Heather Cox Richardson

February 16, 2022 (Wednesday)

Today, the Washington Post ran a story by Claire Parker explaining that most Canadian truckers oppose the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests. Almost all Canadian truckers are vaccinated and resent the protesters, whose shutdown of international borders has “had a very significant negative impact upon our professional driving community,” according to Stephen Laskowski, the president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance.
Prominent leaders of the convoys, including conspiracy theorist James Bauder, are not truckers themselves. Instead, right-wing agitators appear to be the ones behind the Trump and Confederate flags at the protests. More than 55% of the donations to the Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo for the protesters came from the United States.
Truckers’ organizations say the protests undermine the real concerns of truck drivers—wage theft, bad roads, and a lack of bathrooms—and worry that the convoys will hurt the public image of truckers.
Parker’s Washington Post story showing the Freedom Convoys as the expression of a radical fringe was an important reality check to the breathless stories from the American right hailing the Freedom Convoys as a popular movement.
The story that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton allegedly spied on then-candidate Trump’s campaign in 2016 illustrates the importance of the sort of reality-based corrective the Washington Post published about the Canadian truckers.
The story at the root of the right’s accusations against Clinton is actually fascinating. After Russians hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016, cybersecurity experts started to look to see what else hackers might have hit. In July 2016, four of them noticed that Russia’s Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank appeared to be pinging a server registered to Trump Tower. To a lesser extent, it communicated with Spectrum Health in Michigan, an organization associated with the DeVos family. The servers were configured in such a way that they appeared to be shutting out other communications.
One of the security specialists took the story to lawyer Michael Sussman, who took it to the general counsel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2016, alerting him that cybersecurity folks thought there might be secret communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank. Sussman worked for the same law firm that represented the Clinton presidential campaign.
In May 2019, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, appointed John Durham, former U.S. attorney for Connecticut, as special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In September 2021, Durham indicted Sussman for lying to the FBI by saying he was not working for a client when he alerted them to the issue. Sussman denies he said he did not have a client, and identified himself as working for the cybersecurity expert. While Durham’s witness has contradicted himself, emails support Sussman’s account. For his part, Sussman responded by denying the charges and saying that Durham’s 27-page indictment contained “prejudicial—and false—allegations that are irrelevant to his Motion and to the charged offense, and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool."
In his indictment, Durham said the cybersecurity experts did not believe their own suggestion of connections between Alfa Bank and Trump Tower and were trying to hurt candidate Trump. They responded by accusing Durham of editing their emails misleadingly and stood behind their earlier conclusions.
The current furor is over a related issue. On Friday, in a court filing in the case against Sussman, Durham alleged that one of the cybersecurity experts, who was working for the White House as part of a cybersecurity contract, “exploited” his access there to find “derogatory information” about Trump. This charge stems from the fact that the researchers found odd data suggesting that a Russian-made smartphone, a YotaPhone, had communicated with the same networks—this we already knew—and that one of them told that information to the CIA in February 2017, about 20 days into the Trump administration. Durham did not indicate when he thought the experts had uncovered the issue—the timing suggests it was in 2016, before Trump took office—and the researcher’s lawyer has pointed out that the person had been hired to identify security breaches and threats.
The story is confusing, but it seems to show security experts who found anomalies and took them to the appropriate authorities (none of them has been charged with anything). The FBI dismissed the server issue, and it is not clear whether the phone issue was ever investigated. The launch of the FBI’s investigation of the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia had nothing to do with any of this, anyway. The investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, began in July 2016 after George Papadopoulos, a member of the Trump campaign, told an informant that the campaign had dirt on Hillary Clinton. An investigation by the inspector general of the Justice Department concluded that the FBI investigation was not politically motivated.
The current story appears to be a nothing burger, and yet, the former president, right-wing media, and Trump loyalists are flooding the news with accusations that the Clinton campaign paid operatives to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House to create the Russia scandal. They are calling for multiple indictments.
??Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) told the Fox News Channel on Sunday: “They were spying on the sitting president of the United States…. And it goes right to the Clinton campaign.” The former president claimed that “Robert” Durham—a name switch that might reflect his intense focus on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was in charge of the Russia investigation—had provided “indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.… In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”
The right is complaining bitterly that the mainstream media has covered this story only briefly, insisting the lack of wall-to-wall coverage proves the media is biased against the right. But the exaggeration of this story seems a transparent attempt to revisit the 2016 attacks on Clinton in order to distract both from the revelations of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and from the eye-popping news that Trump’s accountants have said the last ten years of his financial statements cannot be relied upon.
Controlling the narrative has always been a key factor in the right’s ability to turn out voters. But that ability just might be slipping.
Today, former judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit J. Michael Luttig, a Republican, said: “For the past six years, I have watched and listened in disgust that not one single leader of ours with the moral authority, the courage, and the will to stand up and say: ‘No, this is not who we are, this is not what America is, and it’s not what we want to be,’ has done so.”
Also today, a report by the Interior Department’s Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump, offered a window into how one Trump loyalist looked at our government as a way to further his own interests. The report concluded that Trump’s secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, broke federal ethics rules, lying to officials that he had “purely social” contact with developers in Whitefish, Montana, when in fact he communicated with the developers 64 times to talk about the project, including a parking lot on his own land and his interest in having a brewery on the property.
Zinke is now running for Congress. His campaign called the investigation a “Biden Administration led report” (the investigation began in 2018, under Trump) that “published false information, and was shared with the press as a political hit job.”
Spreading false stories depends on making sure the truth is inaccessible. Today Biden rejected Trump’s attempt to hide the White House visitor logs for January 6, 2021, from the January 6th committee on the grounds of executive privilege. Biden said that keeping them hidden “is not in the best interest of the United States.” Unless a court steps in, the National Archives and Records Administration will deliver them to the committee on March 3.

[splutter] WORSE ThEN WATERGatE!! LOCK 'eR UP!! [splutter] and them rePORTers 2!!!

Nice. Justice still has a shot to prevail.

For the Trumpies around here....................

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,.............

lets just say that i know that trump is a racist and his core supporters who comprise between 33.33% and 50% of trump supporters are racist
and if someone does not hide their racism you can believe that as sure as god loves little green apples that person is a virulent racist.
And i know a racist when i see one.

And that is what i have to say about that.
If i was a god fearing man i would worry a lot about being a racist.

Heather Cox Richardson is as good as it gets.
I get her in my email feed each morning.
And as great as the posting of today is she puts out such greatness every single day.

if you were to compile in chronological order jan 1 through dec 31 you would have the greatest book of that years story of the politics of preservation of democracy with some other amazing political and history lessons.

Posted by DougOut on 2/17/2022 7:12:00 PM (view original):

GOVERNMENT / DOUGLAS ANDREWS

The Leftist Tyrant Up North

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau embodies all the worst elements of the Left.

He is an anti Christ. but as I said before, my problem is not so much with him as with the idiots that ELECTED him. THREE TIMES. He is a Marxist and it shows even ehe was ever p.n.

Harper was ten times the man this punk is. We have what we deserve. A SCHOOL TEACHER who is on a power trip

I love that a dose of TRUTH and REALITY from Heather TRIGGERS these two disingenuous shitbags so much. It must suck to be one of these bitter, ignorant LOSERS, particularly when they know they’re completely ignored, laughed at and disregarded as the lying, gaslighting, human projectors they are.

I feel sorry for the both of them.
The Canuck, just because he's probably a real nice feller to hang with, or play a round of golf with (he'd need to pay my green fees as Golf is now the province of the wealthy/privileged). But NOT because he shoots his mouth off about US politics with which he has NO say, and no understanding at ALL!

Dougout...........well I feel a bit of empathy for him.
How did anyone get so blinded and stupid??

Posted by laramiebob on 2/18/2022 7:57:00 AM (view original):
I feel sorry for the both of them.
The Canuck, just because he's probably a real nice feller to hang with, or play a round of golf with (he'd need to pay my green fees as Golf is now the province of the wealthy/privileged). But NOT because he shoots his mouth off about US politics with which he has NO say, and no understanding at ALL!

Dougout...........well I feel a bit of empathy for him.
How did anyone get so blinded and stupid??

blinded by junk science

Heather Cox Richardson

February 20, 2022 (Sunday)

This afternoon, after a rare four-hour-long meeting of the National Security Council, President Joe Biden canceled a planned trip home to Wilmington, Delaware, tonight. The U.S. intelligence community says with high confidence that Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered military units to proceed with an attack on Ukraine. The U.S. and the United Kingdom say that they expect Russia to create a “false-flag” attack on Russia, allegedly by Ukraine, that they will use as an excuse to invade.
Tonight, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Bathsheba Nell Crocker, told High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, that the United States has “credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation. We also have credible information that Russian forces will likely use lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests or otherwise counter peaceful exercises of perceived resistance from civilian populations.”
A hallmark of this crisis has been the degree to which the U.S. has anticipated events by announcing to the world it has intelligence information laying out Russia’s next moves. This both enables NATO to get out ahead of Russian propaganda and warns Putin that his communications might be compromised, an idea that might give him pause before committing to invasion.
CNN White House reporter D.J. Judd identified those at the NSC meeting as Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Vice President Kamala Harris joined the group from Air Force Two on her way back from Munich, where she was representing the U.S. at the 58th Munich Security Conference, an annual conference on international security.
Russia continues to insist it is not planning an attack on Ukraine, although it has placed 150,000 troops at the Ukraine border, the largest military buildup in Europe since World War II ended. But the warming weather in Ukraine with the mud that it will bring does not bode well for an invasion, and Putin agreed today “in principle” to a meeting with Biden, an offer available only if Russia does not launch a new war.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke yesterday in Munich, chastising Europe for being slow to recognize the danger of Russian expansionism, even as Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. He warned that such imperialist aims historically have led to world wars unless they are stopped.
Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will fight if Russia invades again—it is still in the country from the 2014 invasion— but hammered home that Ukraine should not be begging for help: Ukraine shields Europe from Russia. Helping Ukraine “is your contribution into the European and international security for which Ukraine has been serving as a reliable shield for eight years now, holding back one of the largest armies in the world,” he said. “This is not a war in Ukraine, but a war in Europe.”
Meanwhile, Russia is extending its military presence in Belarus, where 30,000 Russian troops, along with missiles and other military hardware, have been engaged in military exercises with troops from Belarus. The exercises were scheduled to end today, but the Belarusian Defense Ministry said the troops will stay because of the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.
As he has faced increasing protests from pro-democracy opponents, Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko has reacted with an increasingly heavy hand. In May 2021 he forced an airplane flying over Belarusian airspace to land in Minsk, where authorities took opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend into custody (Protasevich has disappeared in custody). Lukashenko has also cultivated ties with Putin. When he invited Russian troops to Belarus in early February, European officials warned they were unlikely to leave. Their presence in Belarus means they are 30 miles from the Ukrainian border and hundreds of miles closer to Poland and Lithuania, both countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that "if Russia invades its neighbour,...we will open up the Matryoshka dolls of Russian-owned companies, and Russian-owned entities to find the ultimate beneficiaries within [and sanction them].”
Europe and the United States have vowed severe economic repercussions if Russia attacks Ukraine. But pro-democracy observers have called for the U.S. and the U.K. to crack down on the flow of Russian money into their countries regardless of what the next weeks bring.
Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia in the 1990s coincided with the deregulation of financial sectors in the U.S. and the U.K. and the resulting flow of illicit money into western democracies. A recent study of the U.K. by Chatham House explained that that money enabled oligarchs to corrupt western democracies as they used their ill-gotten wealth to elect politicians who would advance their interests. The U.K. has a “kleptocracy problem,” the authors said. Earlier this month, kleptocracy scholar Casey Michel and Harvard postdoctoral fellow Benjamin L. Schmitt published an article advocating an end to the practice of former politicians “becoming paid shills for autocrats.”
Indeed, while Biden has made ending that corruption and strengthening democracy a priority for his administration, not all Americans think allying with Putin, an authoritarian who poisons his opponents, siphons his country’s money into his own pockets, and has argued that liberal democracy is obsolete, is a bad idea. Led by Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, the Trump wing of the Republican Party appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin.
But will the Republican Party as a whole buck Trump over this and stand with the Democrats behind Ukraine and its democratic aspirations? There are signs that, in fact, it will. Tonight, Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who was on his way back from the Munich Security Conference, tweeted: “I’ve honestly never seen more unity among our allies, or our two parties in Congress, on any global issue.”
After all, it was not until Trump delegates made changes to the 2016 Republican political platform that the party weakened its support for Ukraine. And yet, in 2019, when Trump tried to skew the 2020 election by withholding congressionally appropriated funding for Ukraine to support its defense against Russia, Republican senators declined to convict him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. So, we shall see how the party responds to the Ukraine crisis.
And how will America as a whole respond?
On February 20, Ukraine celebrates the Memorial Day of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, honoring the memory of 107 protesters who died in mass shootings during the 2013 Revolution of Dignity. From 2013 to 2014, Ukrainians rose up against the government of Viktor Yanukovych, an autocratic politician managed by Paul Manafort and backed by Russia, eventually ousting him.
On February 21, the U.S. celebrates Presidents Day, a somewhat vague holiday placed in 1968 near Washington’s birthday on February 22, but also traditionally including Abraham Lincoln, who was born on February 12, 1809. On November 19, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln reminded Americans what they were fighting for:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” There, where more than 3000 U.S. soldiers died and more than 14,000 were wounded over three days, Lincoln explained: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Heather Cox Richardson

February 22, 2022 (Tuesday)

Today Russian president Vladimir Putin said he’s recognizing the full territories claimed by the upstart governments of Ukrainian eastern provinces Luhansk and Donetsk. Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo points out that since those governments only control about a third and a half of the territory, respectively, in those provinces, this recognition would mean that Ukraine is occupying land that belongs to those breakaway regions.

Today, the European Union led the way on announcing sanctions against members of Russia’s leadership, reinforcing the idea of international cooperation against Putin. The E.U.’s 27 member states unanimously agreed to freeze the assets and ban the visas of 351 members of the Duma, the Russian government’s lower house of parliament, who backed recognition of the rogue governments within Ukraine.

The U.K. followed suit, sanctioning three "high net worth individuals" in Russia and five major Russian banks.

Germany halted certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, a project worth up to $15 billion to Russia.

In a speech this afternoon, President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on two Russian banks, one of which is associated with the Russian military, and five individuals, including one who is in charge of VK, Russia’s largest social media network, and one that is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It also sanctioned Russia’s debt, cutting off its access to western financing.

The U.S. has gone after Russia’s ability to fund military contracts and raise new money to attack Ukraine. It also is joining with other nations to put the squeeze on what the Treasury Department calls “influential Russians and their family members in Putin’s inner circle believed to be participating in the Russian regime’s kleptocracy.” The goal, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is to “begin the process of dismantling the Kremlin’s financial network and its ability to fund destabilizing activity in Ukraine and around the world.”

This first group of sanctions seems carefully targeted to hit Putin’s inner circle without sweeping in the Russian people. By applying pressure gradually, it also maintains leverage to try to dissuade Putin from escalating, which would not be the case if the U.S. threw everything at Russia immediately, leaving Putin no reason to change course. And yet, those sanctions remain on the table. Yellen said, “We continue to monitor Russia’s actions and if it further invades Ukraine, the United States will swiftly impose expansive economic sanctions that will have a severe and lasting impact on Russia’s economy.”

As voting rights activist Rachel Vindman put it: “We’re officially in the ‘Finding Out’ phase and all I can say is FINALLY.”

But not all Americans are on board.

Biden’s strong defense of democracy and pulling together of such a strong international coalition has left Republicans unclear about how to respond. In an interview today with right-wing podcaster Buck Sexton, former president Trump expressed admiration for Putin, saying his move to take over parts of Ukraine was “genius.” “Putin declares a big portion of… Ukraine…as independent…. And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen…. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) responded: “Former President Trump’s adulation of Putin today—including calling him a ‘genius’—aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States.”

Trump is not the only one. There used to be a saying that politics stopped at the water’s edge, meaning that lawmakers presented a unified front to other countries, no matter their partisan differences. So far, Republicans appear to have thrown that idea overboard, trying to use the crisis to attack President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Those Republicans who believe in protecting an international order based on the rule of law are getting around Biden’s reinforcement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and sanctions by accusing him of being weak on Russia.

The House Republicans somewhat nonsensically tweeted a photograph of the president walking away from the podium after his speech with the caption: “This is what weakness on the world stage looks like” (prompting others to ask if he was supposed to turn cartwheels as he left). House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the leadership of the House Republicans issued a statement claiming that “Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action.”

Others allied with Trump are supporting Putin by suggesting that the U.S. has no business protecting its ally Ukraine from Russian aggression. This is pushing them into what sure looks like a stand against America.

The press secretary for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, for example, tweeted that “the sad fact is that the USA is in no position to ‘promote democracy’ abroad while our own country is falling apart.” She continued: “I can never trust the federal government in any way.” J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for the Senate from Ohio, said, “[T]he Russia–Ukraine border dispute has nothing to do with our national security, no American interest is served by our intervention, and that the obsession with Ukraine from our idiot leaders serves no function except to distract us from our actual problems.” Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX) called for sanctions, not against Russia but against “senior officials in the Canadian government,” apparently because authorities there have arrested members of the truck convoy shutting down border crossings and cities to protest vaccine mandates for truckers.

Some have gone further, either defending Putin or attacking America outright. Candidate for New York Representative to Congress Andrew McCarthy tweeted: “Putin protects the church, tradition, and Russian culture to an extent that globalists cannot accept…. We deal with far worse governments regularly.” Right-wing commentator Candace Owens went further, actually blaming the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “WE are at fault,” she tweeted.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has strengthened the international coalition against authoritarianism, but it could enable the Republicans to succeed in undermining Biden at home, replacing him with a pro-Russian leader like Trump in 2024. In that case, Putin’s desperate gambit will have worked, strengthening authoritarians around the world.

Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny continues to stand for democracy against the authoritarianism that threatens his life. Putin tried to murder Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok and, when that failed, imprisoned him on trumped-up charges for 2.5 years. Now, Navalny is on trial again for fraud and contempt of court; one prosecution witness has refused to testify, saying he was pressured to testify and the charges are “absurd.” If convicted, the 45-year-old Navalny will face another 10 years in prison.

And yet, today Navalny released a 16-tweet thread calling Putin’s security council a bunch of “dotards and thieves” who are trying “to divert the attention of the people of Russia from real problems—the development of the economy, rising prices, reigning lawlessness.” “How long has it been since you last watched the news on federal channels?” he asked. “It's the only thing I watch now, and I can assure you, there is NO news about Russia there AT ALL. Literally. From the first to the last piece, it's Ukraine—USA—Europe.” “We have everything for powerful development in the 21st century, from oil to educated citizens, but we will lose money again and squander the historical chance for a normal rich life for the sake of war, dirt, lies and [corruption]. “The Kremlin is making you poorer,” he wrote, “not Washington.”

How many times are you gonna post a stupid meme and think people don’t see right through it?


DOUGOUT - “I saw the video. Did you? We'll learn a lot when Republicans take back the House.”

Posted by tangplay on 11/4/2018 2:49:00 PM (view original):
Imagine how ****** doug will be when dems win the house... Or will he spin it somehow?

I'm guessing it will either be spun as Repub win or dems cheat

DOUGOUT - That's not going to happen my friend. Is your memory so short?

DOUGOUT - The Senate is the thing that makes the second election of TRUMP possible and a victory for democracy and AMERICA.

DOUGOUT - Your horrible upcoming loss in the House will back my words.

I marked them. Here they are. How do they taste?

Heather Cox Richardson

February 23, 2022 (Wednesday)

Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky made a passionate plea to the people of Russia to avoid war. He gave the speech in Russian, his own primary language, and, reminding Russians of their shared border and history, told them to “listen to the voice of reason”: Ukrainians want peace.

“You've been told I'm going to bomb Donbass,” he said. “Bomb what? The Donetsk stadium where the locals and I cheered for our team at Euro 2012? The bar where we drank when they lost? Luhansk, where my best friend's mom lives?” Zelensky tried to make the human cost of this conflict clear. Observers lauded the speech and contrasted its statesmanship with Putin’s recent ramblings.

And yet, it will stand only as a marker. Tonight in America, but early Thursday in Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation,” claiming, quite transparently falsely, that he needed to defend the people in the “new republics” within Ukraine that he recognized Monday from “persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.” He called for “demilitarization” of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands.

He also promised to provide for the ”denazification” of Ukraine, a harking back to the period after World War II when Nazis and those who had worked with them were purged from society. Putin has repeatedly referred to Ukrainian leaders as Nazis, a charge Zelensky, who is of Jewish heritage, has pleaded with Russians to reject, citing Ukraine’s losses in World War II and his own grandfather’s service in that war. Putin’s chilling word here suggests that he intends to purge from Ukraine all those who worked with the Zelensky government.

Putin warned: “Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.” This sweeping and vague threat seems to encompass everything from massive cyber attacks through nuclear war, but at this point it seems mostly to be an effort to deter resistance. Russia’s economy is already taking hits from Putin’s decision to recognize the breakaway governments, and it likely cannot withstand a long war. Putin needs a quick win.

As he spoke in a video, wearing the same clothes he wore in the prerecorded meeting broadcast Monday, suggesting this message might have been recorded at the same time, the U.N. Security Council was holding an emergency meeting in New York City to implore him not to go forward with war. At the Security Council meeting, the Russian ambassador claimed his nation was not “being aggressive against the Ukrainian people, but against the junta in power in Kyiv.” Rather than a junta government that took power by force, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was popularly elected in April 2019 in a landslide of more than 73%.

At 10:58 tonight, Eastern time, Ukraine foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: “Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”

By midnight tonight, Ukraine’s state emergency service said that ten regions were under attack.

Countries around the world condemned the attack. Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Sebastian Kofod said: “Denmark utterly condemns this horrific attack…. An abhorrent breach of international law. Russia bears full responsibility for this needless conflict[.] We will coordinate closely with allies, partners for strongest possible international reaction[.]”

In a statement, President Biden said, “The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.”

The administration increased sanctions today, adding the company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and its corporate officers. Tomorrow, Biden will meet in the morning with the other leaders of the G7: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.—the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies. He will speak to the American people afterward to announce further consequences for Russia’s aggression.

Tonight, Biden reported: “President Zelenskyy reached out to me tonight and we just finished speaking. I condemned this unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. I briefed him on the steps we are taking to rally international condemnation, including tonight at the UN Security Council. He asked me to call on the leaders of the world to speak out clearly against President Putin’s flagrant aggression, and to stand with the people of Ukraine.”

Zelensky told his people: “A minute ago I spoke to President Biden. The USA has started to unite international support. Today we need each of you to stay calm. If you can, stay at home. We are working. The army is working. The whole security and defense sector of Ukraine is working.”

Richard Engel of NBC News reported on this speech by Zelensky and in the report he noted that much of the Russian news flying around Ukraine appears to be false, designed to get Ukrainians to panic and give up quickly.

I’m cutting the news in this letter off at midnight, Maine time, to keep the record clear. And, while we’re at it, a lot happened domestically today, but I am holding it for the future. Today’s invasion of democratic Ukraine by authoritarian Putin is important. It not only has broken a long period of peace in Europe, it has brought into the open that authoritarians are indeed trying to destroy democracy.

Heather Cox Richardson

February 24, 2022 (Thursday)

Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter with the Kyiv Independent, reported today that according to Ukraine’s top general, “Russia’s blitzkrieg on day one has failed.”

Washington Post reporter Dan Lamothe today listed information delivered in an early briefing by a senior U.S. defense official. While this information is very early, and likely to be revised in the future, the official told reporters that the U.S. believed Russia launched more than 100 missiles at Ukrainian targets last night, primarily at airports and military targets. There were an estimated 75 Russian planes, including bombers, targeting nearly 10 airports.

The official described this as an “initial phase” of a “large-scale invasion” from Belarus south, from Crimea north, and from Russia to around the city of Kharkiv, which saw the heaviest fighting. The next move, he predicted, would be on Kyiv. “We still believe—it is our assessment—that they have every intention of basically decapitating the government and installing their own method of governance, which would explain these early moves toward Kyiv.” Tonight, U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told lawmakers that Russian troops were now about 20 miles from Kyiv.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky told his people that Ukraine lost 137 defenders on the first day, with 316 more wounded. Russia has not acknowledged any losses, although images from photojournalists in Ukraine indicate there have been Russian casualties.

Before midnight, American Eastern time, Friday had begun in Ukraine with the news from Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs Dmytro Kuleba that Kyiv was being hit by “horrific Russian rocket strikes…. The last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany. Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one. Stop Putin. Isolate Russia. Sever…all ties. Kick Russia out of everywhere.”

In fact, isolating Russia and turning it into an international pariah seems to be the plan of the U.S., the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and other allies and partners.

This morning, President Biden spoke with the leaders of the G7, the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies, and tweeted: “[W]e are in full agreement: We will limit Russia’s ability to be part of the global economy. We will stunt their ability to finance and grow Russia’s military. We will impair their ability to compete in a high-tech, 21st century economy.” G7 countries, which control 50% of the world’s gross domestic product, will participate in isolating Russia.

Early this afternoon, President Biden announced more sanctions on Russia, squeezing its financial system, its economy, and its political leadership. The Treasury Department also announced sanctions against state-owned banks, defense and security industries, and individuals in Belarus, “??due to Belarus’s support for, and facilitation of, the invasion.” The U.S. will also block Russian access to emerging technologies.

According to the White House, the European Union, Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom all are planning their own sanctions. Tonight, the leaders of the European Union announced “massive and targeted” sanctions against Russia, hitting 70% of the Russian banking market, oil exports, and Russia’s access to technology.

A bright spot for Putin is that China has eased restrictions on the importation of Russian wheat, thus helping Russia’s economy and helping out its own food security. Analyst Rachel Ziemba told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that China’s interest in its access to important commodities will likely make it a “meaningful financial lifeline” for Russia, but China will not align with Moscow completely.

But there are plenty of dark spots for Putin, too. After the invasion, Russian stocks plunged 45% before recovering to close down 33%, while the ruble hit a record low against the dollar. Putin summoned Russian oligarchs to a meeting today. According to Max Seddon, Financial Times Moscow bureau chief, Putin told Russia’s business elite that he was forced into invading Ukraine because “they could have created such risks for us that it wasn’t clear how the country [Russia, that is, not Ukraine] could have continued to exist.”

Protesters in Russia took to the streets to oppose the war; many were arrested. According to Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, a Financial Times reporter in Moscow, the Kremlin had expected the public would support the attack on Ukraine. Prominent celebrities, including those who rely on the state to make a living, also came out against the war.

On Facebook, the commander in chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, posted that a Russian platoon surrendered about 85 miles north of Kyiv. He said the platoon leader believed they were a reconnaissance team. “No one thought that we were going to kill. We were not going to fight, we were collecting information.”

The Ukraine Defense Ministry has asked computer hackers to help Ukraine’s war effort, and a Twitter account claiming to represent the computer hacker group Anonymous claimed to have taken down the Russian RT media outlet, which was, indeed, down this afternoon.

The U.S. is sending 7,000 more U.S. troops to Europe to shore up the defenses of our NATO allies. And two former presidents—Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican George W. Bush—today released statements condemning the invasion and standing behind Ukraine. Bush wrote, “The American government and people must stand in solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as they seek freedom and the right to choose their own future. We cannot tolerate the authoritarian bullying and danger that Putin poses.”

And yet, while some leading Republicans are expressing support for Ukraine and simply ignoring President Joe Biden, the same Republicans who have been most closely associated with Trump and the January 6 insurrection are trying to use Russia’s attack on Ukraine to undermine the president. Following the lead of former president Trump, who says that Putin invaded because Biden is weak, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who took over for Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) when the House Republicans stripped her of her position as the third most powerful House Republican, tweeted that “Joe Biden is unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief. He has consistently given into [sic] Putin’s demands and shown nothing but weakness.”

This is simply an extraordinary statement for a lawmaker to issue at a time when a president is rallying the global community to stop an invasion of another democracy, but she is not alone. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called Biden weak and corrupt; Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said that former president Trump’s “unpredictability” (!) kept Putin cautious; Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) complained that the administration “project[s] weakness.” Representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ); Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Ron Johnson (R-WI); and others all are working to undermine Biden in this moment of global crisis.

Diplomat Aaron David Miller, who spent 24 years in the State Department, had his own assessment of the president. He said: “So far, Biden has done a masterful job of leading and maintaining both E.U. and NATO unity.”