Prime

We have mentioned to you a few times what you almost certainly remembered: that President Trump’s first impeachment was over Ukraine and that Trump’s disgraced 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work was in Ukraine for the Russia-aligned former President of Ukraine. But there’s more to it than that. If we step back we can see a thread stretching back at least a decade, weaving from one crisis to the next until this moment. We start in the uprising against Viktor Yanukovych, the so-called Maidan Revolution, an event which was triggered by Yanukovych’s decision to move away from integration with the European Union. Vladimir Putin has always blamed Yanukovych’s ouster from power on the U.S. And this was actually the context for an incident which people in the U.S. foreign policy and national security world later saw as a harbinger of what was to come.

The Times has this harrowing, disturbing report from Trostyanets. It’s a good, reported, observational piece on what happened. One key takeaway is that civilians describe the initial Russian occupying force as professional and agreeable enough. Eyewitnesses describe many of them as disoriented, not even quite sure why they were there. (Remember, the Russian soldiers apparently had very little advance warning they were actually going to war.) But as time went on they got antsy and started running low on supplies. That led to a cycle of looting and the tensions that follow from it. But things really went bad when this initial force was cycled out and replaced with Chechen separatist paramilitaries.

As I’ve mentioned to you before, I continue to find Michael Kofman, who works at CNA, the big Navy think tank, the most measured and informative analyst for information on the war in Ukraine. Today he posted a Twitter thread which has as many questions as answers. But there’s a key dynamic I want to highlight. We tend to make fun of the Russian insistence on calling the Ukraine war a “special military operation.” But this turns out to have important real world implications.

As I’ve shared with you, I’ve spent a lot of the last month closely reading on-the-ground reports from Ukraine as well as accounts from a spectrum of military analysts, reporters, soldiers of fortune, people on the ground in Ukraine and more. In recent days I had seen a number of claims that Russian troops had carried out mass executions before evacuating or being driven out of towns in Ukraine. Most of these were claims of mass killings of men of military age but others of men and women of all ages. I haven’t known what to make of these accounts because claims of civilian atrocities are the most established kind of wartime propaganda. There is the deceit of war and the fog of war that demands caution in evaluating all new information. Most of these were either anecdotal, second hand or from sources I wasn’t familiar with. But over the last two days reporters have followed in the wake of Ukrainian troops or evacuating Russian troops. Now some of these claims are being validated. They may be widespread, not limited to a few incidents.

I wanted to flag this article for your attention. It’s written by an Austrian military analyst named Gustav Gressel. He’s one of the military analysts I’ve been following on Twitter. The argument is that Russia isn’t retrenching or narrowing its goals to seek a diplomatic settlement. Rather, it’s in an operational pause in which Russia is restocking men and materiel for a second offensive which will be modified and optimized based on what the Russians learned in their mostly failed original war plan. Based on this analysis Gressel says NATO/U.S. should be pouring more and more big ticket arms into Ukraine in advance of that next onslaught. I’m unable to independently analyze this argument and increasing the scale of arms transfers is a policy question more than an analytic one. But I want to put the argument in front of you because it does seem to square with what a number of these analysts and observers are saying.

Also, Kazakhstan seems to be saying more clearly it’s not taking Russia’s side over Ukraine.

TPM Reader RC thinks TS “fundamentally misunderstands what’s at stake and what it takes to win today.”

At the national and statewide levels, persuading perceived “center and center-right voters” is a waste of time at this point. The goal here is to keep the coalition together. The last two cycles have demonstrated that there is a 50+1 majority that can give Democrats political power. We need to be making sure that coalition shows up, not chasing a handful of “gettable voters”, most of whom are closet partisans.

From TPM Reader TS on pandemic-era restrictions on asylum-seekers…

The pandemic is not over and the limits on entrants should be extended at least through 2022.  The President should say no to advocates and legalistic experts pushing him to open the border to asylum claimers.  CNN will be filming droves of people crossing the Rio Grande every day. They are already starting.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what TPM Reader PT says here about “Ukraine on the Verge of Defeat” …

As I mentioned, I’ve seen a fair number of different variations on the theme of “Vladimir V. Putin, SUPER-GENIUS” over the last few days; I’m sure you have as well. A thing they all seem to have in common is a presumption that Putin’s real goal in all of this was to acquire more territory in Ukraine’s east, or get a more firm grip on territory there that they already hold. I get the sense that they’re all taking a not-really-applicable analogy — making an opening bid in a negotiation that’s much bigger than what you actually expect to achieve — and applying it in a comically-inappropriate manner (specifically: ignoring the distinction that when you open with an overlarge ask it doesn’t actually cost anything to anyone, while Putin’s war in Ukraine has in fact cost Russia vastly more than if they’d just pursued additional conquest of territory in eastern Ukraine). 

From TPM Reader SS …

I want to follow-up on reader JJ’s thoughts. I’m aware of people like the “older Catholic guy” he describes. I’ve met some. But anytime we decide to label entire people groups with a stereotype that might be true for a subset, we are in danger. Any analysis that lacks nuance and complexity is often misguided.

I grew up in right-leaning evangelical subculture in the 1980’s in a highly conservative part of the country. My parents stood out in our circles as the token liberals. But they really were just people who left this area for a period and had lived both overseas and in California, and knew the world and the issues of the world were more complex.

From TPM Reader AE …

This may horrify you, but I am a pro-life leftie who has been a TPM-prime member for quite a while.  (I don’t remember exactly how long – I am sure that you have records.)  I thought your post “Traditionalism and Aggression” was horribly unfair.

I recognize of course that TPM is 100% pro-choice, and I still support you.