Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: The woman in labour stared out from the stretcher, as medics rushed her over a wasteland left by a Russian attack on a maternity hospital. In a different hospital and feeling her baby slipping away, she begged doctors: “Kill me now.” Hours later, both she and her child were dead. The horror of the attack on a maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol stunned the world. But it was not the first time…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: The White House has quietly assembled a team of national security officials to sketch out scenarios of how the United States and its allies should respond if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — frustrated by his lack of progress in Ukraine or determined to warn Western nations against intervening in the war — unleashes his stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The Tiger Team, as the group is known, is also examining responses…

Read More Read More

Antony Beevor writes: Otto von Bismarck once said that only a fool learns from his own mistakes. “I learn from other people’s,” the 19th-century German chancellor said. Astonishingly, the Russian army is repeating the past mistakes of its Soviet predecessor. In April 1945, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, under intense pressure from Stalin, sent his tank armies into Berlin without infantry support. Vladimir Putin’s forces not only made the same error; they even copied the way their forebears had attached odd bits…

Read More Read More

Rolling Stone reports: In the months before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, an oligarch with Russian ties allegedly paid for locals to paint swastikas around Kharkiv, sources say. The effort, according to the sources, was part of a false flag operation to exaggerate Ukraine’s Nazi presence at a time when Putin was using it as a pretext for war. The alleged plot, according to multiple sources, involved Pavel Fuks, a real estate, banking, and oil magnate who, the sources claim,…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: NATO says that up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing in Ukraine, said a senior military official from the alliance. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization calculates the figure based on information provided by Ukrainian authorities and information obtained from Russia–both officially and unintentionally, the official said. NATO estimates that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24. Using statistical averages…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia invaded Ukraine in February with an arsenal of advanced fighter planes, bombers and guided missiles, but significant combat losses in more than three weeks of fighting raise questions whether Moscow will ever fully dominate the skies. The Ukrainian military is using a patchwork of Soviet-era air-defense batteries dating to the 1980s and modern, shoulder-launched missiles supplied by the U.S. and others in the West to inflict heavy losses on Russian combat planes and helicopters….

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is primarily Vladimir Putin’s war, but if there is a second man whose name and reputation will be tied to the devastation unleashed by Moscow it is Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. His fighters were part of the first wave assault on the country, and died in large numbers around the Hostomel airbase, with one key commander among those killed. Elite Chechen squads were also reportedly recruited for failed attempts to assassinate key Ukrainian…

Read More Read More