A new article (sub req) in the FT says that Russia and Ukraine are discussing a ceasefire agreement in which Ukraine would agree not to join NATO but also get NATO-like security guarantees from major European powers and the U.S. Ukraine would also be free to join the EU. This essentially amounts to armed neutrality and likely an agreement not to host foreign troops on its territory. A key element appears to be an agreement to leave the question of the territories Russia held as of February 24th as a matter to be discussed in subsequent negotiations. So an agreement to disagree for the time being essentially.

The unknown in these negotiations and the reported draft agreements they are working on is that no one on the Ukrainian side — and I suspect in the U.S. as well — is clear at all about whether Russia is actually seriously considering these potential agreements or simply using them to stall for time or keep the Western powers from imposing more sanctions.

Michael Kofman is one of the most important Twitter follows for understanding the Russia-Ukraine war. This morning he has a short thread about Russia’s dismal military performance in Ukraine. While he says he has no doubt the U.S. military would greatly outperform the Russian military, he sees the reaction to those Russian failures as an example that “we may be psychologically unprepared for war with [a] determined opponent that has some parity of capability.”

In other words, when you have a real army on the other side, lots of things can go wrong. The U.S. military has had lots of experience over the last two decades in counter-insurgency conflict, against very lethal and determined enemies. But when it comes to invasions, air combat, armor and the like the U.S. has not faced a peer or near-peer in a very, very long time. The military has an adage that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But if the enemy is weak enough — in terms of technology, training, logistics, firepower — your plan probably can survive first contact and maybe most of the whole engagement.

But there’s a related but distinct issue that keeps coming back to me as I watch this war unfold.

For many Atlanticists in Europe and the United States there is a deep belief that the horror of the invasion of Ukraine — a conflict with a still very uncertain outcome — has nonetheless revitalized not only NATO but a sense of unity and purpose among the world’s civic democracies. I agree with this. Increasingly over the last decade the forces of revanchist authoritarianism have been on the march while those of civic democracy have been mired in internal division and generally unaware of or indifferent to the fact that a conflict is even afoot. And yet the same conflict is underway or continues within the United States itself. It’s quite possible that the economic clout and military might of the United States, around which the resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revolves, could be absent from the field in less than three years.

TPM Reader SB, like virtually everyone else who wrote in this morning, is all in with TPM Reader JB’s “Punch Them in the Nose” …

In response to the letter from JB, re: “Punch Them In the Nose”: this is exactly right, it’s beyond right, and Democrats and liberals in positions of power and influence ignore these words at the peril of our democracy. Every point JB made, in particular tying Putin and Putin’s Russia to the Republican Party, is not just factually correct but existentially necessary. The rest of the world is watching us, especially Western Europeans who have extensive experience with fascism, authoritarianism, and autocracy, and they see precisely what’s going on in the U.S., and they are watching to see whether or not Democrats and Americans rise to the occasion. We have a Chamberlain wing of the Democratic Party, mostly consultants and so-called “moderates,” that has a risk averse chokehold on Democratic political culture and praxis that permeates the entire political structure, but it goes beyond that.

From TPM Reader JB …

I just listened to the March 24^th podcast and have to tell you that I could not disagree more with you concerning the right response to republicans from democrats. I do not disagree that there are significant characterological differences between the members of the parties. There are, but there are so many other issues that were elided by using that explanation that one end’s up concluding that there is no good response. That is wrong and a set up for failure for the democratic party.

Let’s focus on three major problems.

From TPM Reader JS …

The reason I think it’s hard to separate the “Old Guard Bush-Cheney” types from the Trumpers is because…they’re the same people. No one got killed, but the “Brooks Brothers Riot” was an attempt by mostly astroturfed Republican activists to physically intimidate an election process that they didn’t like, only in bad faith suggesting there was something wrong with it. And you know what? What if the Supreme Court didn’t bail them out in the end. The wink and nod agreement after Bush v. Gore was that, shucks, there was no valid way to count those hanging chads so they should just pick one so things can happen in time.

I wanted to flag an emerging issue in the Jan 6th investigations. It’s been alluded to in various articles describing the Ginni Thomas text revelations. But it’s worth drawing out a bit more explicitly. There has apparently been some level of rift in the Jan 6th committee about whether to call Ginni Thomas to testify and how much to pursue the obvious questions that arise about the role of her husband Justice Thomas. According to this Times article, Rep. Liz Cheney had resisted calling Ginni Thomas but has apparently dropped her objection after the revelations. In the words of this Times account, Cheney has “wanted to avoid any aggressive effort that, in her view, could unfairly target Justice Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court.”

This extended passage from the same article provides more context …

TPM Reader ES flags for our attention this paywalled article in Le Parisien. In addition to the paywall issue, ES is a native French speaker. So his characterization will be much closer to the mark than anything I’d be able to cobble together through Google translate …

Hey so I found this in the French press (it’s unfortunately paywalled).

In a nutshell it’s an insider account of Macron’s regular phone calls with Putin. The really juicy part, which gives a window on what’s going on is this: apparently during these discussions Putin goes on what sounds like lengthy rants about Russia’s history (“c’est interminable” says one source).

To my slight surprise, the Ginni Thomas story — the texts about her involvement in the January 6th conspiracy — appears to be escalating rapidly. Politico’s Playbook is in such a case a good barometer. A couple days ago I felt I was pushing the envelope by saying Justice Thomas should recuse himself from any Jan. 6th or Trump election (past or future elections) related cases. Over the last 36 hours, though, calls for this are not only coming from standby legal ethics experts but from a number of conservative legal types who have in the past been either indifferent to or protective of Ginni Thomas’s fairly open involvement in GOP partisan politics. (Justice Thomas was already the sole dissent in a case that could quite likely have involved — though in the event it apparently did not — communications from his wife to other participants in the Jan. 6th conspiracy.) Now the Jan. 6th committee seems prepped to ask her to testify and, if she doesn’t agree, subpoena her, though here there appears to be a division centering around Liz Cheney.

From TPM Reader PC …

The remarkable thing about the change in Russian messaging about their objectives is the threat it poses to Putin’s regime survival.

Even before the military changed their public tune, on March 16 Lavrov described ceasefire negotiations as being “close to agreement” on terms that were basically: give up Donbass and Crimea (no clarity on borders, or the potential land bridge between them) and give up NATO membership (no clarity on EU membership, just “neutrality”).