Editors’ Blog

I oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to dismember Ukraine, and I support placing sanctions on Russia. But I am leery of the political process by which the United States and Russia reached this turn of the road, which could signal the beginning of a Cold War II. The process is sadly reminiscent of how the United States had previously come to a point in its foreign policy where it had no favorable options.

A number of dangerous, disquieting and scary things happened today in the unfolding Ukraine Crisis. Russia is a revisionist, nuclear power. In today’s lengthy and bellicose speech, Vladimir Putin barely mentioned NATO. He focused on his long-attested belief that Ukraine is not a real country and is only separated from Moscow by historical accident and perfidy. Beyond wanting to bring Ukraine to heel he made broad and menacing statements that brought the whole post-Cold War settlement into question.

Scary stuff.

Here are a few possibilities to consider as Russian troops roll into eastern Ukraine.

Russia has shown in various ways in recent weeks that it fears the repercussions of a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Over the last couple weeks, Russia has been hung up on a binary choice: invade or begin a humiliating climbdown. This may be a way to create a third option: occupy and de facto annex the regions that have been under de facto Russian control for eight years, celebrate a great nationalist victory and wrap this crisis up. Declare victory and go home without the huge gamble of full scale invasion.

In case you’re just catching up, yesterday there were reports that French President Macron may have brokered a Biden-Putin summit that would deescalate the crisis. That didn’t happen. Today President Putin of Russia gave a long speech in which he insisted that Ukraine is not a real country and is merely a phony state created by the decisions of the Bolsheviks a century ago. It’s a speech that will be studied closely as it openly and aggressively touted the revanchist, neo-Imperial vision which Putin has long been said to harbor but has never stated quite so openly. He then recognized the “independence” of the two separatist puppet states Russia set up in eastern Ukraine during the 2014-2015 crisis. The leaders of these puppet states then immediately requested Russian “peacekeepers” to come into their purported territory. It was a request Putin — surprise, surprise — rapidly acceded to.

So over the course of the day Russia has executed an invasion and what amounts to a de facto annexation of Ukrainian territory but without — so far — firing a shot.

As I’ve noted recently, I’ve usually been in the ambivalent/skeptic camp when it comes to NATO enlargement. There were many good reasons, from the U.S. perspective, to oppose NATO enlargement back in the 1990s and in the subsequent smaller expansions in the last quarter century. The U.S. has very good reasons not to extend security guarantees with what amount to existential implications to every country bordering Russia or adjacent to its borders which is or feels threatened by Russia. So you can say NATO expansion was dubious policy. Or you can claim, though the evidence for this is murky at best, that the U.S. broke some “deal” it made with the Soviets/Russians at the end of the Cold War. But all of these points ignore a basic foundational question: why did or do all these countries — Poland, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, et al. — want to join?

One of the uncanny things about what now does appear to be an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine is that so much is visible in real time. I’ve seen people saying we can’t take American claims of a military buildup or invasion at face value. And skepticism is always warranted about any government’s claims during a crisis. But in fact, between social media and commercial satellite imagery most of the story is unfolding before our eyes. If we’re smart and diligent, we can even fact check a lot of it from the privacy of our own homes.

I’m putting together a twitter list of accounts to follow the unfolding situation. You can view it here. It’s what I’m now using to keep track of events.

The leader of one of Russia’s puppet statelets in eastern Ukraine announced today that he is organizing a mass evacuation of civilians out of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and into Russia. As far as I can tell there’s no independent confirmation that this is happening. There are a few different possibilities. One is simply that this is an effort to pull civilians out of what will soon be a warzone. But it is being portrayed by Denis Pushilin, the self-styled leader, as a last chance to escape a coming invasion by Ukraine and what Vladimir Putin and his Donbas region puppets have been predicting will be a “genocide” of ethnic Russians carried out by Ukraine. In other words it looks exactly like the kind of agitprop and confusion campaign Biden, NATO and basically everyone who’s not in active sympathy with Russia has been predicting all along that Russia would use as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Russia-Ukraine situation, and some chaos reigning right here at home as Texas prepares for its first-in-the-nation primary under a new voting law.

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

There are actually two subvariants of Omicron COVID. The one that upended the world in recent months is BA.1. There’s also BA.2, so far considered a subvariant of Omicron, and it’s been spreading around the world at BA.1’s expense. There’s seems to be little debate that BA.2 is at least somewhat more transmissible Classic Omicron (BA.1). But a study released today in preprint out of Japan suggests it is also more pathogenic. So more transmissible than Omicron and on a par with Delta when it comes to severity of disease. (Not good!) But a separate study out of South Africa, reported yesterday, says that BA.2 is on a par with Classic Omicron when it comes to severity of disease.

If we’ve learned anything about the former president, we know that accountability for his various wrongdoings are often a far-off pipe dream. He tends to find various loopholes to endlessly delay legal proceedings or politically squirm his way out of repercussions.

But today there were two bits of news that suggest he might soon have to answer for at least a fraction of his alleged financial misconduct over the years.