Editors’ Blog

On its face, the current Ukraine crisis is over the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Russia wants a binding commitment that that will never happen. The U.S. and NATO refuse to offer such a firm and binding commitment. What’s easy to miss if you haven’t been following this story over the last two decades is that Ukraine has never gotten an invitation to join NATO. Not even close. There’s really no reason to think such an offer is or would have been coming any time soon. Successive U.S. Presidents have not been willing to take that step, even as they’ve worked to support Western-leaning governments in Kyiv. It’s been seen — rightly, I think — as just a bridge too far for the reasons I noted yesterday. Indeed, the backdrop to the current high stakes brinksmanship over whether Ukraine will be allowed to join NATO is that it’s a discussion of such a highly notional possibility. That fact must come up again and again in high level discussions.

It’s hardly a surprise: More than half of the funds donated on at least one crowd-funding website raising money for protesters involved in the Canadian anti-vax trucker demonstrations came from U.S. donors.

I usually let notes from TPM Readers speak for themselves. But TPM Reader JE’s note made me think JE both didn’t know the extent to which he and I agree or where I get my news. It also gave me an opportunity to address a few issues I’ve been wanting to discuss.

First, JE …

A federal judge is placing the burden on John Eastman to demonstrate that he had an attorney-client relationship and thus privilege in his efforts to help ex-President Trump launch a coup to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The current argument turns on more than 500 pages of emails from just the days between January 4th and January 7th, 2021.

What jumps out at me is the fact that in his responses Eastman quite openly plays to the fact that his strategy is to delay until the committee is disbanded by a new Republican majority in early 2023. “To the extent the congressional defendants’ claimed ‘urgent need for resolution of the privilege issues’ is motivated by the looming 2022 midterm election, this is not a valid reason to alter this Court’s January 26 order,” Eastman’s attorney wrote in reply to the arguments put forward by House lawyers.

A headline last night from the Times: “Tone of Ukraine Crisis Shifts as Russia Signals Openness to Talk More.”

There are also some limited signs that Russia is redeploying some number of military personnel from their forward positions up against the Ukraine border back to their regular bases.

TIL what a “hoser” is.

In Canadian pop-culture, it’s a term used to describe the type of personality that former president Trump tends to embody — the brand of bombastic extremism that makes up the personality of people who currently occupy the center of the Canadian populism movement: think loud, uncouth and skeptical of facts, precedent and the government in general.

This (below) is a tweet from over the weekend from the Russian Embassy in South Africa. It’s an example of the dynamic I was talking about yesterday. U.S. diplomats have apparently told NATO allies, based on U.S. intelligence, that Russia had set February 16th, Wednesday, as a possible or probable invasion date. This is at least consistent with various moves by the U.S. and NATO allies over recent days — pulling out dependents, canceling civilian flights and such. Here Russia is denying it has any plans to invade on Wednesday and claims that the warnings are part of a U.S. plot to create a provocation which justifies NATO military action inside Ukraine. This is the kind of wrong-footing I’m talking about.

There has been a growing chorus of articles arguing that the Biden administration is trying to confront Russia on its own ground of information warfare. The key example is moving rapidly to declassify military intelligence about Russian moves to eliminate their potential element of surprise. The administration is trying to upend Russian tactics by continually revealing what they’re about to do or what they are preparing to do in advance. But there is something else they are doing that is getting less direct attention, something I mentioned earlier this month.

I wanted to share with you this post about the situation in Ottawa, sent along TPM Reader JK. I recommend reading the whole thing. But this is the gist:

What’s happening in Ottawa, they were clear, is two separate events happening in tandem: there is a broadly non-violent (to date) group of Canadians with assorted COVID-related gripes, ranging from the somewhat justified to totally frickin’ insane. But that larger group, which has knocked Ottawa and too many of our leaders into what my colleague Jen Gerson so perfectly described as “stun-fucked stasis,” is now providing a kind of (mostly) unwitting cover to a cadre of seasoned street brawlers whose primary goal is to further erode the legitimacy of the state — not just the city of Ottawa, or Ontario or Canada, but of democracies generally.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the RNC’s latest missive and some glimmers of hope for the Biden administration in the economy and pandemic.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.