Attention to the Unseen

William M Arkin reports: Russia has stumbled again. Its southern offensive, the second phase of the Ukraine war, has failed to be the “biggest tank war since World War II,” as some analysts were predicting. Instead, Russia’s ground forces have shown the same lackluster performance on the ground, unable to break through anywhere. The towns and villages of the south, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday, “are the places where the fate of this war and the future of our…

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The Guardian reports: Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced. Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. For the EU, imports were about €44bn…

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The Guardian reports: Russia has been accused of seeking to blackmail Europe, as the energy giant Gazprom confirmed it had halted gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria and was prepared to target other countries. The Kremlin said the dramatic move, widely seen as an attempt to weaponise Russia’s energy supplies, was a response to the failure by the two EU countries to make their payments in roubles. The immediate consequence of Gazprom’s decision was a 20% rise in the wholesale…

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Chris Miller writes: On March 27, President Joe Biden claimed that U.S. sanctions had reduced Russia’s currency to “rubble.” Yet in the past few weeks, the currency has rebounded, while the country shows no outward signs of crisis. So what impact are sanctions having? Plenty of questions remain in the short term. But the long-term consequences of the sanctions are clear and severe. Russian industry now faces difficulties in acquiring crucial tools and components. The future of entire sectors of…

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Ahmed-Waleed Kakar reports: Muhammad Sadiq Akif was not in Kabul as the city fell to the Taliban last August. An insurgent propagandist who had been chronicling the frantic last days of the war on Twitter, he was over 60 miles to the southeast, in Loya Paktia. Taliban control there was tenuous and the surrender of a regional CIA-created militia, the notorious Khost Protection Force, was still being negotiated. Akif arrived in Kabul days later. Across the city, fluttering in the…

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Anne Applebaum writes: In the terrible winter of 1932–33, brigades of Communist Party activists went house to house in the Ukrainian countryside, looking for food. The brigades were from Moscow, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, as well as villages down the road. They dug up gardens, broke open walls, and used long rods to poke up chimneys, searching for hidden grain. They watched for smoke coming from chimneys, because that might mean a family had hidden flour and was baking bread. They…

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Politico reports: Western countries are rushing heavy weaponry to Ukraine as the war enters what promises to be a deadly, and potentially protracted, new phase. Those deliveries are coming amid increasingly desperate pleas from Ukrainian battlefield commanders as they endure withering Russian artillery and rocket fire that could last weeks or months. Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration began shipping out $1.2 billion worth of howitzers, around 200,000 artillery rounds, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars and experimental new armed…

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Nicholas Grossman writes: As the United States and other NATO countries send Ukraine weapons to fight Russian invaders, some left-wing critics have denounced the effort as warmongering escalation. For example, linguist professor and activist Noam Chomsky described American policy as “praising ourselves for heroism” while “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.” I fault no one for lamenting the destruction and hoping for peace, but that assessment misunderstands this war and America’s role in it. The decision of when to stop…

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Viktor Yushchenko writes: Maksym Kurochkin is a playwright. For almost three years, he and 20 other Ukrainian playwrights had been planning to build a new theatre in the heart of Old Kyiv. The group found a magnificent old structure that they were busy renovating in order to open the Playwrights’ theatre on 12 March. On 24 February, Maksym and his colleagues awoke to the horrific sound of bombs. 12 March came and went. Instead of planning a grand opening for…

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The Observer reports: Last week a familiar figure returned to the main square of the seaside town of Henichesk. Dressed in a three-piece suit, and sporting his familiar goatee and moustache, Vladimir Lenin was back on his pedestal. A statue of the Bolshevik leader had been erected outside the town’s main council building. Flying from the roof were the Russian and Soviet flags. All in time for Lenin’s 152nd birthday on Friday. Henichesk, however, is not in Russia. It is…

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