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Psychiatrists have warned that the repeated viewing of such visceral imagery can lead to what’s known as “vicarious trauma,” damaging people’s mental health

Some commenters there say the videos offer a grisly lesson. They have “basically taken all the ‘glory’ out of war,” one Redditor said in a thread discussing a video of an injured Russian soldier taking his own life. “I wish politicians would watch these vids as they had their morning coffee.”Others there celebrate the violence or riff on the strange banality of seeing such carnage from home. “I’m eating coco puffs watching this,” one Redditor said on a video showing Russians soldiers killed with grenades.

such videos have also been used to sow terror and provoke an emotional overreaction that could enrage onlookers, expand a conflict or play into the attackers’ hands, said Amanda E. Rogers, a research fellow at the Century Foundation think tank who has studied extremist propaganda. Nearly a decade ago, she said, the Islamic State’s video-recorded beheadings of aid workers, journalists and others helped mark a turning point for terrorists who saw the value in publishing footage so heinous many viewers felt they couldn’t ignore it.

White supremacists have for years spread videos showing violent acts committed by people of color to inflame racial animus in hopes of winning potential recruits, Henry said. In recent conflicts, such gruesome videos have been used to dehumanize the enemy and get international viewers feeling more invested in the fight

“When any of the various Ukraine war influencers share videos of Russian soldiers dying from drone attacks, part of the strategy is to appeal to American or European audiences who see Russian soldiers as part of a wider hated out-group and Ukrainian soldiers as sort of like themselves.”

The Ukrainian government last year began posting photos and videos of captured and killed Russian soldiers to Telegram, Twitter and YouTube in hopes of inflaming Russian protests over the war’s human costs. Military-justice experts told The Post that some of the images likely violated the Geneva Conventions, which demand governments shield prisoners of war from “insults and public curiosity.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has adopted a similar tactic to enrage Western audiences by running hundreds of haunting YouTube ads, including videos in which Israeli medical examiners describe what they saw in their autopsies of the bodies of children purportedly killed during the Hamas attack, according to YouTube’s ad library.

our government has the ability to meaningfully push Israeli policy toward peace by leveraging military aid — and has done so under presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. So long as the status quo remains unchecked, violence will continue.

In a telling sign of AIPAC’s willingness to prioritize unconditional support for the Israeli government over all else, its first-ever slate of endorsements this year includes over 100 Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election. They have raised millions of dollars to make sure those insurrectionists keep their jobs. In addition to AIPAC endorsing Republicans who are trying to undermine our democracy, they also endorsed dozens of Democrats, including 44 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

Progressive Democrats should not accept support from AIPAC, full stop. Do members of the CPC want to be connected to an organization that also endorses insurrectionists?

Beijing’s opposition to U.S. coalition building and expansion of military cooperation with Indo-Pacific countries. Overall, Beijing’s instinct is to understand the Ukraine crisis largely through the lens of its confrontation with Washington.

Beijing will want to ensure its position is not overly exposed to Western criticism and to safeguard its moral standing in the eyes of developing countries

When Russia invaded Ukraine, India immediately came under the spotlight as at once a consequential friend of Moscow and a country traditionally keen to portray itself as the world’s largest democracy and a champion of peace. The U.S. and European countries pressured India not to side with Moscow and the Ukrainian ambassador in New Delhi pleaded for India to halt its political support for Russia. Yet under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has responded to the invasion with the blunt realism of a rising, aspirational power that does not want to get caught between Russia and what Modi calls the “NATO group”. India chose the well-trodden non-alignment path and hid behind diplomatic language with a not-so-subtle tilt toward Russia.

“military-technical cooperation”, which has resulted in more than 60 per cent of India’s arms and defence systems being of Russian origin

India also depends on Russia to counterbalance China, which has become its primary security and foreign policy concern, especially given its unresolved border tensions with Beijing. With Pakistan, India’s main rival, already close to China and cosying up to Russia, India’s worst fear is that China, Pakistan and Russia will come together

Relations with Washington are already strained largely because of Islamabad’s seemingly unconditional support for the Afghan Taliban. To give his government diplomatic space, Khan has sought to forge closer ties with Moscow. Those efforts could not have come at a less opportune time.

Khan returned home with little to show from the trip, the first by a Pakistani prime minister in over two decades. He signed no agreements or memoranda of understanding with his Russian counterpart. Widening Western sanctions on Russia have also sunk Pakistani hopes of energy cooperation with Moscow, casting particular doubt on the fate of a proposed multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project.

In contrast to Russia, with which Pakistan’s commerce is miniscule, the U.S. and EU states are its main trading partners. The war in Ukraine could further undermine Pakistan’s economy. The rise in global fuel prices is already fuelling record-high inflation and putting food security at risk, since before the invasion Ukraine provided Pakistan with more than 39 per cent of its wheat imports. With a trade deficit estimated by one analyst at around $40 billion, Islamabad’s reliance on external sources of funding will inevitably grow. A Russia under heavy sanctions will be in no position to assist. In such a scenario, Pakistan’s powerful military, which Khan depends on for his own political survival, could question his foreign posture.

The Gulf Arab countries have so far adopted an ambiguous position on the Russian aggression in Ukraine. As close U.S. partners that also have increasing ties to Russia, they sit between a rock and a hard place, unwilling to openly antagonise either side. They have landed in this conundrum because of what they perceive as a growing U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. In response, they embarked on an effort to diversify their security relations, moving away from sole reliance on Washington. Russia is one of these new partners.

No Gulf power wants to give the impression of siding with the Kremlin, for fear of aggravating the U.S. – their primary security guarantor. But as international support for Ukraine and anger at those seen to support (or at least not publicly oppose) Russia grows, the damage may already have been done: the U.S. and its European allies were appalled at the Gulf states’ reticence to get in line with immediate condemnations of the Russian invasion

despite Iran’s own experience of losing large swaths of territory to Czarist Russia in the nineteenth century and facing Soviet occupation during and immediately after World War II, the Islamic Republic today can claim few major allies beyond Russia. Tehran sees few upsides in breaking ranks with Moscow. In comparison to the possible results of provoking the Kremlin with anything less than fulsome support, the diplomatic opprobrium it may receive from the U.S. and Europe is of little consequence.

Israel has substantive relations with both Russia and Ukraine: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has spoken to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the war began, and has offered to act as mediator; Israel sees itself as, in effect, sharing a border with Russia to its north east in Syria, relying on Putin’s continued tacit approval of its airstrikes on Iranian targets there; large Jewish and Israeli populations reside in both Russia and Ukraine and over 1.5 million Russian and Ukrainian expatriates live in Israel; and Israel is a major U.S. ally and beneficiary that identifies with the Western “liberal democratic order”.

Israel has offered humanitarian aid to Ukraine but has refused to sell it arms or provide it with military assistance.

concerned that the fallout from the war could lead Putin to increase arms sales to anti-Western proxies along its borders, chiefly Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon, or step up electronic measures to disrupt NATO operations in the Mediterranean Sea, affecting Israel’s own navigation systems. Thus far, Russia has assured Israel that it will continue coordination on Syria, though reiterating that it does not recognise Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed

President Zelenskyy is the only elected Jewish head of state outside Israel. He lost family in the Holocaust. As such, Israel’s silence on Putin’s antisemitic rhetoric, such as his claim to be “denazifying” Ukraine with the invasion, is noteworthy. That said, Israel has some track record – vis-à-vis Hungary and Poland, for example – of placing what its leaders view as national security or foreign relations concerns above taking a strong stand against antisemitism.

The Ukraine conflict is a major problem for Turkey. It threatens not only to damage Ankara’s relations with Moscow, but also to hurt the Turkish economy, pushing up energy costs and stopping Russian and Ukrainian tourists from visiting Turkey. Some analysts estimate that a decline in tourism could mean up to $6 billion in lost revenue.

Since 2014, Turkish defence companies have been increasingly engaged in Ukraine, and in 2019 they sold the country drones that Ukrainians see as significant in slowing the Russian advance.

On 27 February, Ankara announced that it would block warships from Russia and other littoral states from entering the Black Sea via the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits as long as the war continues, in line with the Montreux Convention (though Russian vessels normally based in Black Sea ports are exempt from the restriction, under the convention’s terms). But it also requested other states, implicitly including NATO members, to avoid sending their ships through the straits, in an apparent effort to limit the risks of escalation and maintain a balanced approach to the conflict.

Some fear, for instance, that Russia and its Syrian regime ally will ratchet up pressure on Idlib, the rebel-held enclave in Syria’s north west, forcing large numbers of refugees into Turkey, from where they might try to proceed to Europe. This worry persists though it is unclear that Russia would want to heat up the Syrian front while facing resilient Ukrainian resistance.

A prolonged war will only exacerbate Turkey’s security and economic concerns, and if Russia consolidates control of Ukraine’s coastline, it will also deal a significant blow to Turkey in terms of the naval balance of power in the Black Sea. It is likely that Turkey will draw closer to NATO as a result of this war, and less likely that Turkey will buy a second batch of S-400 surface-to-air missiles from Russia

Kenya, currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, has taken a more strident stance in opposition to Russia’s invasion than most non-NATO members of the Council. This position springs in part from the country’s history. Nairobi was one of the strongest supporters of a founding principle of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) prescribing respect for territorial integrity and the inviolability of member states’ colonial-era borders.

As in many African countries, a deep current of public opinion is critical of Western behaviour in the post-Cold War era, emphasising the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya, as well as the double standards that many Kenyans perceive in Washington’s democracy promotion on the continent.

What Nairobi saw as Washington’s endorsement of the 2013 coup in Egypt particularly rankled Kenyan authorities, who took an especially vocal public position against that putsch

Kenya will also push for the strengthening of multilateralism in Africa to confront what many expect to be difficult days ahead in the international arena. “We are entering an age of global disorder”, Peter Kagwanja, a political scientist and adviser to successive Kenyan presidents, told Crisis Group. “The African Union must band together or we will all hang separately”.

longstanding solidarity between South Africa and Russia. In the Soviet era, Moscow offered South Africans support in the anti-apartheid struggle and actively backed liberation movements across southern Africa.

Although just over half of African states backed the UN General Assembly resolution on Ukraine, many governments in the region have responded to the war with caution. Few have voiced open support for Russia, with the exception of Eritrea. But many have avoided taking strong public positions on the crisis, and some have explicitly declared themselves neutral.

Ghana, which joined the UN Security Council in January, has consistently backed the government in Kyiv. The West African bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), released a statement condemning Russia’s actions. Nonetheless, not all ECOWAS members voted for the General Assembly resolution. Mali, which has drawn closer to Russia as France pulled its military forces out of the country, abstained. Burkina Faso did not vote, perhaps reflecting the fact that Russia watered down a Security Council statement condemning the January coup in Ouagadougou.

Russia has many friends in Africa due in part to the Soviet Union’s support for liberation movements during the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles. Many also appreciated Moscow’s strident opposition to the more recent disastrous Western interventions in Iraq and Libya. Furthermore, a number of African leaders studied in the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc countries and Moscow has done a good job of maintaining these ties over the years. Numerous African security figures also received their training in Russia.

African leaders and elites generally oppose sanctions, seeing them as blunt tools that tend to punish the general population more than national leaders. In the meantime, African officials are concerned that the war will have a deleterious impact on the continent’s economies and food security, both by driving up energy prices and by restricting grain supplies from Russia and Ukraine (a particular concern after a period of poor rainfall and weak harvests in parts of the continent). These shocks are liable to be severe in African countries that are still only beginning to recover from the downturn prompted by COVID-19, although oil producers such as Nigeria, Congo and Equatorial Guinea may benefit from a hike in energy prices.

Since the invasion began, Bolsonaro’s affinities with Moscow have exposed the divisions within his hard-right government. From the outset, Brazil’s foreign ministry has vowed to maintain a position of neutrality, urging a diplomatic solution. But a day after the invasion, Hamilton Mourão, the vice president and a retired army general, said “there must be a real use of force to support Ukraine”, arguing that “if the Western countries let Ukraine fall, then it will be Bulgaria, then the Baltic states and so on”, drawing an analogy to the conquests of Nazi Germany. Hours later, Bolsonaro said only he could speak about the crisis, declaring that Mourão had no authority to comment on the issue.

Calls for neutrality nevertheless enjoy traction in Brazil. Within the government, there is concern that Western sanctions against Moscow will harm the economy, in particular its agricultural sector, which relies heavily on imports of Russian-made fertilisers. Brazil’s soya production, one of the country’s main sources of income, would suffer considerably from a sanctioned Russia.

Mexico depends on the U.S for its natural gas supply, and the prospect of rising prices is spurring the government to consider other means of generating electricity

Relations between Russia and Venezuela flourished under the late president, Hugo Chávez, who set the relationship with Washington on an antagonistic course. Under Maduro, Venezuela’s links to Russia have intensified, especially through the provision of technical military assistance as well as diplomatic backing from Moscow after Maduro faced a major challenge from the U.S.-linked opposition in early 2019.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 after the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was attacked and burned by Iranian protesters, angered by the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. The cleric had emerged as a leading figure in protests in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, a Shiite-majority region in the Sunni-majority nation.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington responded defiantly to Friday’s announcement, tweeting that “The rogue Iranian regime is still sending lethal weapons to the terrorist Houthi militia in Yemen, and the Yemeni embassy in Tehran is still occupied.”

Yemen has enjoyed a rare reprieve from fighting since last April, when a United Nations-sponsored truce went into effect. Though the truce expired in October, the peace has largely held, and back-channel talks between the Houthis and the Saudis have resumed.Story continues below advertisementThese negotiations “are also a reflection of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement,” said Maysaa Shuja al-Deen, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

Tensions reached new heights in 2019 after a wave of Houthi drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities, knocking out half of the kingdom’s oil output. At the time, U.S. officials said they believed the assault was launched from Iranian territory. Tehran denied involvement.

The Houthis, meanwhile, appeared to approve of the agreement. “The region needs the restoration of normal relations between its countries, so that the Islamic nation can recover its security lost as a result of foreign interventions,” spokesman Mohamed Abdel Salam tweeted.

Iran and Saudi Arabia had been exploring a rapprochement since 2021, participating in talks hosted by Iraq and Oman.

“Facing a dead end in nuclear negotiations with the United States, and shunned by the European Union because of its arms exports to Russia … Iran has scored a major diplomatic victory,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

China’s well-publicized role in the deal was probably intended to send a message to major powers, including the United States, “that the hub for the Middle East is shifting,”

Beijing has largely avoided intervening politically in the Middle East, focusing instead on deepening economic ties. China is the largest importer of energy from the region, and “there is a lot of interest” among major players including Saudi Arabia and Iran in securing long-term access to Chinese markets

“China has truly arrived as a strategic actor in the Gulf,”

saving Egypt’s coral reefs will require greater action, likely from world powers

A 2019 study found that climate change could cost Egypt as much as 95 percent of its revenue from tourism to the coral reefs, so world powers will likely have to come up with millions or even billions of dollars more. Egypt hardly finds itself alone. In the first half of 2022, the government debt of Jordan—home to its own prized set of coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba—reached $41 billion, 88.4 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Meanwhile, in Tunisia, coral reefs near the resort destination of Tabarka appear set to suffer as climate change batters the country and the Tunisian economy falters, depriving authorities of the funds necessary to fund marine conservation.

pairing debt relief with marine conservation, as well as more general measures for environmental protection and climate change mitigation, a boon for Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other coral-rich countries in the Arab world

Since the beginning of the 2020s, several articles5Jean-Loup Samaan, “The Rise of the Emirati Defense Industry,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 14 May 2019 https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/79121;  Elenora Ardemagni, “The UAE’s Military Training-Focused Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 22 October 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/83033; Melissa Dalton and Hijab Shah, “Evolving UAE Military and Foreign Security Cooperation: Path Toward Military Professionalism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 12 January 2021,  https://carnegie-mec.org/2021/01/12/evolving-uae-military-and-foreign-security-cooperation-path-toward-military-professionalism-pub-83549; Elenora Ardemagni, “ Building New Gulf States Through Conscription,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 25 April 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/76178; Elenora Ardemagni, “Gulf Monarchies’ Militarized Nationalism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 28 February 2019,https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78472; Zoltan Barany, “Big News! Conscription in the Gulf,” Middle East Institute, 25 January 2017, https://www.mei.edu/publications/big-news-conscription-gulf; Dr. Eman Ahmed Abdel Halim, “Implementation of Military Conscription in the Gulf,” Future for Advanced Research Studies, 12 December 2016, https://futureuae.com/m/Mainpage/Item/2250/pressing-threats-implementation-of-military-conscription-in-the-gulf were written on the economic, social, and geopolitical reasons behind Gulf countries’ shift in military recruitment strategy. The security problems originating from Iran and Yemen, the willingness to exercise soft power in the region along with the volatile energy sector, and the ruptures within the rentier state model are put forward as the main justifications behind the Gulf countries’ developing defense industries and growing their armies. In this context, compulsory military service does play an important role, be it to increase the size of the army, cause deterrence in the region or create new job opportunities and a qualified workforce out of young citizens.

can also create intangible moral advantages, and thus have significant effects on these countries’ civil-military relations. The biggest reason for this is the symbiotic relationship that has formed over time between compulsory military service and national sentiment.  In this sense, introducing conscription shows an effort to turn these societies into nations where individuals would be bound to one another by national sentiment and not the rentier state model they have so far known.

To raise obedient and productive citizens who wore the same uniform, spoke the same language, and sang the same anthems, education became an important tool in the nation-building process.11Ayşe Gül Altınay and Tanıl Bora, “Ordu, Militarizm ve Milliyetçilik,” Iletişim Yayınları, (2002): 140. In Prussia, this “new form of nationalist socialization” was provided through military establishments with the hope that, after their discharge from military service, men would remain loyal to the state and transfer their sentiment and what they “learned” to the rest of the population.12

mandatory military service in these countries should not be seen as a way to efficiently raise strong and competent armies. First, like their Gulf neighbors, neither Qatar, Kuwait, nor the UAE is populated enough to sustain a competent standing army. Most of their populations are made of ex-pats who are not subject to conscription laws. Second, their current system of outsourcing military needs has proven to be efficient in the long run, with all three countries continuing to invest in contracting foreign soldiers to efficiently populate their armies. Therefore, the new conscription laws should be seen as a symbolic move to strengthen nationalistic bonds and ambitions.

paradoxically, the exact nationalistic sentiment and loyalty that the Gulf countries try to channel among their citizens can backfire if the people (including the conscripts) were to ever resent the rulers and their policies. This is rather contrary to the long-established coup-proofing strategies25After gaining their independence, most countries in the region (or rather individual leaders) have engaged in various coup-proofing measures to keep their militaries in check. There were different types of coup-measuring strategies. For example, until 2011, Hosni Mubarak, a military man himself, tried to keep the Egyptian military at bay by giving officers and the military institution economic benefits and providing an unfair competition. In Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took a different approach and choose to ouster the military as an institution completely and empowered the police force. In Sudan and Libya, former presidents Bashar and Gaddafi took a more social approach and tried to counterbalance different groups of society, especially the tribal establishments, as a buffer against the military. In the Gulf, the ruling monarchs resorted to using foreign soldiers to keep the military away from social and political affairs as much as possible. that Arab countries followed over the years. However, given the low numbers of citizens that will be drafted each year, the risk of such revolts taking place remains low.

In Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar, there are legal sanctions in place against anyone who fails to enlist when they become eligible and conscientious objection is not recognized. This could cause or further the feeling of oppression and resentment and trigger protests and turmoil in these countries. However, at this stage, this risk is low but still a possibility as seen in Thailand, Israel, and Armenia

Between 2017 and 2022, land used to grow vegetables and herbs in greenhouses increased by more than 20 million square feet, an 18 percent jump, according to the federal government’s latest agriculture census, released last month

In New England today, about 20 percent of the leafy greens for sale come from controlled-environment agriculture outfits

A study of 12 indoor farms by the nonprofit Resource Innovation Institute found that five of them used as much energy per square foot as a hospital. One vertical farm, an outlier, was guzzling as much energy per square foot as a data center.

These companies advertise their produce as safer, more nutritious and fresher than field-grown produce, since their operations typically skip pesticides and are within a few hours’ drive of major cities. They boast of using one-tenth of the water, a claim backed up by independent research. But they don’t often talk about their energy use; most states don’t require them to report it, and researchers said many are reluctant to share this data.

In Westbrook, Maine, Vertical Harvest is building a four-story, 52,000-square-foot vertical farm and is negotiating a deal to supply it with renewable energy. However, company leaders said they can’t apply the same strategy to their next project, in Detroit, where the state’s energy mix is heavy on fossil fuels and the company can’t choose its electricity provider.

At a time when consumers are seeking more year-round vegetables and berries, and many still have grim memories of the pandemic’s supply-chain crises, states are courting indoor farms that can be built wherever there’s a market for fresh produce.

Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said the state has created a “concierge service” to ease the permitting process and help indoor-farm operators with site selection. His agency is focusing on locations in the Lehigh Valley and the south-central region, where there’s proximity to major energy infrastructure and desirable markets in New York, New Jersey and D.C. Some of the state’s top universities are working on technology to speed automation inside vertical farms and greenhouses, he said, while its colleges are training workers for jobs in these facilities.One of Pennsylvania’s selling points is its abundance of energy, most of which is generated by burning natural gas.“These facilities are energy-intensive,” Redding said, “but Pennsylvania is the second-largest net energy supplier to the nation, and we think that’s a differentiator for us.”

Gretchen Schimelpfenig, a civil engineer who has worked to track indoor farms’ energy use, said many American greenhouses could cut their energy use in half. Dutch greenhouse technology has proved that this is possible, she said, but in the United States, there’s little pressure on indoor food growers to do things differently.

Little Leaf Farms, the dominant controlled-environment producer of packaged greens in New England, uses natural gas to heat its greenhouses. To get around this problem, CEO Paul Sellew said the company buys renewable-energy certificates, each of which corresponds to a set amount of energy generated by cleaner sources such as wind or solar. Little Leaf is also planning to build a large solar array on its 180-acre site in McAdoo, Pa., and Sellew said he’s keen on eventually switching to geothermal energy, which is already being used in the Netherlands to heat greenhouses but hasn’t caught on in the United States.

A few vertical-farm companies, like Texas’s Eden Green, have responded to the problem of dirty energy by focusing on efficiency. Eden Green’s hybrid model uses natural light, and the company lessens the burden on its cooling system by using programmed vents to control heat and humidity. Badrina estimated his two farms use about a quarter of the electricity consumed by a typical vertical farm growing leafy greens, which has allowed the company to plant other crops, such as herbs, that are more energy-intensive.

as some companies look to build vertical farms in the swampy Southeast, Badrina said they are likely to face even higher power bills from all the energy needed to counter the region’s heat and humidity.