Editors’ Blog

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate is joined by TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky to discuss the struggle for democracy in Ukraine and back in the U.S.

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

I’m going to go back to sharing sources of what I believe is reliable information about the situation in Ukraine, in addition to commenting on developing issues. But I wanted to attempt an overview of where things stand two weeks in.

In advance of the Russian invasion it was clear that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine was an immense gamble for Russia. Success depended on a number of outcomes that were, critically, not under Russia’s control: most specifically a rapid collapse of Ukrainian morale and disintegration of the Ukrainian state under military assault. Had that happened, the military cost of invasion would be limited and there was at least a chance that the Europe and the U.S. wouldn’t have had the appetite or unity for sanctions in the face of what was a fait accompli. Maybe. But after only a few days it had become clear that the the decision to invade was a strategic disaster of immense proportions for Russia. The invasion finally created the united and militarized NATO Russia has long professed to fear. That unity also spurred a tide of economic sanctions that are already bringing the Russian economy to its knees. The Nordstream 2 gas pipeline which appeared to be an unbreakable link between the Russian and EU economies is now a distant memory. The Russian stock market has been shuttered since just after the invasion. At least the country’s near term future looks to be one of economic autarky, collapsed incomes and savings and one in which basic technology driving sectors of the economy may sputter or grind to a halt for lack of parts which can no longer be imported.

We know the former president has a lot of enemies — both political and inanimate.

I’m still poking around. Because this is just a very general impression and of course this is not an area of expertise. But putting together comments over the last 36 hours from political leaders in Ukraine and Russia in addition to political and military leaders in Europe and North America, something seems to be shifting. As in I’m getting the sense that Russia’s near-term position is weaker than we might have imagined. This isn’t a prediction. I wouldn’t be in a position to make one. But watch the statements coming out of Ukraine and Russia, both their substance and their tone.

I must say that I am looking forward to the raft of articles in the works from the Times, WaPo, Politico and above all Axios about the GOP’s reckoning with the fact that their party leader (and most of his party) has spent the last several years toadying and obsequiously embracing Vladimir Putin and Russia. I jest of course since I have little hope that any of these pieces will be written. But the leader of this party has spent the last seven years fawning over the increasingly dictatorial leader of the country who has now tipped the world into the biggest international crisis in a generation and I guess we’re somehow not going to talk about that. I mean, he actually got impeached over it and for participating in a scheme to make the country Russia just invaded easier to invade.

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.