Remember when America helped its friends? Republican no longer care.
Republicans are happy to allow Ukraine to die and become part of Russia again. They LOVE Vladimir Putin.
It’s no secret that it’s much easier for a repressive society to do its worst in an open society than for the reverse to happen. Americans can’t go into Russia and promote democracy the way they might be able to do in other countries. Still, America’s open society makes it far easier for Russians to spread propaganda, misinformation, and/or disinformation to further their interests.
As we learned from the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns, the Russian government eagerly promotes efforts designed to produce results favorable to their interests. And it’s not just the Presidential elections. Russian interference has been detected in Senate and House campaigns and other aspects of American governance.
It’s spread from election interference to longer-lasting day-to-day interference in the workings of our political system, particularly on Capitol Hill.
If you’ve followed the debate over aid to Ukraine in the (barely) Republican-majority House, you’ve undoubtedly noticed it quashed by the same cast of characters. It’s what some have begun calling the House Putin Caucus, for what else could you call politicians who appear to be doing Vladimir Putin’s dirty work on Capitol Hill?
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
Republicans have successfully delayed aid to Ukraine for six months as Republicans on the Far-Right, like Marjorie Trailer Greene (R-GA) and the Freedumb Caucus, have done everything they can to drag out the process under the direction of Donald Trump. Arguing everything from “it’s not our problem” to “we need greater accountability” to “we could use the money here at home,” they’ve essentially taken Russia’s side in the war.
[T]here have been multiple troubling developments that we should all be tracking with concern. In my opinion (and that of numerous professional foreign policy experts), much of Putin’s fear is driven by his current weakness in Russia as the result of the Navalny murder and his battlefield failures in Ukraine for over two years.
Western sanctions have also taken a bite out of his economy, which is now fully on war footing, putting over 40 percent of their federal budget, representing 7.5 percent of Russian GDP, into war-making. As the recent headline at The Wall Street Journal succinctly describes, “Russia’s Economy Goes All In on War.”
Putin’s bravado, on the other hand, is driven by the fact that he and Donald Trump have succeeded in blocking the US House of Representatives from taking even one single vote on legislation to aid Ukraine that, without their efforts, would have easily passed with a majority of both Democratic and Republican votes.
Until the past six months, aid to Ukraine has been an issue with considerable bipartisan support. To be fair, it still is. It’s only the efforts of Donald Trump’s MAGA loyalists, led by MTG, who’ve stifled efforts to continue supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
One has to wonder what’s behind her effort to strangle Ukraine and deliver it to Putin.
This is a massive and empowering victory for Putin, and on Friday Marjorie Taylor Greene took a further step on his behalf: she filed a motion to vacate Mike Johnson from his position as Speaker of the House, explicitly saying that she’ll push the motion and demand a vote on it only if Johnson does anything to aid Ukrainians against Putin’s violence and his ongoing kidnapping of their children.
And we may now be seeing the fruits of Putin’s embrace of his new Big Lie that Ukraine was behind the theater attack.
The past few days have seen a significant increase in the frequency and ferocity of Putin’s attacks on that struggling country. He used cruise missiles to take out a hydro dam and a major power station, throwing over a million Ukrainians and about a fifth of the country into darkness. He rained missiles on Kiev, the capital city.
Yesterday, as Putin declared a “National Day of Mourning” to rally people around his upcoming efforts, Russia poured at least 57 different missile attacks on Ukraine, in addition to the ongoing and deadly mortar- and gunfire that extends hourly along the eastern Ukrainian front.
Saturday morning, when Putin first spoke about the theater attack on Russian state television, he ignored the group that has claimed credit for it (and has a long history of attacking Russian interests), ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, and instead blamed it on Ukraine.
The Moscow terrorist attack was, in effect, the best thing that could’ve happened to Putin. Yes, ISIS-K claimed responsibility, but one has to wonder: Is Putin cynical and psychopathic enough to kill his own people in large numbers to obtain a pretext to ramp up the war in Ukraine? Is he that craven? Or is ISIS-K really behind the attack, and the timing was too fortuitous for Putin to pass on?
Whatever the case, it presented Putin with the perfect scenario and justification for the escalation of his military involvement in Ukraine. In a country where it was illegal for more than two years to call their “special military action” a war, the Russian government has taken the glove off and is calling it what it’s been all along.
A war.
Nonetheless, a few hours later on Saturday, Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the nation and the world that Russia was no longer pursuing a “special military operation” against Ukraine.
Russia is now fully at war, Peskov said.
This is a major shift in Putin’s characterization of his efforts to seize Ukraine: just a week ago Russians who called the attack on Ukraine a “war” faced prison time. Now Peskov is publicly embracing the word and the Russian military and economy are following suit.
Saturday evening a Russian missile crossed through Polish airspace, a violation of Polish and NATO territory, leading to headlines and articles wondering out loud if this was the beginning of an escalation that could involve NATO, or was simply a screwup in the Russian military.
For the moment, Poland and NATO are going with the benefit-of-the-doubt scenario, trying to avoid further inflaming the situation, although the Polish government scrambled jets and has since protested the intrusion, demanding an explanation.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there are people here on Substack like
doing Putin’s dirty work by passing along the propaganda that Ukraine appeared to be responsible for the Crocus attack when there’s no evidence pointing in that direction.Earlier today Putin addressed the Russian people in response to the attack. In his address, Putin denounced the mass shootings at Crocus City Hall a "bloody and barbaric terrorist attack.” He then claimed that those involved in the shooting allegedly intended to travel to Ukraine, where, according to him, a “window" to exit the country had been prepared for them. Putin stated, "All four perpetrators of the attack - all those who shot and killed people - have been found and detained…They were trying to hide and were moving towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them to cross the border.
The Ukrainian government, from President Vladimir Zelenskyy on down, has denied Ukrainian complicity in the attacks. To date, no one has produced credible evidence of Ukrainian involvement. Realistically, one could argue that Ukraine is well aware of the damage such an attack would do to their cause within the international community.
Of course, Vladimir Putin has never been one to let the truth stand in the way of a perfectly good narrative.
Of course, the question is why Ukraine would risk the West's condemnation for descending to the same depths as its Russian adversaries.
The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
- H. L. Mencken
During the war in Ukraine, the Russians have targeted civilians daily. Anyone who knows anything about the laws of war understands that the deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. The Russian command and control structure has much to answer for.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has, as much as possible, tried to stick to military targets.
Having seen what Russia is capable of, why would the Ukrainians want to do the same and risk ceding the moral high ground in the eyes of the world? The Ukrainian government certainly understands that targeting civilians would undoubtedly put American support at risk. The American public will not support aid used to target civilians. For anyone to claim that Ukraine is responsible for the Crocus massacre in Moscow is ludicrous. There’s no argument in which such a claim makes sense- and no one has produced evidence to the contrary thus far.
I’m not connected to the Ukrainian military or intelligence community or even the American side, for that matter. So, no, I can’t authoritatively state that Ukraine isn’t responsible for the Crocus attack, but it makes no sense for them to target civilians. There’s no doubt that the Ukrainian military has targeted unoccupied or mostly unoccupied buildings in Moscow late at night to demonstrate its reach. I think that’s a reasonable demonstration of what they’re capable of. Still, for a small country trying to maintain its humanity against a very inhumane enemy, it makes no sense for them to adopt Moscow’s tactics.
That argument is a distraction, however. The more important discussion is how Congress gets past the human logjam that is MTG so that aid to Ukraine can begin flowing again. When Ukraine gave up its part of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal in 1996, America agreed to defend Ukraine in the case of Russian aggression against its territory. When Russia invaded the Donbas in 2014, we sent war materiél but did nothing else. When Russia widened the war in February 2022, we sent more war materiél but again did nothing else.
Now, there are Republicans in the House who don’t want to meet even that part of our treaty obligation, which we’re not currently honoring as it is.
This abrogation starts to make sense in light of current events when you consider that there’s a de facto “Putin Caucus” within the larger House Republican Caucus.
On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”
Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”
When Republicans begin to reflect the language of Kremlin trolls on the floor of the House of Representatives, one has to wonder how far Russian influence has reached into American governance.
Judging from the available reporting, it seems the Kremlin’s influence is not insignificant.
Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.
Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”
Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.
Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.
If it looks like a Kachinka doll, walks like a Kachinka doll, and talks like a Kachinka doll….
If we’re not going to live up to our commitments, we should at least be transparent about it. We made a commitment to Ukraine, one we’re not honoring. It’s time we told the Ukrainian people that we’re with them or tossing them to the Russian bear, and good luck with that.
Trump loyalists continue to block aid to Ukraine, threatening the existence of the rules-based international order that has helped to prevent war since World War II. Last week, even Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Speaker Johnson against “abandoning our Allies at this time of great need, when they are staring down enemies of the free world.”
Why is this happening? Because certain feckless Republicans would rather curry favor with Donald Trump than do the right thing by an American ally who desperately needs American aid.
Republicans are promoting pro-Putin propaganda because they know, with the leader of their party in thrall to the Russian dictator, that there will be no pushback or consequence; Trump actually rewards such behavior with special recognition, private phone calls, and visits to Mar-a-Lago. Just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.
To be blunt, MTG doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything that won’t benefit her political prospects directly.
I wouldn’t necessarily call her a traitor, but let’s say “traitor-adjacent.” She’s a soulless troll who’d sell America down the river if it put her at the right hand of Donald Trump. And delivering Ukraine to Vladimir Putin might do precisely that.
And we’ll have to wonder why no country will ever trust America again.
Ukraine has much to lose today, just as it did in 1996 when the tiny former Soviet republic gave up what leverage it had by turning over its nuclear weapons stockpile. The Ukrainian government took the American government's word that its security would be guaranteed.
Now, when the time has come to back up those guarantees, the American government has pulled back on that commitment, providing only weapons and logistical support. How can the rest of the world trust America when they see how we’re leaving Ukraine to twist in the wind so Russia can slowly bleed it to death?
This betrayal is what happens when traitor-adjacent, self-absorbed Republicans are allowed to hold American policy hostage to their own self-interest.
We deserve better.
All of my posts are public at this time. Any reader financial support will be greatly appreciated. There’s no paywall blocking access to my work (except for a few newsletters), but that remains an option down the road. I’ll trust my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their financial support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.
It finally appears that an aid package will finally go through, leaving the Full Frontal Fascist Caucus furious about MJ's leadership.