Attention to the Unseen

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: In Syria, when the regime escalated its aerial attacks on civilian neighborhoods in the fall of 2012, the Obama administration rejected calls for a no-fly zone and deployed the CIA to the south of Turkey to prevent shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles from reaching Syrian rebels. Consequently, the regime’s ancient air force, which could have been neutralized with ease, continued to bomb civilian neighborhoods with impunity. Lumbering Soviet-era Mi-8 transport helicopters rained unguided barrel bombs on urban areas,…

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The New York Times reports: In video after video taken in Ukraine, a puff of smoke and a brief flash of light signal that another clutch of Russian troops are about to die. Sometimes it is only a split second before that light streaks to a tank or armored vehicle that suddenly erupts in smoke and flame, often bursting from within as ammunition inside explodes. Rewinding these videos a bit often shows Ukrainian soldiers before the attack, patrolling to an…

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Politico reports: EU leaders are in possession of “very reliable evidence” that China is considering military assistance to Russia, a senior EU official told POLITICO, threatening potential trade measures if weapons’ deliveries go ahead. It follows a similar warning from U.S. officials earlier this week that the Russian government had asked China for military equipment and other support, as POLITICO and other media outlets reported. A subsequent Financial Times report said China signaled openness to the request. It is not…

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Lawrence Scott Sheets writes: In the Soviet period, watching the evening news broadcast on state television provided important clues into what was happening inside the Kremlin. One of my first jobs as a young Russian speaker living in Moscow was monitoring those broadcasts for American journalists — which leaders were shown shaking hands with whom could signal who was up or who was down in the Communist Party leadership. Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has eliminated the last vestiges…

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The New York Times reports: The Syrian police stormed her house and dragged her husband away. Her eldest son died in a rain of Syrian government shells on her hometown. So like millions of other Syrians, Hanadi Hafisi fled the country with plans to return when the war ended. A decade later, she’s still a refugee in Turkey, where her work at a center that treats war injuries exposes her to a constant display of the human destruction wrought by…

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John Sweeney reports: The Russian army is 13 miles from my rather fancy Airbnb flat on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main thoroughfare, where I am typing this. The hot tub doesn’t work, but there is a war on. Every now and then the air raid sirens howl and artillery crumps sound; however, the last time I felt incoming through my boots was three days ago. The electricity is still on, the internet is still on, and I still wear my neon-orange, lucky…

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Richard Wilcox writes: The war in Ukraine will end in some form. The longer it persists, the higher the costs to both Ukraine and Russia. Clearly a diplomatic solution is preferable, but it is difficult to identify a diplomatic construct that could provide a sufficient and face-saving off-ramp for Russia as well as the kind of security that Ukraine needs. The center of gravity of any negotiated settlement to this war will be the question of Ukraine’s status between the…

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Brian Klaas writes: In the span of a couple of weeks, Vladimir Putin—a man recently described by Donald Trump as a strategic “genius”—managed to revitalize NATO, unify a splintered West, turn Ukraine’s little-known president into a global hero, wreck Russia’s economy, and solidify his legacy as a murderous war criminal. How did he miscalculate so badly? To answer that question, you have to understand the power and information ecosystems around dictators. I’ve studied and interviewed despots across the globe for…

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David Ignatius writes: With the war for Ukraine in its third bloody week, the world faces two urgent questions: How do we help the brave Ukrainian people continue their fight for freedom? And how do we bring this war to an end before Ukraine is destroyed? The two questions may seem sharply at odds, but the Biden administration rightly believes they are related. By stepping up military assistance to Ukraine — and making President Vladimir Putin pay an ever-steeper price…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: A Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, Voznesensk’s funeral director, Mykhailo Sokurenko, spent this Tuesday driving through fields and forests, picking up dead Russian soldiers and taking them to a freezer railway car piled with Russian bodies—the casualties of one of the most comprehensive routs President Vladimir Putin’s forces have suffered since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. A rapid Russian advance into the strategic southern town of 35,000 people, a gateway to a Ukrainian…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Four Russian brigadier generals have died in three weeks on the battlefield in Ukraine, Kyiv officials said, showing faults in Moscow’s ability to lead troops into battle. The fallout could shape the outcome of the war, according to Ukrainian and Western officials. The deaths of Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov, Gen. Oleg Mityaev and Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky were announced by Ukrainian officials and confirmed by some Russian media reports, but not the Kremlin. They…

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CNN reports: “I want to tell our commander-in-chief to stop terror acts in Ukraine because when we come back we’ll rise against him.” Russian President Vladimir Putin “has given orders to commit crimes. It’s not just to demilitarize Ukraine or defeat the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but now cities of peaceful civilians are being destroyed.” “The crimes that we committed; we all will be judged.” These are the voices of Russian prisoners of war now held by Ukraine. Nearly a…

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The New York Times reports: By day, the workers used heavy machinery to dig pits and trenches. After dark, the corpses arrived, sometimes hundreds at a time, in the beds of military pickups or in refrigerator trucks meant for transporting food. As government intelligence officers looked on, the dead were dumped into the ground and buried near the capital, Damascus, according to men who worked at two mass grave sites in Syria. Sometimes, the workers packed the dirt down tightly…

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The Guardian reports: Russian soldiers patrol the streets of Berdyansk in cars and armoured vehicles marked with the “Z” symbol that denotes the Russian occupying force. Local government officials in this city in southern Ukraine, which has been controlled by Russian troops for the past two weeks, have been kicked out of their offices, and the local radio station plays Soviet ballads and Russian pop songs, interspersed with excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speeches and news items about Ukraine being “liberated…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: It was 10 a.m., 16 days into Russia’s war on Ukraine, and a land-line phone rang inside the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The site of the world’s worst nuclear-power disaster had become an impromptu prison, and an increasingly dangerous one. The signalman on duty lifted the receiver and passed the call to shift supervisor Valentin Heiko, a veteran of the defunct facility. Mr. Heiko told managers on the other end of the line that the…

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