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KIEV, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 01: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the media on October 1, 2019 in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine has been at the core of a political storm in U.S. politics since the release of a whistleblower’s complaint suggesting U.S. President Donald Trump, at the expense of U.S. foreign policy, pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) MONDAY 14 MARCH 2022
Another day of destruction in Ukraine. The Pentagon, through Kirby, is saying over and over again that we will not put soldiers into Ukraine or establish a no fly zone. So, another day, we sit and watch Ukraine being destroyed.
As a number of people have pointed out, this is a war of autocracy against democracy and we are sitting on the sidelines.
BNO News
- The Ukrainian city of Mariupol says at least 2,200 people have been killed since the war began.
- In Saudi Arabia, 81 prisoners have been executed.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Russians deny humanitarian convoy entry into Mariupol.
SUNDAY, 13 MARCH 2022
WALL STREET JOURNAL (3/13/22)
• Prosecutors in Russia are warning that they may arrest corporate leaders who stay in Russia and criticize the government. They are also warning that they may seize assets of companies that withdraw from the country.
EUROMAIDAN PRESS
• Following previous reports that mercenaries from Russian private military companies are deployed in Ukraine, are reports that the Russians are recruiting Middle Eastern mercenaries.
• Russian soldiers are being treated in Belarus. There are not enough blood supplies for surgery. Reserves of blood accumulated for the citizens are being used. There is a campaign to collect blood from the citizens.
• In a video of a Russian deserter, he claims that the Russians haVe established “shooting squads” to shoot deserters. He also related that 600 Russian marines refused to land from their ship near Odesa.
• A similar story is reported from Kherson Oblast, where 80 Russian marines refused to participate in the war.
• There are reports of Russian commanders being appointed over Belarusian soldiers who are resistant to go to war against Ukrainians.
• Putin has publicly welcomed the recruitment of 16,000 mostly Middle Eastern volunteers.
• Defense Intelligence of Ukraine is reporting that the Russian army has legalized looting. Troops have been instructed to “move to ‘self-sufficiency” if they are out of supplies. “…to take away everything necessary from the local population and to rob warehouses, shops, drugstores.”
• According to the local Zaporizhzhia Miitary Administration, Russian troops looted a humanitarian convoy headed to Mariupol on March 12. “As each checkpoint, the invaders were forcibly seizing food, clothing, hygiene products.”
• The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has been kidnapped and is reportedly being tortured. The occupiers have evidently found a replacement for him, a local MP from a pro-Russian Opposition Party for Life. This woman had posted a video urging people to “adjust to the new reality” and “not destabilize the situation and not participate in extremist activities.”
• On March 13, occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Dniprorudnyi, Yevhen Matveyev. A journalist, Oleh Baturin is also feared kidnapped in Kherson.
• March 11, during an evacuation from Peremoha (Kyiv Oblast) Russian forces fired on a column of women and children (Defense Intelligence of Ukraine).
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry Second European Department Director Sergei Belyayev has said that Finland and Sweden’s possible accession to NATO would have serious military consequences.
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List of presidents of Ukraine – Wikipedia
— Read on en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_Ukraine -
McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, P&G and IBM among those warned that leaders could be arrested, trademarks seized.
— Read on www.wsj.com/articles/russian-prosecutors-warn-western-companies-of-arrests-asset-seizures-11647206193 -
Sunday 13 March 2022: 8:00 PM
WALL STREET JOURNAL (3/13/22)
- Prosecutors in Russia are warning that they may arrest corporate leaders who stay in Russia and criticize the government. They are also warning that they may seize assets of companies that withdraw from the country.
EUROMAIDAN PRESS
- Following previous reports that mercenaries from Russian private military companies are deployed in Ukraine, are reports that the Russians are recruiting Middle Eastern mercenaries.
- Russian soldiers are being treated in Belarus. There are not enough blood supplies for surgery. Reserves of blood accumulated for the citizens are being used. There is a campaign to collect blood from the citizens.
- In a video of a Russian deserter, he claims that the Russians hae established “shooting squads” to shoot deserters. He also related that 600 Russian marines refused to land from their ship near Odesa.
- A similar story is reported from Kherson Oblast, where 80 Russian marines refused to participate in the war.
- There are reports of Russian commanders being appointed over Belarusian soldiers who are resistant to go to war against Ukrainians.
- Putin has publicly welcomed the recruitment of 16,000 mostly Middle Eastern volunteers.
- Defense Intelligence of Ukraine is reporting that the Russian army has legalized looting. Troops have been instructed to “move to ‘self-sufficienty” if they are out of supplies. “…to take away everyting necessary from the local population and to rob warehouses, shops, drugstores.”
- According to the local Zaporizhzhia Miitary Administration, Rusian troops looted a humanitarian convoy headed to Mariupol on March 12. “As each checkpoint, the invaders were forcibly seizing food, clothing, hygiene products.”
- The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has been kidnapped and is reportedly being tortured. The occupiers have evidently found a replacement for him, a local MP from a pro-Russian Opposition Party for Life. This woman had posted a video urging people to “adjust to the new reality” and “not destabilize the situation and not participate in extremist activities.”
- On March 13, occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Dniprorudnyi, Yevhen Matveyev. A journalist, Oleh Baturin is also feared kidnapped in Kherson.
- March 11, during an evacuation from Peremoha (Kyiv Oblast) Russian forces fired on a column of women and children (Defense Intelligence of Ukraine).
- Russia’s Foreign Ministry Second European Department Director Sergei Belyayev has said that Finland and Sweden’s possible accession to NATO would have serious military consequences.
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SUNDAY 13 MARCH 2022 (7:30 PM)
MSNBC
- MSNBC is reporting that the police chief reported that a burning chemical was dropped in the village of Popasna.
- There will be negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in about nine hours.
- Interview with Melinda Haring, Deputy Director for Foreign Policy Research Institute, Eurasia Center. “The White House is playing my favorite game of cover your butt.” “This is really easy.” “We should have sent MIGS last week.” “We need to be strong.” “The White House is afraid of the Russian bear and they need to grow up.” “Engaging in some kind of outward pretense that we’re going to move MIGS and then pulling them back, that’s not going to scare Putin.” “All of the justifications” given by the White House and Pentagon are “false.”
BNO NEWS
- Russia has asked China for military equipment and aid in the invasion.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- The U.K. Ministry of Defense stated that the Russian fleet established a blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
- Rob Portman, Republican visiting Ukraine, calls for a no-fly zone.
- Instagram users in Russia are told that the service will cease at midnight.
TWITTER
- Pundits on Russian state TV are advocating public hangings in Ukraine once Russian dominance is established. (@JuliaDavisNews)
- Occupy Democrats reports that NBC is reporting that Goldman Sachs in “making a killing” off Putin’s invasion by exploiting a loophole in Biden’s sanctions in order to sell Russian debt to hedge funds “on the cheap.”
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BLOG ENTRY Sunday 13 Marcy 2022
Putin Arrests Head of FSB’s Fifth Service
The leadership of the Fifth Service of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence service, have reportedly been placed under house arrest.
The Fifth Service has been in charge of providing Putin with intelligence on political developments in Ukraine up to and on the eve of the invasion.
Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, has been arrested along with his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh. Both of these men were heavily involved in the planning for the invasion.
Putin is conducting what the Times of Israel (3/11/22) has termed a “purge” of military officials over failures in Ukraine. He has replaced over eight generals, and he has blamed his security services for faulty information about, for example, the amount of resistance that might be met in Ukraine.
Beseda is also charged with being responsible for embezzling $5 billion over an eight year time period. This money was to be directed at paying for subversion inside Ukraine. As Galeotti has noted, the Kremlin now wants to know what they got for all that money.
Several days ago, Putin appointed a commission to look into that very question. As Galeotti notes, when you want to know whether somebody will be found guilty at a high level in Russia, just look at the people appointed to the commission investigating the crime. In this case, all the major players on the investigative commission are people who would personally benefit if Beresda was ousted.
Galotti argues that the charges are not about embezzlement at all. They are instead a method of establishing a scapegoat for the failures in Ukraine. He also notes that commissions like this can be “mutual firing squads” that can be very disruptive for a security state.
Sources:
In Moscow’s Shadow. Podcast. Mark Galeotti.
CEPA (3/11/22)
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BLOG POST 3/13/22
The following points are from Mark Galeotti’s podcast “In Moscow’s Shadow.”
IN MOSCOW’S SHADOWS (Podcast and blog)
Mark Galeotti (A Short History of Russia, 2021; We Need to Talk about Putin, 2019; Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid, 2019; The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia, 2018).
Hitler or Stalin?
Hitler and Stalin clearly thought they could impose their political views on the fighting of a war. Stalin was convinced he had won before Germany invaded and did so much damage to the Russian forces, they almost didn’t recover. Spies, generals, analysts and even men deserting from the front lines, told Stalin, but he refused to believe them.
After Barbaroso, Stalin learned his lesson. He retained overall command of the armed forces but listened to his generals and allowed them to fight the war.
Hitler, however, seemed never to learn this lesson. He insisted up till the very end in intervening and micro-managing the war.
The question is whether Putin will be a Stalin or a Hitler.
Col. General Beseda
Rumors are that Col. Gen. Beseda, of the FSB, has been put under house arrest. It is unclear whether this includes his deputies and others. The FSB is the primary foreign intelligence arm of the Russian government.
Beseda was one of the primary leaders involved with Ukraine. In 2014, he managed to convince Putin that Yanukovych (then president of Ukraine) was handling the Maidan revolution successfully. Obviously, this proved to be disastrously wrong. But, Beseda managed to avoid being sacked. A smooth manipulator and political game figure, he blamed his faulty analysis on the information he got.
It seems that this time he hasn’t been so successful.
Galeotti maintains that Beseda will be convicted of the charges brought against him because of the people given charge of the investigation. They are all people who have something to gain from Beseda’s ouster.
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SATURDAY 12 MARCH 2022
IN MOSCOW’S SHADOWS (Podcast and blog)
Mark Galeotti (A Short History of Russia, 2021; We Need to Talk about Putin, 2019; Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid, 2019; The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia, 2018).
Information War
• Galeotti argues that the support rate in the polls for the war inside Russia is actually support for a limited war, perhaps the seizing of the Donbas, not the take over of the entire country of Ukraine. That support rate will fall rapidly as this goes on.
• Sanctions while initially provoking a “rally round the flag” reaction, will eventually began to hurt regular Russians and therefore erode the support.
• Putin is calling for an investigation about why conscripts were in Ukraine. These conscripts are supposed to be coming back just in time for the call up of new recruits. Their stories about what they experienced in Ukraine will have an effect on regular Russians.
Russian Military
• The Russian military can operate quite effectively. We know this from other conflicts. They also know about their flaws, these flaws are discussed in the press. They know about the corruption within the miitary and the problems corruption causes. They have implemented measures to try to deal with that.
• Initially, there was a huge buildup of troops who were not doing any fighting. They were intimidating Ukraine and the West but were not suffering the military casualties of direct fighting. As a Political war, what Putin was doing by mobilizing forces around Ukraine, was very successful. The Russians weren’t spending a great deal of resources. In addition the economy of the Ukrainians was tanking. International investors, looking to invest in Ukraine, were getting cold feet. Ukraine lost access to international financial markets.
• In addition, western politicians were putting serious pressure on Zelensky to make a deal with the Russians, to make concesstions. So, there was the prospect that the Russians could get political concessions they wanted without having to fire a shot.
• The economic problems being caused in Ukraine caused the Ukrainians to question the democracy model and its ability to provide them with economic well being.
• So, the big question is: Why change? When dates passed, and the Russians didn’t invade, they could say that the Americans were lying to Europe. If so, what else were they lying about? The question the Russians could raise was: Why are they trying to scare you?
• So why did Putin invade? Intelligence suggests that perhaps the invasion was Putin’s plan all along, but there was wobbling by Putin even up to the last minute about whether to just try to take back Donbas or invade the whole of Ukraine.
• It is probable that only a small group of people in Moscow knows the answer to this question.
• But, why did Putin abandon a successful political strategy in favor of a risky military one?
• And, why when they started the invasion was the tactic not the conventional set of tactics that the Russian military is trained for? There was relatively little preparation. There was no massive bombardment by air or by long-range artillery. They did not crater runways or destroy infrastructure. They did not destroy radar and communications hubs.
• They made some attacks, but these attacks were nothing like the ones they could have made.
• The Russians made “Bizarre” “little glory runs.” Small fast-moving raids. They wasted paratroopers trying to move into major cities. They operated as if they could just “motor into” the city centers and grab the government.
• The only conclusion is that there was massive political interference in the military process. Putin limited an undermined the military process. Possibly as early as January, the military was not told that they were moving ahead with the invasion. It is striking how little psychological preparation there was done with the soldiers. They thought they were going on exercises. They were told they would be welcomed by the Ukrainians. (Note: As were the Americans when they went into Iraq).
• This method of operation was bypassing the typical way the Russian military prepares for a conflict.
• Since 2014, the Russians have had a National Defense Management Center. This is a fancy war management center, a situation room where there are banks of computers and operators. A collection of all the relevant experts are assembled.
This is not just a way of waging war, it is a philosophy of war.
It represents a philosophy of war management. It involves a recognition that in the modern world, war is not just about soldiers. It is about intelligence and the economy. All these sources of information are part of waging war.
• If there is a prospect of conflict, a ombat management group is set up. This is a hub that won’t actually try to run the war on the ground, but make sure that there are the forces needed, resources needed. The identify an objective.
• If the sources are correct, GBU was only set up the day after security council meeting where Putin confronted his security council. If so, this is a phenomenal indictment of the process. This war room should have been running for months.
• If the central war room was not set up until late in the process, it explains why there was such a lack of preparation, why there was little coordination of ground and air forces, why there was a lack of resources, fuel, food. If such a war room was operational, they would have prepared for the invasion not happening quickly, and therefore provided food for a longer operation.
• We have no idea whether Putin’s own paranoia about the word leaking that they were going ahead with an invasion prevented the establishment of such a war room or not.
• But, it is likely that this core means for managing the invasion was hampered by Putin.
• There were light forces sent in to seize cities. This is a waste and makes sense only if you have underestimated the Ukrainians and think the government is so rotten it will just collapse.
• The waste of the paratroopers, squandered on “penny package” attacks, only served to embarrass the Russians, delay them, and give the Ukrainians some early victories.
• The military high command would not have made these kinds of decisions. These decisions would have been made by Putin and a “handful of ideologues around him.”
• This war, in some ways, can be considered a confrontation between “autocracy and technocracy.” Autocracy will always win. The technocratic vision will always give way to the authoritarian view.
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Ukraine sees how to fight Putin. But they also see a chance for a different future between the West and Russia. We must take it.
— Read on www.greatpower.us/p/ukrainian-sacrifice-has-created-the -
FRIDAY 11 MARCH 2022
UKRAINE WORLD (@ukraine_world)
- Ukraine World has a new podcast available.
- Ukraine intelligence says that the Russians are planning an attack on Chernobyl.
- Russian aircraft have made an airstrike from Ukraine into Belarus on the Ukraine-Belarus border.
- Ukraine asks the West to close the sky over Ukraine.
- Ukraine may be attacked from Transnistria in order to cut off Odesa from the rest of the country.
KYIV POST
- Russian media is reporting that “volunteers” from the Central African Republic are ready to fight against Ukraine.
THE KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Lithuanian parliament approves a resolution calling for immediate EU candidate status for Ukraine.
TWITTER
- Ukraine says that the Belaruian military is set to cross the border into Ukraine at 9 PM.
- The WSJ is calling the Biden administration refusal to provide the Polish jets, a “fiasco.”
- Kazakhstan is sending tons of medical supplies to Ukraine. Kazakhstan?
- Gary Kasparov: Why are we always hearing what NATO and the US will not do? Never what they will do?
- Republicans are all calling for stricter support and reinforcement for Ukraine. Is there a PR victory that the Democrats refuse to give the Republicans?
- General Clark: Putin doesn’t want an off ramp.
THE BIG TENT BY Brian Beutler
- President Biden has adopted a magnanimous stance toward Republicans to convey unity in support of Ukraine; Republicans have returned the favor by attacking Biden over higher gas prices, which stem from the Ukraine policy they claim to support
The irony is that maintaining American solidarity with Ukraine will require Biden and Democrats to defeat the forces of division here in the U.S., even though that will feel divisive, because if they get their way, America will betray Ukraine all over again
The good news (“good news?”) is, Republican hands are extremely dirty, giving Democrats a lot to work with; the bad news, as always, is Democrats remain reluctant to engage, ceding the battle for narrative control to the GOP
Was this forwarded to you by a friend?
Here are two lines I’d like to revisit from President Biden’s State of the Union address last week (sorry, I was away):
“[Vladimir Putin] thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong.”
“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression they cause more chaos; they keep moving.”
These quotes aren’t contiguous in the text, but they’re deeply connected ideas. If dictators prevail unless they face consequences, and one of the keys to imposing those consequences is American unity, then any forces of division here in the U.S. are (intentionally or heedlessly) working hand in glove with Putin.
That’s a provocative inference, but Biden never actually drew it in the speech, and the sum of his remarks makes me wonder if he’s taken a self-defeatingly rosy view of American solidarity with Ukraine.
Biden cast American unity as presumptive, rather than something that must be fought for. He never broached America’s own brush with dictatorship; he alluded in passing and obliquely to ongoing GOP efforts to subvert elections under color of law, but not at all to the insurrection of January 6, which was—we should never stop saying—an effort supported by the majority of elected Republicans to create a dictatorship right here in the United States.
All of that recent history is very hard to square with triumphalism about American resolve: Our wannabe dictator and his lieutenants have yet to pay a price for their aggression; they’re also, almost to a person, Putin’s most influential allies and useful idiots in American politics. And they keep moving. Suddenly, the stakes of failing to exact a toll for their crimes against democracy have grown. Before Putin’s invasion, the big domestic fear was that the insurrectionists would try to claim power illegitimately once again; now it includes the certainty that they’ll undermine American resolve to support Ukraine along the way.
It follows from Biden’s own view of things, then, that defeating Putin will also require imposing consequences, if only political consequences, on the American authoritarians who would be happy to see Putin win. But those villains featured nowhere in Biden’s assessment of America’s civic health.
① THE GAS MENAGERIE
It’s admittedly a bit paradoxical. Victory requires resolve, resolve requires brutal partisanship, which at least feels divisive. But the logic actually follows, and it’s inescapable.
Biden’s evident purpose was to broadcast American unity for Putin, Ukraine, and NATO to see. State of the Union addresses not delivered by Donald Trump aren’t usually very partisan; this one was civil even by SOTU standards, all to avoid creating the impression that the United States is only half committed to Ukrainian victory. But whether that was the right decision in the context of this one speech or not (I don’t claim to know) it’s important for Biden and all Democrats to understand in their own minds that the display was largely artificial; it gave Republicans far more credit than they deserve, and at some point Democrats are going to have to confront reality head on.
Why? Brace yourself for this, it may come as a shock: Republicans have not returned the favor of Biden’s magnanimity. If for some reason you thought that they wouldn’t treat Putin’s war first and foremost as a circumstance to exploit for partisan political gain—well, you were wrong, and also I have a vehicle with poor gas mileage to sell you.
Here I don’t even mean the Republicans like Trump who have really sided with Russia against Ukraine and the west. They of course want the war to be a drain on Democrats not just because they want Republicans to win elections, but because they want Putin to win his war. The consensus Republican position, though, is that Biden should if anything support Ukraine more aggressively than he has (many will even claim to believe that the invasion is his fault) and also that Biden is to blame for the domestic economic consequences of those policies.
It’s their usual method of reflexive, nonsensical demagoguery (cf. Nikki Haley) deployed in this case on the brink of World War III.
The point isn’t that members of both parties are obligated to fall in line behind the leader just because there’s a national or global security threat somewhere (that’s what Republicans say when they’re in charge and ginning up wars of conquest). It’s that the world can see their motives are ulterior. Whatever their hearts tell them about Ukraine and how America should conduct itself as an ally, they will undermine American resolve in that role if and when it might yield them a domestic political advantage. And everyone knows it. It’d be as if Democrats had hectored George W. Bush into invading Iraq, for the sole purpose of making Americans angry about the price at the pump, while the most famous members of the party fawned over Saddam Hussein’s great genius.
National unity behind an effort facing this kind of bad faith won’t endure for very long. And if our role in Ukraine is destined to become marked by partisan rancor it’d be a tragedy for Democrats—the earnestly pro-Ukraine, pro-democracy majority in the country—to end up on the losing side of it.
② VLAD TO THE BONE
At the moment, the American public rightly sides with Ukraine over Putin, viewing the latter as a liar and a tyrant, the person responsible for plunging the world into the gravest international crisis it’s faced in decades.
With that in mind, let’s review. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, he’d already amassed a lengthy and up-to-then inexplicable public record of pro-Putin adulation. What we didn’t know then, and would only learn when it was tragically too late, is that Putin had bribed him, as he’d bribed many other right-wing political figures in democratic countries, with an eight-figure proposal to build a Trump-branded hotel in Moscow.
If we’d known, it might’ve colored our view of things when, for instance, the Trump campaign (through it’s criminal campaign manager, whose business partner was a Russian spy) strong-armed the GOP into dropping support for arming Ukraine (then under Russian occupation in Crimea) from its official platform. It might have made us more alarmed than we were when Trump pulled the “Russia, if you’re listening” bit, imploring his patrons in Moscow to steal and publish Hillary Clinton’s emails. It definitely would’ve made us reassess the perceptiveness of Kevin McCarthy, when we learned in 2017 that he’d been secretly taped before the election saying he think Putin “pays” Trump (before supporting Trump’s candidacy without reservation).
Still, what we did know was enough to make many of us suspect what Robert Mueller later confirmed: That the Trump campaign and the Russian government had an understanding (and probably a more explicit arrangement) under which Russia would help Trump win the election through illegal sabotage, and Trump would reward Putin with various geopolitical favors: weakening NATO, undermining liberal democracy, and (perhaps most importantly) giving him a freer hand in Ukraine.
And then Trump did his part. He and Putin stood together in Helsinki and lied to the world about their 2016 collaboration, disparaging the U.S. government which had concluded otherwise on the global stage. After multiple conversations with Putin that have been lost to history—either because he held them in secret, or destroyed U.S. government records of them—he joined a Russian disinformation campaign to claim Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election. We can be pretty sure he knew he was lying because, after all, he participated in the actual, lengthily investigated subversion plot. And for his ultimate act of betrayal, he illegally withheld military aid the U.S. had obligated to Ukraine unless its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to smear Joe Biden ahead of the next campaign.
When he got caught in the middle of this scheme, the House rightly impeached him. But every single elected Republican save for Mitt Romney decided it was fine, or, at least, nothing Trump should face any consequences for it. They had the numbers to acquit Trump, and, just as Biden said of dictators throughout history, Trump kept moving.
③ WHEN THE OTHER SHOE GOPS
That’s all the background you need to gauge the sincerity of the GOP’s commitment to Ukrainian autonomy. It’s the context that explains why people who now claim to be unwavering supporters of Ukraine and Zelensky would simultaneously try to sour the American public on the costs of allyship. They don’t particularly care if they weaken the national resolve to punish Putin, because Ukraine has always been a pawn to them; or if not a pawn, then subordinate to the higher calling of Republican partisan advantage.
All of these Republicans are aware of everything Donald Trump has said in recent weeks about Putin and Ukraine, just as they’re aware that he teamed up with Russia to sabotage both Ukraine and the 2016 election, and that he continues to spread poisonous lies about the election in 2020, assaulting democracy at home while we try to defend it abroad. Trump has been banished from mainstream social media, and both Democratic leaders and the national media have frequently engaged in collective, ritual ostriching, as if the best way to limit the damage he might inflict is to act as though it isn’t happening. But everything he says and does filters into the hivemind of the GOP; they know what will come to be party dogma if he runs for the party’s presidential nomination and wins. And through it all, Republican after Republican has made clear that, whether they want him to be the nominee or not, they will support him anyhow, with all that entails.
Bill Barr says, “It’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.” Mitch McConnell will “absolutely” support the man who heaps abuse on him almost daily.
And let’s not delude ourselves: That will almost certainly entail abandoning Ukraine. The most slavish Trump loyalists the party have already taken to parroting Kremlin propaganda about Zelensky’s ‘thuggishness’ and echoing conspiratorial lies meant to justify the Russian invasion. We know the overwhelming majority of Republicans will go along with it if forced to choose between that and party disarray, because they’ve done it before.
And you know who else knows it? Putin, Zelensky, and the rest of the world’s interested parties. As morally satisfying as it may feel to affect a stance of national unity, the benefits for our global alliances are small and the domestic political costs are high. So long as Republicans are what they are, failing to make issue of their fair-weather commitment to Ukraine cedes the whole terrain of political contestation over the Ukraine question to bad actors, allowing them to persuade the electorate that the only thing wrong with our Ukraine policy is Joe Biden’s stewardship of it. That all the sacrifices Putin’s war entails from us are outgrowths of his failures.
Biden has taken to calling it “Putin’s price hike” but he hasn’t completed the circle to make it clear that the people blaming him for higher gas prices are actually doing Putin’s dirty work. Or that this should come as no surprise since Trump’s in Putin’s pocket and they support Trump all the way. Putin has put the western way of life in existential danger, Trump is subservient to Putin, and Republicans are subservient to Trump. It does no further harm to America to level with the world about what Republicans are, and it does Ukraine no favors to pretend America’s commitments to its sovereignty are consistent across our two parties. The Democratic commitment is ironclad. The Republican commitment is Potemkin.
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The countries that import Russian crude and other petroleum products — and what it would take to turn off the spigot.
— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/russia-oil-imports-ban/ -
Ukraine
CNN
- Russians are bombing the humanitarian zone in Mariupol.
MSNBC
- All the usual suspects following along with the “too risky” narrative for the jets from Poland.
- Jane Harmon is on Way Too Early. The war is going very badly for Putin. Harmon supports (surprise, surprise) the Biden administration refusal to implement a No-Fly Zone and transfer of Polish jets.
- Turkey is a NATO member.
UKRAINE WORLD @ukraine_world (One of the best podcasts about Ukraine
- Lavrov admitted that the shelling of the maternity hospital was deliberate in a press conference in Antalya.
- Lavrov once again said that a ceasefire was only possible if Ukraine accepted Russia’s demands.
- Ukraine’s president’s office is saying that there are enough Ukraine soldiers in Kyiv to make encircling the city impossible.
- Mariott, Hyatt and Johnson and Johnson are still operating in Russia.
- Intercepted calls from Russian soldiers describing the loot they are bringing home, liquor, TV’s, speakers from Ukrainian homes.
- Interview with Zelensky: “We can’t stop alone in this.” “It’s still very slowly.” The people from Europe and the United States are far from Ukraine. “You are not fighting here.” “If you are united against this Nazism you have to close (the skies).” “Close the sky.” Tell the parents who lost their children. “Sorry, we didn’t do it yesterday, one week ago. We didn’t push Putin, we didn’t speak with him a lot…we did nothing.” “Yesterday the world did nothing.” “What does mean worse, for whom?” “In future, you will be too late.” “They will close the sky, but we will lose millions of people.”
- Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs, is warning that reserve diesel generators have only a 48 hour capacity to power the Chornobyl. After that, cooling systems for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent.
KYIV POST
- Ukraine has proposed a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol.
- There have been reports in Russia that Ukraine is experimenting with COVID.
- Now seeing “o”s on Russian tanks. It is thought this means that the tank came from Belarus.
- Russia is claiming that reports that it bombed a children’s hospital is “fake news.”
- 300,000 citizens are trapped in Mariupol.
- UK sanctions 7 Russian oligarchs (Abramovich, Sechin, Miller, Kostin, Tokarev, Lebedev, Deripaska).
- Retired Ambassador Francis M. O’Donnell supports a no-fly zone.
TWITTER
- My twitter feed is full of Russian bots. Russian bots are starting to follow me. Most of them I block.
- Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) Journalists choose to forget that Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the West and Russia under the Budapest memorandum in 1994. Some in the EU want Ukraine to surrender so that they will have a buffer state between them and Russia.
- “Ukraine has, is not and will not surrender.” Kuleba after speaking with Lavrov.
- FSB active analyst translated by Igo Sushko @igorsushko: 1) there is a threat of famine due to the destruction of wheat, 2) the FSB is being blamed (inside Russia) for a faulty analysis that led to the invasion, 3) no one knew that this war was going to be launched, 4) when possible repercussions of such an invasion were analyzed, it was only theoretical, we thought it was just so some bureaucrat could check off something in his list, 5) “no one prepared for these sanctions, 6) Kadyrov, head of the Chechen government, was very upset over reports that an FSB operative tipped off the Ukrainians about an assassination attempt on Zelensky, 7) had Zelensky and his deputies been captured in the first three days they would have been forced to read an address announcing their surrender, 8) a newly installed government will be overthrown in three days, 9) mobilization inside Russia would implode, 10) We have lost contact with major divisions, we don’t know what is going on inside of Ukraine, 11) “In June, there will be no economy left in Russia.”
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KIEV, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 01: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the media on October 1, 2019 in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine has been at the core of a political storm in U.S. politics since the release of a whistleblower’s complaint suggesting U.S. President Donald Trump, at the expense of U.S. foreign policy, pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) UKRAINE, Wednesday Night:
There will be jets from Poland and no No-Fly zone. I had to turn off the bullshit from Kirby at the Pentagon. I cannot sit and listen to the U.S. government insulting our intelligence by telling us that the situation would be worse if we implemented a no=fly zone.
Alexander Vindman, Ted Lieu and others are saying that this idiotic narrative that we can’t figure out how to transport some fighter jets to Ukraine is just that, idiotic.
CNN
- There has been a strike on a hospital in Mariupol. No food, no water, no heat
- Zelensky talked about the “genocide” of the Ukrainian people.
- More coverage on the heartlessness of Putin. (Note: I don’t care about the heartlessness of Putin or whether what he is doing fits the definition of “genocide.” I care about doing something about it.)
- Russians are claiming that the Americans are protecting chemical weapons manufacture in Ukraine. (Note: Earlier today I saw on a program I taped from RT, the crawl line said that Americans were only trying to protect their chemical weapons plants in Ukraine.)
- There are warnings that Putin plans to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
- Zelensky says they need more aircraft.
- The Pentagon has rejected a proposal to provide those planes.
- (Note: I am disgusted).
- Interview with mayor Alexander Senkevich, of Mykol, Ukraine. They have used cluster bombs to kill our people.
- Wolf Blitzer is emoting about “horrific” photographs of children. (Note: That does us a lot of good.)
- Wolf Blitzer: How are your citizens holding up? (Note: This is the best he can do?)
- Note: I am increasingly disgusted an embarrassed by the questions being asked these people who are being attacked and killed every day. “How are you doing?” Jesus. Now, he’s saying: “Good luck.”
PBS
- “This is a fight for our planet to be a peaceful place and not a place of war.” Ambassador to the U.S. from Ukraine, Ms. Markarova. We need more help. “Putin will not stop in Ukraine.”
- (Note: What is the point of news anchors repeatedly asking “How long can Ukraine hold out?”)
- Markarova answers with a calm that I certainly would never have been able to maintain: The question is not how long Ukraine can hold out but how long it is going to take the West to do something about it.
MSNBC: Chris Hayes
- A children’s hospital has been attacked.
- Zelensky renews calls on closing the sky. A reporter says to Zelensky that the west maintains that a no-fly zone or supplying them with jets would make the situation worse. “What does it mean worse?” Zelensky replies. Worse for whom?” (Note: I just don’t see how reporters can ask these questions.)
- Zelensky: “Nobody knows…in future you will be too late….they will close the sky but we will lose millions of people.”
- Hayes: That attack on the maternity hospital “should never have happened.” Hayes’ argument is that they should have already taken the country? (Note: What?)
- Showing Haines, DNI, testifying about “an ill constructed plan” by the Russians.
- Russia has the second largest air force in the world.
- Turkey is supplying armed drones.
- Hayes: “It’s not clear that it is achieving any tactical objectives.” He’s talking about the bombing of Kharkiv. (Note: It is achieving a tactical objective, terrorizing the population, driving people out).
- Showing Blinken: Talking about Putin’s war: “To what end?….Failures of the initial military plan.” “strategy of laying waste to the…country.”
- Two million people have fled the country, half of them are children. In two weeks.
- Russian toll is around 2-4,000 Russian soldiers. 2,500 Americans were killed in Afghanistan in 20 years. 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in 10 years. This was in less than two weeks.
- Cal Perry in Lviv. Mariupol, has been on Ukrainian television all day. Mayor estimates that 1200 civilians have been killed. They dug a mass grave because they didn’t have the time to bury everyone individually. In Kharkiv, no power, no water, no heat. Chernobyl has been cut off the IAEA monitoring system as has another nuclear power plant. We don’t know what has been happening at Chernobyl for 10, 12 days. We are expecting a false flag operation perhaps involving chemical weapons.
- Interview with Stavridis: “There is no method but a great deal of madness.” “It makes me heartsick.” Putin is “frustrated by the failure of his generals, frustrated by the failure of logistics….” The damage we are seeing if from artillery, some large range missiles. They are not going after specific military targets. The aviation side is not significant. If the Ukrainians had tactical weapons they could go after that convoy that is stopped. The quickest way to get at it is fighter jets. That’s why I support getting the jets from Poland to the Ukrainians. “There are no forgone conclusions in war.”
