000 Russians, and Armenia was receiving some 6,000 Russians per day. By the end of March, 60,000 Russians had gone to Kazakhstan. And many more have sought refuge in a number of different countries in eastern Europe. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began, Russians who have…

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Sari Arho Havrén writes: Beijing blames the US-led NATO for being the ultimate reason why Russia launched its invasion against Ukraine. Consequently, sanctions are seen as the US forcing its hand on the Europeans. The Chinese leadership appears to be calculating that by holding the US responsible for the war, it can drive a wedge through the transatlantic alliance and portray Europeans as simple puppets of US hegemony. This thinking is in line with how Beijing sees the multipolar world…

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