Editors’ Blog

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on this character.

Convicted Russian spy Maria Butina just did a bizarre and rather concerning interview with the BBC in which she argued that Ukraine is “bombing” its own civilians and pushed Kremlin talking points that President Vlodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors, is a Nazi.

The interview honestly sounds like a confused hostage video. I’ll get into the details more below. But since serving 15 months in U.S. prisons after being convicted of working as an unregistered foreign agent — for attempting to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and after admitting to helping set up a Russian backchannel for conservative strategists ahead of the 2016 election — Butina returned to Russia in 2019. And she’s a politician now — apparently a fairly successful one. Butina became a member of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber in 2021 and has batted away accusations that President Putin helped hand her the position as a “reward” for her criminal endeavors in the U.S.

In the midst of so much news I wanted to give you a heads up about something very important we have coming up next week. We suspended our annual sign up drives for the last two years. But we’re bringing them back because … well, because they’re super important and we need regular readers to become members. So if you’re a regular reader and you haven’t become a member or your membership has lapsed please consider joining or joining again. And if you’re already a member please spread the word about how cool a TPM membership is or lean on your coworker who keeps leaning over your desk to read Prime content without a subscription. The overwhelming percentage of the funds that keep our operation going come from your membership fees. So we really need you. There’s no big corporation behind this outfit to keep it going. It’s entirely reliant on you.

So keep an eye out next week when we get the drive started. And thank you in advance.

I’m sharing a list of write-ups that I have found helpful.

There’s an element of buyer-beware here. I don’t agree with everything these pieces say. As important, I don’t know every aspect of the background of the authors. But I’ve done enough research to have confidence they are reasonable, knowledgable people and the pieces are ones I have found helpful in making sense of what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine right now.

I wanted to share a few more thoughts on this fighter jet issue.

Elana Branson, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, has been charged with illegally acting as a Russian agent in the United States.

The WSJ reports tonight that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have both signaled to Washington that they won’t help ease the global squeeze on gasoline supplies and surging prices unless the Biden administration falls into line on Yemen and other regional issues — one of these being immunity for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The specific hook of the article is that the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have both declined calls from President Biden in recent weeks.

GOPer Robert “RJ” Regan won a special Republican primary election last week and will advance to the special general election for an open Michigan state House seat in May.

After winning the special election by just 81 votes, Regan participated in a panel discussion via Facebook livestream over the weekend with the conservative group “Michigan Rescue Coalition,” which believes that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump. The beginning of the panel discussion focused on what, if any, actions could be taken to continue challenging the 2020 presidential election results in the state of Michigan. One panelist, a Republican strategist named Amber Harris, argued that it was “too late” to continue the Big Lie crusade in the state. She suggested Michigan Republicans should instead focus on ensuring future elections are legitimate.

That’s when newly-relevant Regan cut in with some horrific commentary.

As we noted a short while ago, Poland just announced that it is going to transfer its collection of MiG-29 fighter jets to the U.S. at Rammstein Air Base in Germany. Then what the U.S. does with them is up to the U.S. All they ask is that they get new U.S. jets. But Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, during Senate testimony, just said that the statement from Poland wasn’t discussed in advance or approved by the U.S. This is a very dangerous game with a lot of governments involved, each responding to their strategic situation and public opinion. At the end of the day though, funny business about who exactly is giving the planes doesn’t matter. This isn’t a technicality kind of situation. Supplying fighter jets to Ukraine is a big, big escalatory deal. And that decision has to be for the U.S. to make — because the consequences will be on the U.S. to deal with.

A few points that seem important to absorb — some of which may appear to be in tension.

I ALLUDED TO THIS in my earlier post on my list of military analysts. We’re seeing lots of imagery of downed plans, shattered tanks, captured tanks, often with detailed information about where and how they were destroyed. But that flood of information often leaves us — even if we don’t know it — unclear on the big picture. This thread notes that many of us are getting an incomplete view of the situation in Ukraine because Ukraine’s (and its supporters’) social media efforts have been so effective. The issue here isn’t deception or misinformation, though there’s certainly some of that. It’s that the supporters of Ukraine are doing a very effective job surfacing imagery every time the Ukrainian army scores a tactical victory — destroying a tank, shooting down a plane. And we’re seeing much less of the fact that Russia is continuing to make progress on the ground — just slowly. Maybe very slowly. But they are making progress.

As we’ve documented closely over the last 12 days of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Republicans are offering up a confusing mix of reactions and deflections in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Some have praised Putin, others have condemned him. But all are mostly mad at President Biden, for a slew of reasons mostly tied to a vague assertion that he’s been weak on foreign policy since taking office.

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) offered up a rather unique and entirely backwards hypothesis last week when he suggested that somehow those involved in impeaching President Trump the first time might be to blame for the current war in Europe. Of those attracting his ire: retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was himself born in Kyiv and also became an important whistleblower in the impeachment drama.