Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: European leaders on Friday rallied to defend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance subjected him to a tirade of withering and infantilizing abuse in the Oval Office. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” In what may prove to a significant turning point in the tottering postwar…

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Agathe Demarais writes: As U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin consider meeting in the coming weeks, it may be useful to ask why it is that Moscow now appears inclined to end the war in Ukraine. Three years into the conflict, Putin has shown the world he doesn’t care about bloodshed. And if his goal was to install a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv, he remains far from achieving it. However, there is a third, less explored hypothesis…

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Murtaza Hussain and Ali Younes report: Over a decade of civil war and sanctions have laid waste to much of Syria, crippling its economy and sending much of its population into exile. Already struggling to recover from this carnage, Syria is now facing attacks from Israel that threaten to destabilize the country. On Tuesday night, a wave of Israeli airstrikes struck targets near Damascus and other cities in southern Syria, with initial reports indicating that at least one person was…

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Peter Dickinson writes: As the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion draws close, the chorus of voices calling for new elections in Ukraine is growing louder and louder. Curiously, however, these calls are not coming from the Ukrainians themselves, but from the Kremlin and the Trump White House. Since his inauguration one month ago, US President Donald Trump has begun echoing Russian demands for fresh Ukrainian elections. This week, he sparked outrage by branding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator…

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Anne Applebaum writes: At a major multinational security conference in Munich last weekend, I sat in a room full of defense ministers, four-star generals, and security analysts—people who procure ammunition for Ukrainian missile defense, or who worry about Russian ships cutting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. All of them were expecting Vice President J. D. Vance to address these kinds of concerns. Instead, Vance told a series of misleading stories designed to demonstrate that European democracies aren’t democratic….

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Luke Harding reports: Drawing in the snow with his finger, Mykola Hrechukha sketched out how Ukraine’s new lithium mine might look. It would have a deep central shaft, with a series of side tunnels, he said. “The lithium is good everywhere. The biggest concentration is at a depth of 200-500 metres,” he said. “We should be able to extract 4,300 tonnes a day. The potential is terrific.” For now, though, there is little sign of activity. The deposit is buried…

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  “The way to prevent that is strong defense to spend money on defence to be prepared for the worst case, because that is the only way we are going to deter Russia.” US withdrawal from NATO and failure to challenge Putin in ceasefire talks would cause a war in Europe in five years warns Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Richard Shirreff on Frontline.

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate. Mr. Trump escalated on Wednesday, as he usually does, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator,” and suggesting Ukraine’s…

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  James O’Brien is joined by Sir Bill Browder, an anti-corruption campaigner who is the head of the Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign, and chief executive of the finance company Hermitage Capital. Sir Bill Browder offers hope on Ukraine’s bleak situation following Donald Trump’s comments about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The US president took aim at Zelenskyy after he accused Trump of “helping Putin to come out of isolation” by working with him. On Wednesday evening, Number Ten released a statement expressing…

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Julian Borger writes: All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump. All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble,…

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Maha Yahya writes: Iran, Israel, the United States, and the Arab Gulf countries have all spent decades trying to shape the region to their liking without addressing the root causes of conflict, and they have repeatedly failed. They have sought security over peace and ended up with neither. And yet their current plans are strikingly similar, at least in spirit, to past efforts. All these countries are committing again to visions of a new regional order in which reconstruction takes…

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NBC News reports: As the Trump administration begins preliminary talks with Russian officials about ending the war in Ukraine, intelligence from the United States and close allies shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wants to control all of Ukraine, according to four Western intelligence officials and two U.S. congressional officials. “We have zero intelligence that Putin is interested in a real peace deal right now,” one of the congressional officials said. Putin is sending representatives to Saudi Arabia for…

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Middle East Eye reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Turkey and European countries must be involved in negotiations and security guarantees to end the war with Russia, during a visit to Ankara on Tuesday. “Turkey, the UK and the European Union, along with the US, should be included in the talks, as well as in the security guarantees,” Zelensky said during a press briefing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The negotiations must be fair, and this can only…

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The Guardian reports: Top US and Russian officials have agreed to continue planning an end to the Ukraine war and to pursue closer cooperation amid concerns in Kyiv and across Europe that Donald Trump could push for a settlement favouring Vladimir Putin. After the talks at Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in three years, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the two sides had agreed to create a high-level team to…

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