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.