Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will support the territorial claims of its proxy states in east Ukraine, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a larger war in the near future in what Joe Biden denounced as an attempt to carve out “a big chunk” of the country. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries?” Biden said, announcing new sanctions on two Russian banks and sweeping measures to…

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The Guardian reports: Biden thought he would be remembered as the pandemic president, but finds himself commanding the arsenal of democracy in what could become the biggest military assault in Europe since the second world war. The crisis escalated on Monday after Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent entities, an apparent pretext for invasion. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged…

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Shaun Walker reports: Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion. He was met with silence. A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right…

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Charlie Sykes writes: By now the cast of Putin’s useful idiots is familiar, ranging from Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley to Candace Owens, MTG, and Maria Bartiromo. Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, calls them “the ultimate stooges,” but at least for now, these right wing voices do not speak for most congressional Republicans, who have tended to take a far more hawkish stance. But Putin can be forgiven if he…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia will extend its military drills with Belarus because of rising violence in Ukraine’s Donbas region, the government in Minsk said, as Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted a new round of talks with Kyiv in the midst of warnings of an imminent Russian invasion. Mr. Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron said after speaking Sunday that they agreed to continue seeking a diplomatic solution. Russia has amassed as many as 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders,…

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The New York Times reports: Vladimir Pozner was an English-language Soviet propaganda editor in Moscow in 1962, a job that gave him rare access to American newspapers and magazines. That allowed him to follow the Cuban Missile Crisis outside the Soviet media filter, and sense a world at the brink of war. Mr. Pozner, a longtime Russian television journalist, says he now feels something similar. “The smell of war is very strong,” he said in an interview on Friday, a…

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The Observer reports: Secret discussions are under way between western allies over how to arm what they expect to be fierce Ukrainian resistance in the event of a Russian invasion that topples the Kyiv government. Boris Johnson laid bare the case for such a move in a dramatic speech to the Munich security conference where he stated it was in the collective self-interests of the west for any Russian invasion to “fail and be seen to fail”. He said that…

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Reuters reports: Russia’s strategic nuclear forces held exercises overseen by President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, and Washington accused Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s border of advancing and being “poised to strike”. With Western fears of war rising, foreign ministers from the G7 group of rich nations said they had seen no evidence Russia is reducing its military activity in the area and remained “gravely concerned” about the situation. After Kyiv and Moscow traded accusations over new shelling near the border,…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: China’s longstanding foreign-policy stance, set forth soon after the founding of Communist China by then-Premier Zhou Enlai in the “five principles of peaceful coexistence,” is to not endorse any country’s aggression or intervention in another’s affairs. That helps explain why China hasn’t recognized Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, or fully supported Moscow when it deployed forces to Kazakhstan early this year to quell unrest in the Central Asian nation. Beijing is aware that by so…

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Business Insider reports: Russia on Tuesday claimed it was withdrawing some troops from Ukraine’s border as it denies plans to attack the country, but the US and NATO said Russia appeared to be increasing its military presence there. They may worry that the situation could mirror Russia’s actions in 2008, when it said it was withdrawing troops and invaded eight days later. At the time, Russia said it sent soldiers to the Abkhazia region to fix a railroad, and then…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Rising oil prices and fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have created a dilemma for Saudi Arabia: Help the West by pumping more crude to tame the market, or stand by a five-year-old oil alliance that is helping Moscow at the expense of Washington. For now, the world’s largest crude exporter is sticking with Russia. President Biden has repeatedly called on Persian Gulf producers to pump more oil to reduce gasoline prices that, for…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: U.S. officials are warning that Russia could be about to attack Ukraine. For many citizens in this embattled country, the assault has already begun. Ukrainian officials say that Russia, which has positioned more than 100,000 troops around three sides of Ukraine, is stepping up a destabilization campaign involving cyberattacks, economic disruption and a new tactic: hundreds of fake bomb threats. Russian forces and their proxies already control portions of Ukraine and frequent skirmish with government…

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The New York Times reports: As the threat of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, the European head of state with the longest and deepest experience dealing with Vladimir V. Putin fielded calls and doled out advice to President Emmanuel Macron of France and other world leaders desperate for insight into his difficult neighbor to the east. “‘What do you think about this about this, what about this, or this?’ That’s where I try to be helpful,” said Sauli…

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