Editors’ Blog

If you follow reports closely, you’ve heard that the Ukrainian military has incrementally been reclaiming territory from Russian forces in the north of the country and parts of the south in recent days. The situation is different in the east and southeast, in parts of which Russia has continued to consolidate its possession of territory. There have also been reports of Russian withdrawals. But it’s been hard to disentangle which of these withdrawals are more like retreats in the face of counter-offensives, or simply redeployments to find more defensible positions, or actual withdrawals. All that’s been clear is that in substantial parts of the country Ukraine has been retaking control of territory that had been occupied by the Russian Army.

Today though Russia’s deputy defense minister said that Moscow would “fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernigiv” in order to “increase mutual trust for future negotiations to agree and sign a peace deal with Ukraine.”

I’m trying to make sense of how big a deal this is, how new this is and frankly just what to make of it. I was even put slightly on my guard since the reporting is in part from Bob Woodward and it is so reminiscent of the notorious 18 minute gap in Watergate tape recordings. But what the Post and CBS News report this morning is that in the records turned over to the January 6th committee there is a roughly eight hour gap in the record of the President’s actions and calls that maps almost exactly to the period of violent insurrection on Capitol Hill.

I am of course just speculating, but that ^ might be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) current internal debate after Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) flailing around on Fox News this weekend.

As head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott put out an “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” last month to attempt to give Republicans some sort of safe-space to coalesce around heading into the 2022 Midterms — as the party seemingly does not have a broader legislative agenda, beyond letting the right-wing media rile the base into a frenzy over faux culture wars.

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 …