In case you’re just catching up, yesterday there were reports that French President Macron may have brokered a Biden-Putin summit that would deescalate the crisis. That didn’t happen. Today President Putin of Russia gave a long speech in which he insisted that Ukraine is not a real country and is merely a phony state created by the decisions of the Bolsheviks a century ago. It’s a speech that will be studied closely as it openly and aggressively touted the revanchist, neo-Imperial vision which Putin has long been said to harbor but has never stated quite so openly. He then recognized the “independence” of the two separatist puppet states Russia set up in eastern Ukraine during the 2014-2015 crisis. The leaders of these puppet states then immediately requested Russian “peacekeepers” to come into their purported territory. It was a request Putin — surprise, surprise — rapidly acceded to.
So over the course of the day Russia has executed an invasion and what amounts to a de facto annexation of Ukrainian territory but without — so far — firing a shot.
In a speech this afternoon, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his recognition of the independence of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, a move that increases the chances of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, beyond Russia’s already boiling-over aggression toward the country in recent weeks.
Putin’s move was met with swift condemnation by President Biden. Shortly after Putin’s announcement, the White House announced that Biden will impose new sanctions on trade and financing in the two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine that Putin recognized as independent.
Capitol Police said they are planning for “extra security” ahead of the State of the Union on March 1 in light of potential protests by anti-vax trucker protests that began in Canada and may spread to the U.S.
A federal judge shot down former President Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity” from multiple lawsuits accusing him of inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection last year.
As I’ve noted recently, I’ve usually been in the ambivalent/skeptic camp when it comes to NATO enlargement. There were many good reasons, from the U.S. perspective, to oppose NATO enlargement back in the 1990s and in the subsequent smaller expansions in the last quarter century. The U.S. has very good reasons not to extend security guarantees with what amount to existential implications to every country bordering Russia or adjacent to its borders which is or feels threatened by Russia. So you can say NATO expansion was dubious policy. Or you can claim, though the evidence for this is murky at best, that the U.S. broke some “deal” it made with the Soviets/Russians at the end of the Cold War. But all of these points ignore a basic foundational question: why did or do all these countries — Poland, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, et al. — want to join?
One of the uncanny things about what now does appear to be an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine is that so much is visible in real time. I’ve seen people saying we can’t take American claims of a military buildup or invasion at face value. And skepticism is always warranted about any government’s claims during a crisis. But in fact, between social media and commercial satellite imagery most of the story is unfolding before our eyes. If we’re smart and diligent, we can even fact check a lot of it from the privacy of our own homes.
I’m putting together a twitter list of accounts to follow the unfolding situation. You can view it here. It’s what I’m now using to keep track of events.
The leader of one of Russia’s puppet statelets in eastern Ukraine announced today that he is organizing a mass evacuation of civilians out of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and into Russia. As far as I can tell there’s no independent confirmation that this is happening. There are a few different possibilities. One is simply that this is an effort to pull civilians out of what will soon be a warzone. But it is being portrayed by Denis Pushilin, the self-styled leader, as a last chance to escape a coming invasion by Ukraine and what Vladimir Putin and his Donbas region puppets have been predicting will be a “genocide” of ethnic Russians carried out by Ukraine. In other words it looks exactly like the kind of agitprop and confusion campaign Biden, NATO and basically everyone who’s not in active sympathy with Russia has been predicting all along that Russia would use as a pretext to invade Ukraine.
The National Archives and Record Administration confirmed on Friday that it had recovered classified White House records from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and that it had referred the matter to the Department of Justice.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Russia-Ukraine situation, and some chaos reigning right here at home as Texas prepares for its first-in-the-nation primary under a new voting law.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
