Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: When Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he sought to divide and weaken NATO. Nowhere has that strategy backfired more than in Finland. If the Nordic country joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alongside Sweden in coming weeks, as expected, Mr. Putin will get a highly militarized NATO member next door. Russia’s border with NATO will more than double at the stroke of a pen, with an additional 830 miles. Finland’s president and prime minister…

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The New York Times reports: The Gotland regiment of the Swedish Army was going through its paces, practicing how to use its Swedish-designed lightweight anti-tank missiles, the NLAWs, that are proving so effective in Ukraine. The regiment, which was resurrected in 2018 on this strategic island that helps control the air and naval space of the Baltic Sea, is in the process of rebuilding with the aim of expanding to 4,000 soldiers from the current 400 — still a far…

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Riada Asimovic Akyol writes: Crimean Tatars, the indigenous Muslims of Ukraine and the country’s largest ethnic minority, have joined the fight against Russia’s invasion. Tatars serve throughout Ukraine’s military ranks and as civilian volunteers offering humanitarian help. Tatars are Turkic-speaking Muslims who have lived in Crimea since the 13th century. Russian rulers have persecuted them for almost 300 years. One of the greatest tragedies in Tatar history was their genocidal expulsion from Crimea by Josef Stalin in 1944. About 200,000…

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The Guardian reports: Finland must apply to join Nato “without delay” in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, its president and prime minister have said, signalling a historic shift in the country’s security policy that drew a blunt warning of retaliation from the Kremlin. With neighbouring Sweden expected to follow suit, Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s president, and Sanna Marin, the prime minister, made the call in a joint statement, adding: “We hope that the national steps still needed to make…

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Senator John McCain (R-AZ) on Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) following the Senator’s objection to a bill advancing Montenegro’s bid to join NATO, March, 2017. The Wall Street Journal reports: The Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate tried to fast track a nearly $40 billion U.S. aid package to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia, only to be blocked by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.,…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Western weapons, including NATO-standard 155-mm howitzers supplied by the U.S. and its allies, have begun arriving on the battlefield in Donbas. Ukrainian officials say that will allow them to switch from defense to offense and seek to regain lost ground. “Our first task was to stop and destroy the enemy, but after that we have to liberate everything that they have taken from us. This will take time, at least the whole summer. It won’t…

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The Guardian reports: When the soldiers of an elite Russian army brigade were told in early April to prepare for a second deployment to Ukraine, fear broke out among the ranks. The unit, stationed in Russia’s far east during peacetime, first entered Ukraine from Belarus when the war started at the end of February and saw bitter combat with Ukrainian forces. “It soon became clear that not everyone was onboard with it. Many of us simply did not want to…

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Nina Khrushcheva writes: On December 20, 1999, Vladimir Putin addressed senior officials of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at its Lubyanka headquarters near Moscow’s Red Square. The recently appointed 47-year-old prime minister, who had held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the FSB, was visiting to mark the holiday honoring the Russian security services. “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished,” Putin quipped. His former colleagues chuckled. But the joke was on Russia. Putin became interim…

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Alexander Vindman writes: For years before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Ukrainians had been growing frustrated with U.S. leadership. A former high-level Ukrainian official described U.S. policy to the country in this way: “You won’t let us drown, but you won’t let us swim.” Washington has earned this mixed reputation in the decades since Ukraine broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991. Although Ukraine saw the United States as an indispensable partner and greatly appreciated U.S. security and…

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Eliot A. Cohen writes: Russian objectives were clear enough at the beginning: overthrowing the Zelensky government, occupying all of Ukraine (or at least all of eastern Ukraine), and reducing the country to client status (much like Belarus), or even reincorporating it into what would effectively be a reestablished Russian empire. Defeat on the outskirts of Kyiv forced a change in Russian objectives to the complete occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, and of the Black Sea coast of…

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Mart Kuldkepp writes: Much of the West’s commentary on Russia’s war against Ukraine has fallen victim to critical blind spots or inherent biases—an approach often claimed as “realism” but which has little to do with academic international relations theories. As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion continues, it’s time to consider what a better approach to punditry on Russia’s war against Ukraine would look like. To be sure, I am not a neutral observer—in fact, I couldn’t possibly be more pro-Ukraine….

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The Washington Post reports: The mere sight of a child here — wearing sunglasses, pulling a scooter, bugging his mother to buy him candy — was enough to impress Petro Trotsenko, a stall owner at a market in Bucha that reopened this past week. Just over a month ago, the market lay bare, looted of all its wares, cut up by shrapnel. The nearby glass factory where Trotsenko, 74, worked in his younger years was being used as a torture…

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Kirill Martynov writes: Vladimir Putin was born seven years after the end of the second world war, and raised on the Brezhnev-era myth of the great victory. A man of no great education, he loved to quote Soviet films and old stories. The history books portrayed the “great patriotic war” as a magical fable in which the hero – the Russian people – vanquishes a monster, to the envy of the whole world. In this myth there was no room…

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The Washington Post reports: President Biden signed into law Monday afternoon a bill that will expedite the process of sending military aid to Ukraine, as the Eastern European country presses into its third month of fighting off a Russian invasion. Flanked by Vice President Harris and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, Biden vowed the United States would continue to support Ukraine “in their fight to defend their country and their democracy” against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s…

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