Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles. Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time. “We’ve got…

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The Washington Post reports: In a painstakingly slow process that has come to define the speed of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, small groups of sappers on the front lines are crawling across minefields — sometimes literally on their stomachs — to detonate Russia’s defenses and clear a path for troops to advance. The long buildup to the counteroffensive, which began about a month ago across multiple segments of the battlefield in the country’s east and south, gave the Russians time to…

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Insider reports: Russian tourists are snarling up crucial military supply routes as the Kremlin continues to encourage civilians to visit the occupied Crimea peninsula despite it being a war zone, a report says. The traffic jams caused by tourists were made worse this week after an explosion tore through the Kerch road bridge on Sunday, with Russia blaming the attack on drones launched by Ukraine. Ukraine Monday claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack forced the temporary closure of the…

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Reuters reports: Russia halted participation on Monday in the year-old U.N.-brokered deal that lets Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea, spreading fear in poorer countries that price rises will put food out of reach. Hours earlier, a blast knocked out Russia’s bridge to Crimea in what Moscow called a strike by Ukrainian sea drones, killing two people in what Moscow cast as a terrorist attack on the road bridge, a major artery for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. The…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: A Ukrainian strike disabled the only road bridge connecting Russia with the occupied Crimean Peninsula, hitting once again a major symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s rule and constricting Russian supplies to the front lines in southern Ukraine. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said it would likely take until mid-September to restore partial two-way cargo traffic on the bridge, and until November to fully rebuild the 12-mile-long structure. According to Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee, Kyiv…

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Amanda Kadlec writes: When South Africa’s defense force disbanded in 1994, tens of thousands of military personnel found themselves out of work. The state’s massive security infrastructure — independently built with advanced capabilities relative to the country’s size and geopolitical importance — employed the force to keep an inhumane system in place. Suddenly jobless and pension-less with the fall of the apartheid state, some of the elite officers turned to Eben Barlow, the special forces lieutenant colonel who resigned just…

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