“10 torture sites in 1 town: Russia sowed pain, fear in Izium.” That is the heading over a report from the Associated Press. Those with the stomach, and the interest, can read it.
• On Saturday, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman, said, “The American people don’t care about that war over there.” Is that true? I imagine it’s true of the congresswoman’s supporters, who are legion. (She is a star on the GOP circuit.) But is it true of Americans at large? I’m not sure how you’d measure such a thing, even with careful polling.
• Here is an article by Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal: “Electric Shock, Extortion and Slave Labor: How Russia Ran a Detention Camp in Occupied Ukraine.” Important things to know.
• Another article, this one from the Kyiv Independent: “Wife of Izium mass grave victim learns of husband’s death from viral photo.” At the top is a warning: “This story contains graphic images and descriptions that some readers may find disturbing.
• Ostap Yarysh, of the Voice of America, posts a video from the city of Mykolaiv, which he captions, “A man mourning his wife after she was killed in a Russian strike. This is a daily reality in many Ukrainian cities.”
• This was terribly interesting — a missive from Marc Bennetts, a foreign correspondent with the Times of London:
Spoke to a pro-Russian Ukrainian in Izium. He insisted that Russian soldiers were “kind” before admitting that they had thrown him into a pit to interrogate him, chopped off a friend’s finger and tortured another with electric shocks until he lost his mind.
• CPAC — whose initials stand for “Conservative Political Action Conference” — posted a tweet on Friday. It had a fluttering Russian flag. And it said,
Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of 4 Ukrainian-occupied territories.
Pause to consider the phrase “Ukrainian-occupied.”
CPAC went on,
Biden and the Dems continue to send Ukraine billions of taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, we are under attack at our southern border. When will Democrats put #AmericaFirst and end the gift-giving to Ukraine?
“America First” is a phrase that is going around. It was revived from the 1940s. Last year, alumni of the Trump administration set up an organization called the “America First Policy Institute.” Earlier this year, Heritage Action put out a press release that said, “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.”
Is aid to Ukraine mere “gift-giving,” as CPAC said? Or is aid to Ukraine in the U.S. interest? That is an ongoing debate. What does our southern border have to do with it? Republicans often mention our border when speaking of Ukraine. They think — or say they think — that Russia’s assault on Ukraine is a mere “border dispute.”
Here is Congressman Dan Bishop (R., N.C.), tweeting last week:
$12 billion for Ukraine’s border, while our own border is wide open. The definition of America Last.
In any event, CPAC took down its tweet — its “Ukrainian-occupied territories” tweet — after many people expressed horror at it. Some of us will never quite get used to hearing organizations on the American right echo Kremlin propaganda.
• As Congressman Bishop tweeted last week, so did Donald Trump Jr.:
What tiny fraction (if any) of the almost $75,000,000,000.00 that’s been sent to the Ukraine in the last few months will go to help the hundreds of thousands of American taxpayers in Florida many of whom who lost everything over the last few days?
Our southwestern border. The natural disaster in Florida. These are subjects that come up when Republicans talk about Ukraine. It seems to me that these Republicans resent Ukraine more than they care about immigration or Florida.
• Have some more Marjorie Taylor Green: “Zelensky doesn’t run the United States government. He is not our president, but for some reason Joe Biden bends over every single time.”
You may say that Greene does not represent the Republican Party or the conservative movement. But consider: Who is more popular in that party and that movement? Greene or, say, Mitch McConnell? Greene or Mitt Romney or George W. Bush? Greene or Liz Cheney?
(Just kiddin’ about that last one.) (The others too, really.)
• Once more, an expansionist, imperial-minded dictator is redrawing European borders by force. Either people see the grave importance of this — for all of us — or they don’t. Ukraine is under assault by Russia and is struggling for its national survival. It needs the support of both parties in America. If Ukraine becomes a partisan issue — red versus blue, like everything else in our country — the consequences will be horrific.
• Andrew E. Busch is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He is what you might call a conservative of the old school — a pre-Trump school. He also has extensive experience in Ukraine. Professor Busch has performed a real service in writing “Why We Are in Ukraine.” He lays out the basics, and we are in sore need of them, because the fog machine never stops belching — the machine that would obscure basic facts.
• Last week, the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged, causing great environmental damage and widespread fears. Charlie Kirk, the young Republican leader, said, “Is this a potential midterm-election operation?” He was talking about U.S. politics. He also said, “They’re guilty until proven innocent in this situation.” He was talking about the CIA. “They’re going to have to prove to us it wasn’t them.”
The first thing that occurred to me, probably given my age, and the political coloration of my hometown, was: That’s exactly how the Left talked when I was growing up.
• Speaking of the Left and Right, mingling: James Kirchick has written a clinical piece — a dissecting piece — showing that that “critics of U.S. foreign policy from both ends of the ideological spectrum have found common cause in supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” (I have quoted the subheading.)
• Let me paste the opening of an old piece of mine — a report from Tirana, Albania:
Years ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer joked about what he called “the Tirana Index.” This was a way of measuring how unfree a country was. For example, election returns out of this capital would tell us that the Communist dictator, Hoxha, had received 98.6 percent of the vote. (You had to wonder about the other 1.4 percent.) The greater a dictator’s vote, the more unfree the country was. That was the Tirana Index. Of course, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq, improved on Hoxha by securing a full 100 percent of the vote.
I thought of Charles K. and the Tirana Index when reading the figures from Putin’s “referenda” in the Ukrainian territories he has seized. I will quote a report in the New York Times:
Tass, the Russian state news agency, said the ballot count showed 87 percent of voters supported joining Russia in Kherson region; 93 percent in Zaporizhzhia region; 99 percent in Donetsk region; and 98 percent in Luhansk region in the east.
Only 87 percent in Kherson? Hail, Donetsk! (Except for that one percent.) (It’s always the one percent. Gotta watch ’em.)
If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, the holding of sham referenda is the tribute that dictatorship pays to democracy. Same with the dictatorship’s “legislature,” etc.