Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Russia said its latest nuclear-capable missile system has been deployed in Belarus, a day after Moscow claimed that Ukraine had carried out a large-scale drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence. Footage released by Russia’s ministry of defence showed the new Oreshnik missile trundling through a snowy forest. Soldiers were seen disguising combat vehicles with green netting and raising a flag at an airbase in eastern Belarus, close to the Russian border. The video appeared part of a…

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The New York Times reports: The train left the U.S. Army depot in the west of Germany and made for Poland and the Ukrainian border. These were the final 800 miles of a trans-Atlantic supply chain that had sustained Ukraine across more than three long years of war. The freight on this last day in June was 155-millimeter artillery shells, 18,000 of them packed into crates, their fuses separated out to prevent detonation in transit. Their ultimate destination was the…

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Andrew Chakhoyan writes: In Netflix’s House of Dynamite, a ballistic missile hurtles toward the United States, the nightmare scenario that keeps defense planners awake at night. Yet the West’s Russia policies, over the past decade, have done more to increase the odds of such a catastrophe than prevent it. Washington’s unwitting effort to teach Moscow that nuclear threats work and aggression pays has culminated in a 28-point dictator’s wishlist, bizarrely presented as a “peace plan.” The United States, the world’s…

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The New York Times reports: On a spring night in the Oval Office, President Trump asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio how to get tougher on Venezuela. It was just before Memorial Day, and anti-leftist Cuban American lawmakers whose votes Mr. Trump needed for his signature domestic policy bill were urging him to tighten a vise on Venezuela by stopping Chevron’s oil operations there. But Mr. Trump did not want to lose the only U.S. foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry,…

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The Hill reports: Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said on Sunday that Russia’s strikes on civilian homes — including on Christmas — are a reminder to Americans that the war against Ukraine is at odds with America’s values. In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” the former House Intelligence Committee chair pointed to images of the destruction in Ukrainian cities and neighborhoods and said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “continuing to remind us that this is a war of aggression.”…

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The Intercept reports: President Donald Trump said the U.S. launched airstrikes in northwest Nigeria on Christmas night targeting ISIS militants and warning future attacks may follow. “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. Africa Command conducted the…

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The Guardian reports: China and Russia have expressed support for Venezuela as it confronts a US blockade of sanctioned oil tankers, while Donald Trump continues to ramp up his pressure campaign on the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Amid reports of slowing activity at Venezuelan ports, the US president again called for Maduro to leave power, and reiterated that the US would keep or sell the oil it had seized off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks. Asked…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer and longtime golfing partner of Donald Trump, was just days into his job as the new president’s special envoy to the Middle East when he received a tantalizing message from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Vladimir Putin was interested in meeting Witkoff—so interested that he might consider releasing an American prisoner to him. The invitation came from a Kremlin moneyman named Kirill Dmitriev, using the de facto Saudi…

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Axios reports: President Trump designated Venezuela a “foreign terrorist organization” Tuesday and formally ordered a blockade of all U.S. sanctioned oil tankers servicing the country. Why it matters: Trump’s newest escalation, backed by a giant U.S. armada, exerts unprecedented pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s regime, threatening to bankrupt the country’s already struggling economy. “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like…

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Politico reports: Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine. “Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to…

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The New York Times reports: A pre-dawn phone call jolted President Trump awake. His national security adviser had urgent news about Venezuela. Protests were erupting, soldiers had defected, and the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, had been hustled to a military compound. It looked like he could be forced from power. “Wow,” Mr. Trump said, according to a memoir by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time. That hopeful moment for Mr. Trump, in his first term,…

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