Editors’ Blog

A gruesome, horrifying topic but also a stunning, remarkable piece of data, visual and explanatory journalism. The Russian defense ministry has released a statement claiming that the bodies of executed civilians left on the streets of Bucha in Ukraine are another Ukrainian “provocation,” a hoax engineered by Ukraine meant to discredit Russia. They claim that the killings happened after the Russian army evacuated the city. The Times has an article that graphically and dramatically refutes these claims. You’ve likely seen those videos of drive-throughs through the shattered city in which the bodies, most shot execution style and many with bound hands, are visible on the side of the road. Times journalists cross-referenced these harrowing videos with satellite imagery which shows very clearly that the bodies were there when the town was under Russian occupation. It feels unseemly to to be so praiseful of something that is about chilling war crimes. But the work is still remarkable. The dispositive nature of the refutation is hard to fully appreciate without seeing it. See it here.

Who could’ve seen this coming/Only the best people/You’re fired/etc.

I wrote earlier this year about the deliciously glitchy roll-out of former President Trump’s new social media app, which he created to spite Facebook and Twitter for daring to ban him after he used their platforms to incite his violent insurrection. Back in February, the Trump Media & Technology Group’s CEO (and former U.S. representative from California) Devin Nunes — who has also made a name for himself whining about Twitter and cows and left Congress to take on this Trump social task — predicted Trump’s new social site would need another month past its launch date to be fully functional.

But, it’s been more than a month since Truth Social weathered its disastrous debut. Things haven’t improved much.

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The Times has this harrowing, disturbing report from Trostyanets. It’s a good, reported, observational piece on what happened. One key takeaway is that civilians describe the initial Russian occupying force as professional and agreeable enough. Eyewitnesses describe many of them as disoriented, not even quite sure why they were there. (Remember, the Russian soldiers apparently had very little advance warning they were actually going to war.) But as time went on they got antsy and started running low on supplies. That led to a cycle of looting and the tensions that follow from it. But things really went bad when this initial force was cycled out and replaced with Chechen separatist paramilitaries.

As I’ve mentioned to you before, I continue to find Michael Kofman, who works at CNA, the big Navy think tank, the most measured and informative analyst for information on the war in Ukraine. Today he posted a Twitter thread which has as many questions as answers. But there’s a key dynamic I want to highlight. We tend to make fun of the Russian insistence on calling the Ukraine war a “special military operation.” But this turns out to have important real world implications.

As I’ve shared with you, I’ve spent a lot of the last month closely reading on-the-ground reports from Ukraine as well as accounts from a spectrum of military analysts, reporters, soldiers of fortune, people on the ground in Ukraine and more. In recent days I had seen a number of claims that Russian troops had carried out mass executions before evacuating or being driven out of towns in Ukraine. Most of these were claims of mass killings of men of military age but others of men and women of all ages. I haven’t known what to make of these accounts because claims of civilian atrocities are the most established kind of wartime propaganda. There is the deceit of war and the fog of war that demands caution in evaluating all new information. Most of these were either anecdotal, second hand or from sources I wasn’t familiar with. But over the last two days reporters have followed in the wake of Ukrainian troops or evacuating Russian troops. Now some of these claims are being validated. They may be widespread, not limited to a few incidents.

I wanted to flag this article for your attention. It’s written by an Austrian military analyst named Gustav Gressel. He’s one of the military analysts I’ve been following on Twitter. The argument is that Russia isn’t retrenching or narrowing its goals to seek a diplomatic settlement. Rather, it’s in an operational pause in which Russia is restocking men and materiel for a second offensive which will be modified and optimized based on what the Russians learned in their mostly failed original war plan. Based on this analysis Gressel says NATO/U.S. should be pouring more and more big ticket arms into Ukraine in advance of that next onslaught. I’m unable to independently analyze this argument and increasing the scale of arms transfers is a policy question more than an analytic one. But I want to put the argument in front of you because it does seem to square with what a number of these analysts and observers are saying.

Also, Kazakhstan seems to be saying more clearly it’s not taking Russia’s side over Ukraine.

TPM Reader RC thinks TS “fundamentally misunderstands what’s at stake and what it takes to win today.”

At the national and statewide levels, persuading perceived “center and center-right voters” is a waste of time at this point. The goal here is to keep the coalition together. The last two cycles have demonstrated that there is a 50+1 majority that can give Democrats political power. We need to be making sure that coalition shows up, not chasing a handful of “gettable voters”, most of whom are closet partisans.

From TPM Reader TS on pandemic-era restrictions on asylum-seekers…

The pandemic is not over and the limits on entrants should be extended at least through 2022.  The President should say no to advocates and legalistic experts pushing him to open the border to asylum claimers.  CNN will be filming droves of people crossing the Rio Grande every day. They are already starting.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what TPM Reader PT says here about “Ukraine on the Verge of Defeat” …

As I mentioned, I’ve seen a fair number of different variations on the theme of “Vladimir V. Putin, SUPER-GENIUS” over the last few days; I’m sure you have as well. A thing they all seem to have in common is a presumption that Putin’s real goal in all of this was to acquire more territory in Ukraine’s east, or get a more firm grip on territory there that they already hold. I get the sense that they’re all taking a not-really-applicable analogy — making an opening bid in a negotiation that’s much bigger than what you actually expect to achieve — and applying it in a comically-inappropriate manner (specifically: ignoring the distinction that when you open with an overlarge ask it doesn’t actually cost anything to anyone, while Putin’s war in Ukraine has in fact cost Russia vastly more than if they’d just pursued additional conquest of territory in eastern Ukraine).