Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored U.S. lawmakers on Saturday to do more to force Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and end the war on his country — including the establishment of a no-fly zone, additional direct aid and a ban on oil imports from Moscow. In a private Zoom call with Senate and House members, Zelenskyy expressed appreciation for the actions taken so far by the U.S. and NATO allies as Russia continues assaulting Ukraine,…

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The Hill reports: Former national security adviser John Bolton said on Friday that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was “waiting” for a possible United States withdrawal from NATO, claiming former President Trump would have likely made such a move had he been reelected. Bolton, during a Washington Post Live event, was asked about his memoir, in which he claimed that Trump wanted to leave the military alliance in 2018. The newspaper’s Opinions Editor-at-Large Michael Duffy asked him how close…

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David Ignatius writes: Javelin antitank missiles, the American-made weapons that can destroy Russian tanks, are stacked in steel racks awaiting quick shipment into Ukraine. A giant C-17 transport is parked on a nearby runway. This is what American and NATO support for Ukraine looks like. Every day, 14 widebody jets are landing here to deliver Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft missiles and other weapons for the Ukrainians. A half-dozen of these daily arrivals are American planes. Watching the Javelins move toward the…

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Markos Kounalakis writes: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is criminal on multiple counts, but some of them should be leveled at one of his main accomplices: Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Russia’s military is executing an unprovoked and unprecedented attack on a peaceful neighbor on many fronts, from the air and sea. The land war, however, would not be as effective or lethal were it not for Lukashenko providing a front along Belarus’s southern border, not far from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv….

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The Guardian reports: Happiness lies in ruins. This small town – Schastia in Ukrainian – has been out of the headlines since Moscow took its brutal war against civilians to the country’s biggest cities. But it is here, and in nearby Volnovakha, that the illegal tactics of terrorising civilians for military aims, honed in Syria and then brought back so close to home, have reached a grim high point. There have been terrible strikes on homes, schools and hospitals around…

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The New York Times reports: Ukraine has succeeded in slowing the Russian advance, but has not been able to stop it, nor is the resistance strong enough to shift Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s war aims. Over the long term, U.S. officials said, it will be difficult for Ukraine to continue to frustrate the Russian advance. In the meantime, though, Ukrainians are turning into a nation at arms. “In combat, it’s always different than what you thought it’d be, and…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian shelling in southern Ukraine caused a fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant before Russian troops took control of the area, according to local authorities and international observers, raising fears that Moscow’s increasingly indiscriminate war could cause a global environmental disaster. The fire, extinguished Friday morning, erupted at the Zaporizhzhia power plant’s training facility, Ukraine’s emergency service said. None of the plant’s six reactors, one of which is currently operational, were affected and there…

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Vanity Fair reports: As the war in Ukraine was about to drag into its second weekend, rightly dominating news coverage, I found myself craving perspective about that coverage from an expert on Russia and Ukraine. For that I turned to Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British journalist, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and author of two books about Russian disinformation and propaganda. Pomerantsev was born in Kyiv, spent years living in Moscow, and has friends…

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The Associated Press reports: As the West condemns Russia, President Vladimir Putin has vocal supporters in China, where the ruling Communist Party tells its people they are fellow targets of U.S.-led harassment. “If Russia is destroyed, we will be next. This is for sure,” said Wang Yongchun, a retiree in Beijing. “The United States wants to dominate the world.” Such comments reflect the stance of a ruling party that is the closest thing Putin has to a major ally: The…

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Reuters reports: As Russian troops slowly advanced on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Thursday, some people back in Moscow were attempting to flee to destinations abroad that have not banned flights from Russia, stomaching soaring prices in the rush to escape. The Kremlin dismissed speculation that Russian authorities plan to introduce martial law following the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation”, or that they will stop men of fighting age leaving Russia, but some did not want to…

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The Guardian reports: Five Russian soldiers sit in a brick building. They are blindfolded: the latest prisoners to be captured inside Ukraine. A Ukrainian voice interrogates them. “Speak,” he says to the group’s Russian officer. What message would he like to send to his soldiers and to Russians back at home? “Frankly speaking, they tricked us,” the officer replies, referring to his military superiors sitting in Moscow. “Everything we were told was a fake. I would tell my guys to…

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Simon Shuster writes: Western leaders were still divided two days after the invasion, when they met to agree on a package of sanctions to punish Russia for its attack. Germany, Hungary, and Italy initially wanted to water down these measures. Then Zelensky dialed in to their meeting. Calm but determined, his pale face covered in stubble, he told the leaders of the free world that this might be the last time they would see him alive. “The enemy has marked…

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The New York Times reports: On Feb. 23, Razil Malikov, a tank driver in the Russian Army, called his family and said he would be home soon; his unit’s military drills in Crimea were just about wrapping up. The next morning, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Mr. Malikov hasn’t been heard from since. On Monday, Ukraine published a video of a captured soldier in his unit, apologizing for taking part in the invasion. “He had no idea they could send him…

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