It’s now been almost one week since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Since then, the Kremlin has failed to take the country’s two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv. Both have faced assaults from Russian troops invading from the nearest borders, 20 miles away in the case of Kharkiv and roughly 60 miles away from the Belarusian border, in the case of Kyiv.
Over the past several days, Russia has began to bomb government buildings and civilian infrastructure. The mayor of Mariupol, a city on the Sea of Azov in Ukraine’s east, told Ukrainian TV that an entire residential block was flattened by an artillery strike during heavy fighting.
“We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop,” he said.
Kharkiv, an old capital of Ukraine, has also faced periodic missile strikes and heavy rocket bombardments.
With all that, U.S. officials appear to have changed their assessment of how long the Ukrainians may hold out. When the war began, they predicted that Kyiv would likely fall within four days of the invasion.
Now, per CBS News, Pentagon officials briefed lawmakers that Russia could take Kyiv in 30 days, and that a “tactical seizure” of Ukraine may be complete in six weeks. From that point, lawmakers were told, the war could last from 10 to 20 years.
“She was just annoyed at having to see her ex-lover’s face on billboards as she drove around Plano.”
According to the Dallas Morning News, that was Plano, Texas resident Tania Joya’s justification for spilling the beans about an affair she had with incumbent Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) to one of his opponents ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Look, we’ve all been there.
But there’s a lot of other stuff going on here — far more, in fact, than Joya’s very valid logic. Let’s unpack.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was first published by The Conversation.
A curious new church was dedicated on the outskirts of Moscow in June 2020: The Main Church of the Russian Armed Forces. The massive, khaki-colored cathedral in a military theme park celebrates Russian might. It was originally planned to open on the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, in May 2020, but was delayed due to the pandemic.
Conceived by the Russian defense minister after the country’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the cathedral embodies the powerful ideology espoused by President Vladimir Putin, with strong support from the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Kremlin’s vision of Russia connects the state, military and the Russian Orthodox Church. As a scholar of nationalism, I see this militant religious nationalism as one of the key elements in Putin’s motivation for the invasion of Ukraine, my native country. It also goes a long way in explaining Moscow’s behavior toward the collective “West” and the post-Cold War world order.
Frescoes celebrate Russia’s military might though history, from medieval battles to modern-day wars in Georgia and Syria. Archangels lead heavenly and earthly armies, Christ wields a sword, and the Holy Mother, depicted as the Motherland, lends support.
Service members and young army cadets gather for an event held outside the cathedral to mark the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. Gavriil Grigorov\TASS via Getty Images
‘Cradles’ of Christianity
The original plans for the frescoes included a celebration of the Crimean occupation, with jubilant people holding a banner that read “Crimea is Ours” and “Forever with Russia.” In the final version, the controversial “Crimea is Ours” was replaced by the more benign “We are together.”
When Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated, calling Crimea the “cradle” of Russian Christianity. This mythology draws on the medieval story of Prince Vladimir, who converted to Christianity in the 10th century and was baptized in Crimea. The prince then imposed the faith on his subjects in Kyiv, and it spread from there.
The Russian Orthodox Church, also called the Moscow Patriarchate, has long claimed this event as its foundational story. The Russian Empire, which linked itself to the church, adopted this foundational story as well.
‘Russian World’
Putin and the head of the Russian church, Patriarch Kirill, have resurrected these ideas about empire for the 21st century in the form of the so-called “Russian World” – giving new meaning to a phrase that dates to medieval times.
In 2007, Putin created a Russian World Foundation, which was charged with promotion of Russian language and culture worldwide, such as a cultural project preserving interpretations of history approved by the Kremlin.
Another planned mosaic depicted the celebrations of Soviet forces’ defeat of Nazi Germany – the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is called in Russia. The image included soldiers holding a portrait of Josef Stalin, the dictator who led the USSR during the war, among a crowd of decorated veterans. This mosaic was reportedly removed before the church’s opening.
The Great Patriotic War has a special, even sacred, place in Russians’ views of history. The Soviet Union sustained immense losses – 26 million lives is a conservative estimate. Apart from the sheer devastation, many Russians ultimately see the war as a holy one, in which Soviets defended their motherland and the whole world from the evil of Nazism.
Under Putin, glorification of the war and Stalin’s role in the victory have reached epic proportions. Nazism, for very good reasons, is seen as a manifestation of the ultimate evil.
Portraits of Soviet leader Josef Stalin (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin on display at the opening of an exhibit called Russia – My History, 1945-2016, at Moscow’s Manege Central Exhibition Hall. Valery Sharifulin\TASS via Getty Images
The rhetoric of this militant religious nationalism has been on display as Russia threatened to and ultimately did invade Ukraine. During a speech on Feb. 24, 2022, Putin bizarrely called for the “de-nazification” of Ukraine. He also spoke of fraternal relationships between Russian and Ukrainian people and denied the existence of the Ukrainian state. In his view, Ukraine’s sovereignty is an example of extreme, chauvinistic nationalism.
Putin’s claim that Ukraine’s government is run by Nazis is absurd. However, the manipulation of this image makes sense in the framework of this ideology. Painting the government in Kyiv as evil helps to paint the war in Ukraine in black and white.
The Russian president himself appeared in earlier versions of the cathedral’s frescoes, along with Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. However, the mosaic was removed after controversy, with Putin himself reportedly giving orders to take it down, saying it was too early to celebrate the country’s current leadership.
This volatile religious nationalism manifests itself in the militarism unfolding in Ukraine.
On Feb. 24, 2022, the day the invasion began, Patriarch Kirill called for a swift resolution and protection of civilians in Ukraine, while reminding Orthodox Christians of the fraternal connection between the two nations. But he has not condemned the war itself and has referred to “evil forces” trying to destroy the unity of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Supreme Court heard a bizarre case Monday that dealt with the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A coalition of red states and coal companies are gesturing towards a rule that is no longer on the books — Obama’s Clean Power Plan — as a way to bring before the conservative court questions of how the EPA can act on climate.
I’ve mentioned this a few times already. But I remain stunned at the number of people I’m generally used to seeing decrying “forever wars” and the military industrial complex insisting the time has come for us to intervene militarily in Ukraine. The favored demand seems to be a “no fly zone” either over Kyiv or the entirety of Ukraine — which in case you haven’t reviewed the maps is a very large country. The preference for “no fly zones” is itself a reminder that the U.S. public has virtually no living memory of war with a peer military force or even one that can put up any kind of fight. The word gets tossed around as though it described a kind of high tech forcefield the U.S. deploys when we’ve gotten fed up with the pictures we’re seeing on TV. I’ve even seen people questioning whether a “no fly zone” actually constitutes an act of war.
Even with ex-president Donald Trump’s endorsement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) failed to get more than 50 percent of the vote in his GOP primary race on Tuesday, forcing him into a runoff against Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Just Look At That Guy’s Face Up There
Biden gave his first State of the Union address last night (check out our liveblog here), during which far-right Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) did … whatever this is:
Seeking her own chance to shine,Boebert also heckled Biden as he brought up his late son, Beau,and the exposure to toxic burn pits that put veterans like Beau “in a flag-draped coffin.” “You put them there, 13 of them,” Boebert commented loudly. She was apparently referring to the 13 American troops who were killed in a bomb attack in Kabul last year.
Rep Lauren Boebert gets booed after shouting while President Biden talks about his dead son Beau Biden. pic.twitter.com/dEEIYbAJzY
Russian Troops Ramp Up Attacks On Major Ukraine Cities
The Russian offensive steadily intensified overnight, and now Moscow claims to have captured Kherson, a key port city, though Ukraine disputes that claim.
Arizona GOPer Who Went To White Nationalist Con Gets Censured (Not For That Tho)
The GOP-controlled Arizona state Senate censured state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R), one of the lawmakers who went to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) this past weekend, on Tuesday for making threats against fellow Republicans online and calling for her enemies to be hanged.
The censure didn’t say anything about the fact that she went to a white nationalist rally, or her many ties to white nationalism in general, or her racist and anti-Semitic posts online. The original draft of the resolution, which Rogers posted on social media, condemned her for “inciting general racial and religious discrimination.” That part got taken out.
Rogers didn’t bother defending her comments on Tuesday during the censure vote, according to the Arizona Mirror.
Wisconsin GOP’s Election Investigator Pushes For 2020 Election Decertification
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, the guy who was appointed by Wisconsin Republicans to run their state’s sham election audit, told a state Assembly committee on Tuesday that the Wisconsin legislature should take “a very hard look” at decertifying the 2020 presidential election results.
That’s legally impossible. And Gableman’s own “interim report” that he gave to state lawmakers on Tuesday not only says that the purpose of his report is “not to challenge certification,” but admits that magically decertifying the results “would not, on its own, have any other legal consequence under state or federal law.”
Again: This guy has fully acknowledged that he doesn’t know how elections work. And he went to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s whacky “Cyber Symposium.”
Former Trump Official-Turned-Candidate Can’t Answer Questions About Her Own District
Morgan Ortagus, who previously served as the spokesperson for the State Department under Trump, is now running for Congress in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District–an area she doesn’t actually seem to know much about, if her painful radio interview with the Tennessee Star Report on Monday is anything to go by.
Ortagus, who’s been endorsed by Trump, couldn’t answer any of the questions the radio host asked about the district. Not one.
The ex-Trump administration official is a Florida native who didn’t start living in Tennessee until she moved to Nashville last year. The Tennessean notes that her address isn’t in the 5th District and that this is the first time she’s running for office.
Sidenote: Trump’s endorsement of Ortagus, which came before she even announced her decision to run, actually pissed off his foot soldiers.
Congrats America, You Paid $1 Million For Trump’s Hotel And Travel Last Year
The former president racked up more than $1.3 million in hotel and travel expenses with the Secret Service while traveling between South Florida and New Jersey last year, according to the Daily Beast.
A Big Sad
So about that trucker “convoy” that was supposed swarm D.C. en masse Canada-style before Biden’s State of the Union address yesterday…..
Now: Amidst a National Guard activation and fence erection around the Capitol ahead of expected trucker protests at State of the Union, the “Stage of Freedom” is set up on the National Mall.
Permit says 500 expected, but the event starting in 10 mins has nearly only media here. pic.twitter.com/KVWdsEqkeo
