Attention to the Unseen

The Atlantic: McKay Coppins: During the 2012 election, you identified Russia as America’s number one geopolitical foe, and were mocked for it by President Obama, then Vice President Joe Biden, and by many commentators. You were repeatedly accused of having an outdated Cold War mindset. Do you believe you understood something about Russia and its ambitions that they didn’t? Mitt Romney: You know, it’s hard for me to believe that they didn’t realize that I was right at the time….

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Emily Tamkin writes: Last week, before Russian threats toward Ukrainian borders turned into an all-out invasion, one part of the American media landscape questioned why we weren’t supporting the invaders. “Hating [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy. It’s the main thing that we talk about,” Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday. “It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I…

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Michael Weiss writes: Last summer, in a chauvinist and historically revisionist screed, Putin telegraphed his intent to become an tsarist in-gatherer of the Slavic lands, stating incorrectly that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” Well, he certainly has treated both the same, with murderous contempt. The result of his imperialist folly could well be seeing a European capital burnt to the ground. What unintended consequence might that have for his regime? A strange thing happened on the way to this…

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Franklin Foer writes: Before he became the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky played the part on television. He created and starred in a comedy series, Servant of the People. His character, a high-school history teacher, is surreptitiously recorded by one of his students as he passionately rants against the tyranny of corruption in his nation. Without his knowledge, the video goes viral. Without campaigning or even wanting the job, the teacher is improbably elected president of Ukraine. The humble everyman,…

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Politico reports: Germany has authorized the Netherlands to send Ukraine 400 rocket-propelled grenade launchers to aid in the fight against Russian invaders, according to two EU officials — marking an abrupt shift in Berlin’s military policy amid pressure from EU and NATO allies. Until Saturday, Germany had clung to a longstanding practice of not permitting lethal weapons that it controlled to be transferred into a conflict zone. That stance bewildered some European officials, even more so after Russian President Vladimir…

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Jeff Stein writes: An American businessman with close ties to Volodymyr Zelensky says the Ukrainian president was “calm and businesslike” when they talked yesterday, even as Russian troops pressed on toward Kyiv and the volume of rocket attacks on the capital soared. “He seemed reluctant to leave the country,” said the businessman, who has extensive projects in the country and asked not to be identified because of the fraught security situation. “U.S. officials were urging him to leave. He feared…

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Zoya Sheftalovich writes: Watching Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine play out, it seems the Russian president has vastly underestimated and misunderstood Ukrainians and their president. Putin, a one-time KGB operative who in 2004 said “there is no such thing as a former KGB man,” has made clear that he lives in a world of the past. The world that existed before the end of the Cold War, a world in which the territories of the former Soviet Union, potentially even…

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Jason Stanley writes: When Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at dawn on Thursday, he justified the “special military operation” as having the goal to “denazify” Ukraine. The justification is not tenable, but it would be a mistake simply to dismiss it. Vladimir Putin is himself a fascist autocrat, one who imprisons democratic opposition leaders and critics. He is the acknowledged leader of the global far right, which looks increasingly like a global fascist movement. Ukraine does have a…

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Simon Miles, assistant professor of public policy, expert on Russia and the Soviet Union, says: Before the very lengthy historical speech President Putin gave a couple days ago about Ukraine not having a tradition of statehood – just lie after lie – I was one of the people who didn’t think he could balance the risk/reward equation. The man that I saw giving that speech — and also in that very long, bizarre, grievance-filled speech — and also a deeply…

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Paul Krugman writes: The Europeans, unfortunately, have fecklessly allowed themselves to become highly dependent on imports of Russian natural gas. This means that if they were to attempt a full-scale cutoff of Russian exports they would impose soaring prices and shortages on themselves. Given sufficient provocation, they could still do it: Modern advanced economies can be incredibly resilient in times of need. But even the invasion of Ukraine probably won’t be enough to persuade Europe to make those sorts of…

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Michel Eltchaninoff writes: “They have only one objective: to prevent the development of Russia. They are going to do it in the same way as they did it before, without furnishing even a single pretext, doing it just because we exist.” These were Vladimir Putin’s words on 21 February, in his now notorious speech on Ukraine. They repeat the argument already formulated in his speech on Crimea in March 2014: “The politics of the containment of Russia, which continued throughout…

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James M Acton writes: There is a disquieting nuclear dimension to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. This brutal assault violates the security guarantees that Moscow provided in 1994, when Kyiv allowed it to remove nuclear weapons left in Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent days, trying to justify his aggression, Russian President Vladimir Putin has invoked the specter of a nonexistent Ukrainian nuclear weapons program—a cynical ploy to…

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The New York Times reports: Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials. Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one…

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