Attention to the Unseen

The Associated Press reports: Israel is grappling with how to deal with dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs as Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle. “Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by…

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BBC News reports: A BBC investigation has uncovered new evidence about the corrupt deals that made Roman Abramovich’s fortune. The Chelsea owner made billions after buying an oil company from the Russian government in a rigged auction in 1995. Mr Abramovich paid around $250m (£190m) for Sibneft, before selling it back to the Russian government for $13bn in 2005. His lawyers say there is no basis for alleging he has amassed very substantial wealth through criminality. The Russian billionaire was…

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The New York Times reports: They lined up at ATM’s, desperate for cash after Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia, swapping intelligence on where they could still get dollars. At Istanbul cafes, they sat quietly studying Telegram chats or Google Maps on their phones. They organized support groups to help other Russian exiles find housing. Tens of thousands of Russians have fled to Istanbul since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, outraged about what they see as a criminal war,…

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The New York Times reports: Chinese officials have consistently voiced sympathy for Russia during the Ukraine war by reiterating Mr. Putin’s criticism of NATO and blaming the United States for starting the conflict. They have refrained from any mention of a Russian “war” or “invasion,” even as they express general concern for the humanitarian crisis. They mention support for “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a common catchphrase in Chinese diplomacy, but do not say explicitly which nation’s sovereignty they support —…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. won’t negotiate exemptions to Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and could try to strike a separate accord excluding Moscow, a senior U.S. official said, a diplomatic effort complicated by an Iranian missile attack on Iraq that sent American troops rushing for shelter. With one of President Biden’s top foreign-policy goals imperiled, the U.S. official said Washington would start exploring alternatives to the deal over the next week…

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Reuters reports: The war in Ukraine has opened a new front in the U.S. Republican Party’s civil war, with party primary candidates vying to run in the November midterm elections attacking each other for past comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Senate and House of Representatives races in at least three states, Republican candidates have been put on the defensive over comments describing Putin as intelligent, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “thug” and Ukraine as not worth defending….

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The Guardian reports: Earlier this week, Russia’s defence ministry acknowledged that young conscripts had been sent into battle and some taken prisoner. The admission, notable in itself given Russia’s careful attempts to control the narrative about the war, came just a day after President Vladimir Putin assured his nation in a video address that conscripts “are not participating and will not participate” in the conflict. The backtracking prompted some to question whether the Russian leader lied in his statement or…

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David Remnick writes: Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Josef Stalin. So far he has published two volumes––“Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.” A third volume will take the story through the Second World War; Stalin’s death, in 1953; and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of the Soviet experience. Taking advantage of long-forbidden…

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Richard McGregor writes: Beijing has not backed away from its core position, that Moscow has “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine. And like Moscow, state media in Beijing has labelled the US “an empire of lies”. Still, there is little doubt that Beijing is squirming under pressure, not just from the US, but also from Europe, Japan and Australia, to condemn the invasion. As Evan Feigenbaum, a former US government official and now head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,…

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Kareem Shaheen writes: In 2017, I visited the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun two days after it was hit by a chemical attack by the Syrian regime. After visiting the site of the attack, I went to a local hospital that had received many of the victims but that was evacuated because it came under sustained aerial bombardment shortly after the attack. Locals and militias, who had endured bombing by both the Assad regime and the Russians over the months…

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Peter Beinart writes: Last December, as Russian forces encircled Ukraine, the Biden administration and its allies delivered a stark warning to Vladimir Putin: “Any use of force to change borders is strictly prohibited under international law.” In January, as Russian troops massed even in even greater numbers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that “the inviolability of frontiers” was among the “guiding principles for international behavior.” Last month, after Russia’s parliament recognized the independence of two self-declared republics Moscow had…

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Ben Judah writes: During a documentary interview in 1996, back when he was a little-known political functionary, Vladimir Putin offered an eerie warning about Russia’s future. “However sad and however frightening it may sound, I think that in our country a return to a certain period of totalitarian rule is possible,” he said. “The danger,” he added, “is not to be found in the organs that provide order, the police or even the army. It is a danger at our…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: In the days since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, shelling and airstrikes have killed hundreds of people in Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million about 20 miles from the Russian border. Residents spend their days and nights huddled in the subway. Above them, explosions devastate their city. At least 400 high-rise apartment buildings have been hit, Kharkiv city authorities said. Strikes have damaged the art museum, with its…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian officials accused the U.S. of funding biowarfare efforts in Ukraine, drawing concern from Western officials who fear that a crescendo of allegations about weapons of mass destruction could serve as a pretext for Russia to unleash chemical or biological weapons itself. The Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday said that a U.S. defense agency funded research into bat coronaviruses in Ukraine and the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that “these were not peaceful experiments.”…

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