Politics and American Democracy – Page 82

Smirnov indictment pushes GOP impeachment probe of Biden off the edge

CNN

Opinion: Smirnov indictment pushes GOP impeachment probe of Biden off the edge

Opinion by Dennis Aftergut – February 19, 2024

Editor’s Note: Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is currently counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the rule of law. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

On Thursday, the Justice Department indicted Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant, for lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in negotiations with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Smirnov is a central witness in the House Republicans’ Biden impeachment inquiry, which was already circling the drain as committee leaders have persisted in pursuing baseless allegations for political gain.

According to the indictment, Smirnov lied to the FBI by claiming that officials at Burisma, where Hunter Biden served on the board years ago, bribed then-Vice President Biden and his son so the vice president would interfere with a criminal investigation into the company. Smirnov now faces charges for making false statements to the FBI and creating false records.

Smirnov’s testimony has been the “heart” of House Oversight Committee Republicans’ stumbling “investigation” into impeaching President Biden. News of Smirnov’s indictment had Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky beating a strategic retreat: “The impeachment inquiry,” he said on Thursday, “is not reliant on the FBI’s [interview of Smirnov]. It is based on a large record of evidence.”

That’s to be expected from politicians trying to salvage an investigation whose key witness has been exposed. With Smirnov’s indictment for fabricating claims, the air is out of the House inquiry’s tires. For those in the fact-based world, the oversight committee’s impeachment car, driven by Comer, is stuck on the edge of a cliff with two wheels hanging in thin air.

The Smirnov episode is Exhibit A in what happens when politicians grinding partisan axes make serious public charges without evidence against elected officials. That shameless behavior erodes citizens’ precious trust in government.

Prosecutors learn early that, in white-collar crimes, you’d better have indisputable documents or witnesses whose testimony is thoroughly corroborated before seeking an indictment. Otherwise, you can get seriously burned in the backfire.

As Hannah Arendt, the dean of 20th century political theorists, wrote in 1971 about years of government lies revealed in the Pentagon Papers amidst the Vietnam War, “There always comes the point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive.”

Politicians like Comer and GOP Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, could learn something from Arendt and from capable prosecutors about tossing aside facts and truth. Unfortunately, the MAGA committee chairs seem to have neither time nor interest in thought, care, competence or real evidence. All that seems to matter to them is repeating the charges enough times for them to sink into the public consciousness.

In 2016, there was no there there with House Republicans’ Benghazi investigation, but the smear looked like it had an adverse effect on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. So Republicans have apparently decided, “Let’s do it again.”

But don’t expect it to work this time. The very smart Democrats now on the House Oversight Committee learned from experience and are onto Comer’s political stunts. His claims have been called out by New York Rep. Dan Goldman, a former prosecutor who worked on the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, and ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional scholar who served on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

As Yale professor Timothy Snyder, the eminent historian of 20th century totalitarianism, has written, “Students of democracy have argued since ancient times … that the truth matters, and that truth needs defenses.” We are lucky to have capable defenders of truth whose counter-punches have been stronger than Comer’s feckless jabs. They don’t carry the power of reliable facts.

With Smirnov, Comer has led with his jaw. When you are dealing with a shaky witness whose testimony is the key to your fight plan, you need to muscle up with corroboration. Comer has none.

Indeed, Comer and Jordan have overhyped Smirnov’s testimony so many times, according to the progressive watchdog Congressional Integrity Project, that it’s hard to keep count. To cite just one example, last June, Comer told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “This is one of the highest paid, most respected, most trusted, most effective human informants. So what we learned is what the whistleblowers told Sen. Grassley all along. The FBI never investigated this.”

That last claim is yet another falsehood. This whole investigation into Burisma goes back five years. In early 2020, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s disgraced lawyer who was trying to dig up dirt on Hunter’s father, handed documents over to Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr. According to CNN reporting, Barr told reporters at the time, “‘We can’t take anything we receive from Ukraine at face value.’ Former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady oversaw the FBI investigation of the Giuliani claims. The 1023 document [memorializing Smirnov’s interview] demanded by Comer is among the products of that investigation. … The FBI and prosecutors who reviewed the information couldn’t corroborate the claims.”

There’s the rub. And Comer’s face plant by relying on Smirnov’s alleged lies is just the latest in a long string of leaning on witnesses who have provided no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. They include the president’s bookkeeper, Hunter Biden’s business associates, his art dealer and a host of others who’ve said that President Biden is a loving father but was not involved in his son’s business deals. Comer seems to have gone to the ends of the Earth to find dirt on the president. But the congressman has ended up with an empty dustbin.

Impeachment is the most serious non-criminal charge that Congress can bring against a federal official. It is no place to be inflating allegations and to be relying on witnesses whose testimony is not corroborated. Doing so drains public confidence in impeachment as a guardrail on executive abuses of power. Wild charges without basis in reliable evidence insult fact and truth, the foundations of democracy.

New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat put it this way in her seminal book “Strong Men”: “The decay of truth and democratic dissolution proceed hand in hand.” Snyder makes the same point: “Once factual truth is no defense in politics, all that remains is spectacle and force.”

From Comer and Jordan, we’ve seen plenty of spectacle but an absence of light. These point men for Trump and truthlessness are dangers to democracy.

Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials

CNN

Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials

Hannah Rabinowitz and Cheri Mossburg – February 20, 2024

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The revelations about Smirnov’s alleged foreign contacts were disclosed as part of prosecutors’ arguments to keep him jailed ahead of trial – though a federal judge later granted Smirnov’s release with several conditions, including GPS monitoring and the surrender of his two passports. Smirnov declined to answer questions as he left the courthouse Tuesday evening.

Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov “claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies,” including in Russia, and that he could use those contacts to flee the United States.

The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Smirnov has been charged with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He has not yet entered a formal plea, and his lawyers told CNN in a statement, “Mr. Smirnov is presumed innocent.”

According to the new court filing, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different Russian officials,” all of whom are “top officials” and two of whom “are the heads of the entities they represent.” Prosecutors did not independently verify in the filing whether Smirnov’s reported contacts are legitimate, nor whether the Russians provided him with disinformation about the Bidens.

The false information that Smirnov reported “was not trivial,” prosecutors wrote.

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors said, making an apparent reference to the turmoil in Congress over the discredited bribery allegations – which were a key element of the GOP impeachment probe.

Of particular note is a story Smirnov allegedly told the FBI in September 2023, alleging that Hunter Biden was recorded making phone calls in a Kyiv hotel that is “wired” and “under the control of the Russians.” Federal agents said they knew Smirnov’s story was false because Hunter Biden has “never travelled to Ukraine.”

Smirnov told investigators Russian intelligence officers would use the hotel to intercept cell phone calls made by “prominent US persons,” prosecutors said, which the Russian government could use as “‘kompromat’ in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” Kompromat is a Russian term that refers to compromising information used for blackmail.

The story, prosecutors noted, matches the story Smirnov told his handler about Hunter Biden being recorded in a foreign hotel.

“Thus, Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” prosecutors wrote.

And, prosecutors wrote, Smirnov claims to have met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as November and December 2023.

“What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020,” they wrote. “He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November. In light of that fact there is a serious risk he will flee in order to avoid accountability for his actions.”

Weiss’ team argued in court Tuesday that Smirnov could use his foreign contacts, including those in Russia, to flee the country and resettle abroad out of reach from the US government. The judge pushed back on the prosecutors’ assertion, and sternly warned Smirnov while granting his release: “Do not make a mockery of me.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Cheri Mossburg contributed to this report.

Legal expert warns delay by Judge Cannon could badly backfire on Trump

Salon

Legal expert warns delay by Judge Cannon could badly backfire on Trump

Tatyana Tandanpolie – February 20, 2024

Donald Trump Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images

The delays in Donald Trump’s Florida classified documents case will come to a head Thursday, the date U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has set as a deadline for the former president and the case’s other defendants to file responses in a discovery dispute with the Justice Department, predicts former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

Writing in her “Civil Discourse” Substack, Vance explained that special counsel Jack Smith’s hopes of bringing the case charging Trump with willfully retaining national security documents post-presidency to trial are dwindling as the pre-trial period drags. Whether he will then appeal to the 11th Circuit Court, she said, hinges in part on what unfolds this week.

“Judge Aileen Cannon continues to string out the timeline, permitting this issue to unnecessarily consume weeks of briefing time,” Vance writes, arguing that Cannon must soon decide on issues involving unclassified and classified evidence, while Smith must soon also determine whether to appeal her rulings if they remain “unfavorable.” The case going to trial before the presidential election “would take a moon shot,” Vance added. “Trump is likely to go into the Republican convention and the election without being held accountable for dangerous mishandling of classified materials—something that should be unthinkable and would have been for Republicans in the pre-Trump era,” Vance writes.

But Trump’s efforts to delay the criminal proceedings may backfire, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner argued, pointing to an expected March 1 hearing to address remaining deadlines in the case.

“We know that Donald Trump and his team of lawyers will try to convince Judge Cannon to try to kick the May 20th trial date,” Kirschner told MSNBC Monday, according to Raw Story. “And you may not expect to hear this from me, but I almost hope that she does kick the May 20th trial date. Why? Because if the Supreme Court denies the stay in the absolute immunity issue and returns the case to [Judge] Tanya Chutkan in D.C. in the election interference case — would love to see her take that case and drop it on the docket for May 20th.”

Trapped and left for dead, injured Ukrainian soldiers in Avdiivka exchanged desperate messages as the town fell

CNN

Trapped and left for dead, injured Ukrainian soldiers in Avdiivka exchanged desperate messages as the town fell

Tim Lister, Maria Kostenko and Victoria Butenko – February 19, 2024

Avdiivka was on the front lines of war between Kyiv and Moscow for almost a decade. Fierce fighting raged there for months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.

The withdrawal was far less drawn out. When the Ukrainian military abandoned the town on Saturday, handing Russia its most important victory in months, it was rapid and ruthless.

“Leave the 300 (wounded),” one soldier was purportedly ordered, “and burn everything.”

Hours after Russian troops raised their flags over Avdiivka, one horrifying story has emerged of several injured soldiers who failed to escape – and were later killed as Russian troops reached their position.

The Ukrainian servicemen there were part of the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, occupying a position known as Zenit. As Russian forces advanced through Avdiivka last week, Zenit came under heavy attack.

Soldiers stationed there made desperate attempts to escape the ruins of the town, according to Viktor Biliak, one of the soldiers there. In a long and often bleak Instagram post Biliak described the dangerous route that lay ahead.

“There was zero visibility outside. It was just about survival. A kilometer across the field. A bunch of blind kittens guided by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is filled with Ukrainian corpses,” he wrote.

Eventually a commander informed him over the radio that the wounded would not be evacuated. Six men were left behind. The messages they left were hard to read, Biliak said.

“Their despair, their doom. It will always stay with us. The most courageous are the ones who die,” he said.

The soldiers left behind

Avdiivka has been on the front lines since pro-Moscow separatists seized large portions of the Donbas region, including the nearby city of Donetsk, in 2014. Years of fighting has turned the town into a heavily fortified stronghold, with entrenchments built up over the past eight years.

But with Ukraine’s army under pressure along several points on the front line and facing ammunition and manpower shortages, the Russian military may have sensed a window of opportunity. It pummelled the area with airstrikes and artillery before intensifying the ground assault.

Ukrainian forces made the decision over the weekend to abandon the town, handing Russia its most significant victory since it captured the city of Bakhmut last year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the decision to pull back was made to “save our soldiers’ lives.”

Among those trapped and surrounded was a 30-year-old junior sergeant and combat medic from Dnipropetrovsk region named Ivan Zhytnyk, call-sign “Django.” He’d been fighting in Avdiivka for nearly two years, as had the 110th Brigade.

He was badly injured and could not move.

On Thursday, he was able to contact his sister Kateryna and other family members in an emotional video call, a call that has since received widespread coverage on Ukrainian and social media.

Kateryna asks her brother: “So, what, they … no one is coming? Your guys are there too (with you), or are you alone?”

Zhytnyk replied: “Everyone left, everyone retreated. They told us that a car would pick us up. I have two broken legs, shrapnel in my back. I can’t do anything …

He said there were a half-dozen soldiers at the Zenit position, four of whom, like Zhytnyk, could not walk.

Kateryna responds: “I don’t know how to … who to call,” she said while crying. “I can’t figure it out. Who will pick you up?”

No one did.

Ukrainian journalists working with Slidstvo.info later talked to relatives of three of the Ukrainians who were left wounded at the position.

Kateryna told Slidstvo.info: “They had been waiting for the (evacuation) vehicle for a day and a half. And when they realized that no one was coming to pick them up, they started calling everyone. When Ivan called me, he was in so much pain, they had given him everything they had left, but they were running out of medicine and food.”

Later Thursday, another relative reached Zhytnyk via video link, according to Kateryna.

“My brother said that the command had agreed that the Russians would take them out because our men would not get to them,” Kateryna said. As they spoke, she said, the video showed Russian troops entering the position where the men were trapped.

CNN has not seen that video.

Another of the soldiers trapped at Zenit was Andrii Dubnytskyi. His wife Liudmyla told Slidstvo.info: “We talked at 10 a.m. (on Thursday). He was wounded in the groin, he was reeling, trying to joke, started crying. Then we texted …”

“The last message was at 12:00 that he would be captured,” she said.

‘Mom, I am a warrior’

On Friday, a video was posted by a Russian military blogger that showed the bodies of several of the soldiers. The video carried the emblem of the Russian Army’s 1st Slavic Brigade, which had entered the Zenit area in the south of Avdiivka two days earlier, according to multiple accounts.

The text on the video says it was shot on Friday in Avdiivka at a “military unit facility.” It refers to the Ukrainian troops there as Nazis and says ”only death is waiting for you at our land.”

Kateryna recognized her brother’s body by his clothes and by the water bottle he was holding when the Russians took them from the Zenit position.

Biliak, the soldier who posted his account on Instagram, recognized Andrii Dubnytskyi because he had a tattoo in the shape of a cross on his arm.

So did Dubnytskyi’s wife, Liudmyla, who found the video late at night. “At 10:30 p.m. I found this video, I recognized him by his tattoo,” she said.

“He was called up on March 8, 2022, and since then he had been in Avdiivka all the time … My daughter was 4 months old when he was mobilized,” she told Slidstvo.info.

The mother of another of the soldiers made the same horrifying discovery.

Heorhii Pavlov, call-sign “Panda,” had been a contract soldier since 2015 and had served at the Zenit position for the last year, according to his mother Inna.

“They waited for three days for an (evacuation) car,” she said.

“On the 14th he was wounded, he had shrapnel wounds, his back … I begged him very much, son, surrender, I need you alive – he has a small child, 5 years old.”

“He said: Mom, I am a warrior,” Inna recounted to Slidstvo.info.

“I would like to believe that they are alive. The only thing I want now is to find my son,” she said Friday.

A few hours later she recognized the body of her son in the same Russian video.

The 110th Brigade told CNN that it could not verify any details of the incident and was trying to check what had happened.

A well-known Ukrainian military blogger, Yurii Butusov, has since posted the names of all six soldiers who were left behind at the Zenit position.

“These wounded were unable to move on their own, and there were no evacuation vehicles available to transport them. Due to the complete encirclement of Zenit, no vehicles could get through for evacuation,” Butusov said.

It’s not known how the soldiers died, but Butusov alleged that the Russian military “executed the helpless unarmed wounded, who were captured and unable to move.”

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine said an investigation had been launched into “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder” in the case of the injured soldiers.

In a statement published Monday, the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade said that it attempted to negotiate with Russian forces to evacuate wounded troops from the Zenit position after it was completely encircled.

“They [agreed] to evacuate our wounded and provide them with assistance, and subsequently exchange them (for other prisoners of war). Our soldiers were ordered to save their lives,” the statement read.

The brigade later learned its soldiers were killed from the video released by Russian forces.

“War is cruel and we are fighting for freedom at a high price,” it said.

CNN is reaching out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the allegations against Russian forces in Avdiivka.

The Ukraine aid that House Republican leaders are blocking might actually be good for the US economy

Business Insider

The Ukraine aid that House Republican leaders are blocking might actually be good for the US economy

John L. Dorman – February 18, 2024

House GOP leaders are standing in the way of a Senate-backed $95 billion aid bill.
The bill would provide about $60 billion to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia.
The legislation would also bolster the US economy, The Wall Street Journal reported.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is blocking a $95 billion emergency foreign aid bill, saying he’s in “no rush” to take up the legislation the Senate overwhelmingly approved last week.

The bill — opposed by many conservatives due to its exclusion of desired security measures at the US-Mexico border — would provide about $60 billion in badly needed aid for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s nearly two-year-long invasion.

The legislation would also give $14.1 billion in military funding to Israel, $9.2 billion for humanitarian efforts in Gaza, and $8 billion for Taiwan and Indo-Pacific allies to deter Chinese aggression.

While supporters of the legislation say it’s needed urgently to help Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal also points out that the bill would benefit the US economy.

Over the past two years, the US defense industry has seen a surge in demand for weapons and munitions, with European countries looking to boost their military operations and the Pentagon purchasing new equipment, according to the Journal.

Officials in President Joe Biden’s administration said that 64% of the roughly $60 billion appropriated for Ukraine in the Senate-passed bill would reach the US defense industrial base, the Journal reported.

Lael Brainard, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told the Journal in a recent interview that the impact on the US economy would be significant.

“That’s one of the things that is misunderstood … how important that funding is for employment and production around the country,” she told the newspaper.

The Journal reported that the $95 billion in aid, in addition to money from previous packages, can “inject funds worth about 0.5% of one year’s gross domestic product into the US industrial defense base” in upcoming years.

It remains unclear when or if the House will take up the Senate bill. Former President Donald Trump also opposes it and is the likely GOP presidential nominee. Trump in recent weeks also helped tank a bipartisan bill that would have tightened the US asylum system, among other measures.

Stalled US aid for Ukraine underscores GOP’s shift away from confronting Russia

Associated Press

Stalled US aid for Ukraine underscores GOP’s shift away from confronting Russia

Nicholas Riccardiu – February 19, 2024

FILE - Smoke rises from a building in Bakhmut, site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 26, 2023. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP's growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump's own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP's ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Libkos, File) — Smoke rises from a building in Bakhmut, site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 26, 2023. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP’s growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump’s own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

FILE - Dead bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP's growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump's own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP's ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File) — Dead bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP’s growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump’s own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 14, 2024. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP's growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump's own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP's ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 14, 2024. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP’s growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump’s own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

In this photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024, Two soldiers of the Russian military engineering units eliminate the mine danger in the city of Avdiivka, eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have taken complete control of the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

FILE - A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, April 5, 2022. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP's growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump's own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP's ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) — A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, April 5, 2022. The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. The reasons include Russian President Vladimir Putin holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values, the GOP’s growing skepticism of international entanglements and Trump’s own personal embrace of the Russian leader. Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)

At about 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t like this reality,” Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.” But he quickly added: “Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.”

That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped so there’s no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.

The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Trump won the 2016 election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Putin is holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values and the GOP is growing increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements. Then there’s Trump’s personal embrace of the Russian leader.

Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war.

The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it. In the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as Ukraine’s military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.

Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues don’t see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Putin and his allies have banked on democracies wearying of aiding Kyiv, and Putin’s GOP critics warn that NATO countries in eastern Europe could become targets of an emboldened Russia that believes the U.S. won’t counter it.

“Putin is losing,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said on the floor before Johnson’s speech. “This is not a stalemate.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was one of 22 Republican senators to back the package, while 26 opposed it.

The divide within the party was on stark display Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny, which President Joe Biden and other world leaders blamed on Putin. Trump notably stood aside from that chorus Monday in his first public comment on the matter that referred to Navalny by name.

Offering no sympathy or attempt to affix blame, Trump posted on Truth Social that the “sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”

Nikki Haley, his Republican presidential primary rival, said Monday that Trump is “siding with a thug” in his embrace of Putin.

Tillis responded to Navalny’s death by saying in a post, “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy.”

Johnson, the House speaker, issued a statement calling Putin a “vicious dictator” and pledging that he “will be met with united opposition,” but he did not offer any way forward for passing the aid to Ukraine.

Within the Republican Party, skeptics of confronting Russia seem to be gaining ground.

“Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, elected in 2022, posted on the social media site X after the vote last week. “15 out of 17 elected since 2018 voted NO. Things are changing just not fast enough.”

Those who oppose additional Ukraine aid bristle at charges that they are doing Putin’s handiwork. They contend they are taking a hard-headed look at whether it’s worth spending money to help the country.

“If you oppose a blank check to another country, I guess that makes you a Russian,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said on the Senate floor, after posting that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial interview of Putin shows that “Russia wants peace” in contrast to “DC warmongers.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of Ukraine aid in the House, described the movement as “a generational shift in my party away from neoconservatism toward foreign policy realism.”

In interviews with voters waiting to see Trump speak Saturday night in Waterford Township, Michigan, none praised Putin. But none wanted to spend more money confronting him, trusting Trump to handle the Russian leader.

Even before Trump, Republican voters were signaling discontent with overseas conflicts, said Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell University. That’s one reason Trump’s 2016 promise to avoid “stupid wars” resonated.

“Some of it may be a bottom-up change in a key part of the Republican base,” Kriner said, “and part of it reflects Trump’s hold on that base and his ability to sway its opinions and policy preferences in dramatic ways.”

Trump has long praised Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “smart” and “savvy,” and recalling this month that he had told NATO members who didn’t spend enough on defense that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to them. He reiterated that threat days later.

Despite the reluctance within the GOP to continue supporting Ukraine, Russia remains deeply unpopular in the U.S. A July 2023 Gallup poll found that just 5% had a favorable view of Putin, including 7% of Republicans.

But Putin has positioned his country as a symbol of Christian conservatism and resistance to LGBTQ rights, while portraying himself as an embodiment of masculine strength. The combination has appealed to populist conservatives across the Western world. Putin’s appeal in some sectors of the right is demonstrated by Carlson’s recent tour of Russia, after which the conservative host posted videos admiring the Moscow subway and a supermarket that he says “would radicalize you against our leaders.”

“The goal of the Soviet Union was to be the beacon of left ideas,” said Olga Kamenchuk, a professor at Northwestern University. “Russia is now the beacon of conservative ideas.”

Kamenchuk said this is most visible not in Putin’s U.S. poll numbers, but in fading Republican support for Ukraine. About half of Republicans said the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine when it comes to Russia’s invasion, according to a Pew Research poll in December. That’s up from 9% in a Pew poll taken in March 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded.

When Putin attacked Ukraine, there was bipartisan condemnation. Even a year ago, most Republicans in Congress pledged support. But around the same time, Trump was lamenting that U.S. leaders were “suckers” for sending aid.

By the fall, the party was divided. Republicans refused to include another round of Ukraine funding in the government spending bill, insisting that Democrats needed to include a border security measure to earn their support.

After Trump condemned the compromise border proposal, Republicans sank the bill, leaving Ukraine backers no option but to push the assistance as part of a foreign aid package with additional money for Israel and Taiwan.

Several experts on Russia note that the rhetoric the GOP uses against Ukraine aid can mirror Putin’s own — that Ukraine is corrupt and will waste the money, that the U.S. can’t afford to look beyond its borders and that Russia’s victory is inevitable.

“He’s trying to create the perception that he’s never going to be beaten, so don’t even try,” Henry Hale, a George Washington University political scientist, said of Putin.

Skeptics of Ukraine aid argue the war has already decimated the Russian military and that Putin won’t be able to target other European countries.

“Russia has shown in the last two years that they do not have the ability to march through Western Europe,” said Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget who is now president of the Center for Renewing America, which opposes additional Ukraine funding.

But several experts noted that Putin has alluded to plans to retake much of the former Soviet Union’s territory, which could include NATO countries such as Lithuania and Estonia that the U.S is obligated under its treaty to defend militarily.

Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, noted that Russia for decades has hoped the U.S would lose interest in protecting Europe: “This was Stalin’s dream, that the U.S. would just retreat to the Western hemisphere.”

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Waterford Township, Michigan, and Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Denmark to send its ‘entire artillery’ to Ukraine, the country’s prime minister says

Business Insider

Denmark to send its ‘entire artillery’ to Ukraine, the country’s prime minister says

Nathan Rennolds – February 18, 2024

Denmark is sending all of its artillery to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.
Mette Frederiksen made the announcement while speaking at the Munich Security Conference.
It comes as Ukraine faces severe munitions shortages.

Denmark is sending its “entire artillery” to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mette Frederiksen appealed to other European nations to do more to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invading forces.

“They are asking us for ammunition now. Artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery,” she said.

“I’m sorry to say, friends, there are still ammunition in stock in Europe,” she continued. “This is not only a question about production, because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense that we don’t have to use ourself at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine.”

It comes as Ukrainian forces withdrew from the key eastern town of Avdiivka amid severe munitions shortages.

The Danish announcement will come as particularly welcome news in Ukraine as its military has been starved of artillery shells, forcing it to scale back some operations, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi told Reuters in December.

“There’s a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) – that’s 122 mm, 152 mm. And today, these problems exist across the entire front line,” he said.

Meanwhile, in more positive news to alleviate the ammo famine, the Czech Republic says it could supply 800,000 shells to the Ukrainian military.

Czech President Petr Pavel said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference on 17 February that it had a stockpile of about half a million 155 mm and 300,000 122 mm shells, which can be on the Ukraine frontline in a few weeks “if funding is found quickly.”

Denmark is a key supporter of Ukraine

A serviceman of the 66th separate cannon artillery battalion of the 406th separate artillery brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is pictured by the American M777 howitzer, Zaporizhzhia direction, south-eastern Ukraine.Dmytro Smolienko / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Denmark has been a key supporter of Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the Nordic country’s military aid commitments increased by 3.5 billion euros, or around $3.8 billion, since November — making it one of the biggest military donors by percentage of GDP, the institute says.

Denmark has pledged 8.4 billion euros, around $9 billion, in military aid.

With a crucial $60 billion US aid package stalled in Congress, European support is becoming ever more important for Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the European Union agreed to a new 50 billion euro, or around $53.9 billion, aid package for Ukraine.

“This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine. The EU is taking leadership and responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake,” President of the European Council Charles Michel said at the time, per Reuters.

From Frigid Cells to Mystery Injections, Prison Imperiled Navalny’s Health

The New York Times

From Frigid Cells to Mystery Injections, Prison Imperiled Navalny’s Health

Paul Sonne and Ivan Nechepurenko – February 18, 2024

FILE – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears via a video link from the Arctic penal colony where he is serving a 19-year sentence, provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service during a hearing of Russia’s Supreme Court, in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. Russia’s prison agency says that imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died. He was 47. The Federal Prison Service said in a statement that Navalny felt unwell after a walk on Friday Feb. 16, 2024 and lost consciousness. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko,)

Alexei Navalny portrayed himself as invincible, consistently using his hallmark humor to suggest that President Vladimir Putin couldn’t break him, no matter how dire his conditions became in prison.

But behind the brave face, the reality was plain to see. Since his incarceration in early 2021, Navalny, Russia’s most formidable opposition figure, and his staff regularly suggested his conditions were so grim that he was being put to death in slow motion.

Now his aides believe their fears have come true.

The cause of Navalny’s death in prison at 47 has not been established — in fact his family has not yet even been allowed to see his body — but Russia’s harshest penal colonies are known for hazardous conditions, and Navalny was singled out for particularly brutal treatment.

“Aleksei Navalny was subjected to torment and torture for three years,” Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov wrote in a column after his death was announced Friday. “As Navalny’s doctor told me: the body cannot withstand this.”

More than a quarter of Navalny’s incarceration since 2021 was spent in freezing “punishment cells” and he was often denied access to medical care. He was transferred to ever crueler prisons. And at one point, he said he was being given injections but was prevented from finding out what was in the syringes. His team worried he was again being poisoned.

What specifically led to Navalny’s death Friday at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle may remain a mystery. The Russian prison service released a statement Friday afternoon saying that Navalny felt sick and suddenly lost consciousness after being outside.

Russian state media reported that he had suffered a blood clot. But the story changed Saturday, when Navalny’s mother and lawyer arrived at the prison. They were told he had suffered from “sudden death syndrome,” which appeared to indicate sudden cardiac arrest, according to Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.

Investigators told a lawyer for Navalny that a repeat examination was being conducted and the results would be released next week. Navalny’s staff called for the body to be released immediately so that his family could order an independent analysis, accusing Russian authorities of lying to conceal the body.

According to his aides, Navalny had been put in a punishment cell at the Arctic prison in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region on Wednesday, two days before Russian authorities announced his death.

His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said that marked his 27th time in such an inhumane space, usually a roughly 7-by-10-foot concrete cell with unbearable conditions — cold, damp and poorly ventilated. His latest round of punishment, had he survived, would have taken his total period in such a cell to 308 days, more than a quarter of his time in incarceration, according to Yarmysh.

Once a day at 6:30 a.m., prisoners in the punishment cells at the Arctic facility are allowed into a coffin-like concrete enclosure open to the sky through a metal grate, Navalny said in a message from the facility this year. It appeared to be after such a session Friday that Navalny lost consciousness, according to the Russian prison service’s account. It was about minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

In a letter from prison last month, Navalny described how he could walk a total of 11 steps from one end of the open-air space to the other, noting that the coldest it had been so far on one of his walks was minus 26 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Even at this temperature, you can walk for more than half an hour, so long as you have time to grow a new nose, ears and fingers,” he wrote. “There are few things as invigorating as a walk in Yamal at 6:30 in the morning. And what a wonderful fresh breeze blows into the yard, despite the concrete enclosure, wow!”

While walking there on a recent day, he said he was freezing and thinking about how Leonardo DiCaprio climbed into a dead horse to escape the cold in the wilderness survival movie “The Revenant.” A dead horse would freeze in that part of Russia within 15 minutes, Navalny surmised.

“Here we need an elephant — a hot, fried elephant,” he said.

Navalny often employed such wit in the face of his inhumane treatment. But it had become increasingly clear, over his three years of incarceration, that he might not survive.

“The cumulative treatment of Navalny over several years in prison — in a way you could say it was driving him close to death,” Mariana Katzarova, the United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, said in an interview Saturday. “We don’t know yet. We need an investigation.”

For a time, Navalny did seem almost invincible.

In August 2020, he fell ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, after being poisoned with a nerve agent from the Russian-made Novichok family. He was put into a medically induced coma for two weeks during treatment in Germany — and survived.

The U.S. government later attributed the poisoning to Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB.

Despite the assassination attempt, Navalny returned to Russia in early 2021 to continue his fight against Putin, who denied Russia’s involvement in the poisoning, and quickly found himself imprisoned. His health began to deteriorate almost immediately.

In March 2021, he complained about severe back pain that later turned into a problem with his leg.

He demanded that prison authorities provide him with proper medical care and give him medication. Instead, they subjected him to sleep deprivation, he said. At the end of March 2021, he declared a hunger strike over his treatment, and Russian doctors and Hollywood stars took up his cause in open letters to Putin.

About three weeks later, Navalny was examined by an independent panel of doctors. The tests by the doctors found that, “soon enough, there won’t be anyone to treat,” Navalny said in a message posted to Instagram.

Last year, Navalny wrote from prison that his jokes about the punishment cell shouldn’t normalize the environment.

He lamented that a fellow political prisoner, who had spoken out against the war in Ukraine, had been put in a punishment cell, despite being disabled and missing part of a lung.

Navalny described dire health conditions in prison, where he said many inmates suffered from tuberculosis. He also complained early last year about the administration in his former prison placing a mentally unwell person in a cell opposite his, as a form of torment, and an ill prisoner in his small cell.

At the time, his lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, said the prison deliberately infected him with a respiratory illness, refused to give him medicine and then “treated” him with huge doses of contraindicated antibiotics. Navalny suffered severe stomach pain and lost more than 15 pounds as a result, Kobzev said.

“These actions can’t be regarded as anything other than an open strategy to destroy Navalny’s health by any and all means,” Kobzev said in a statement at the time. “Obviously, the prison wouldn’t risk engaging in this level of demonstrative unlawfulness without approval from Moscow.”

Kobzev has since been arrested on extremism charges for associating with Navalny — part of a broader roundup of the opposition leader’s attorneys late last year.

Navalny suffered a dizzy spell and was put on an IV drip in an unexplained medical episode in early December. But Russian authorities still transferred him later that month from a prison in the Vladimir region, about 130 miles east of Moscow, to the “special regime” penal colony in the Arctic where he died.

Several doctors contacted after his death, including one who was involved in his initial treatment in the Siberian city of Omsk, said his death was likely unrelated to his poisoning more than three years earlier, given his robust recovery.

But he faced many other health hazards since then.

“A Russian prison is a place where you have to be prepared to die every day,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian tycoon who spent a decade in prison after challenging Putin, said Friday.

In the interview, Khodorkovsky, who was released in 2013, said a prisoner must find a way to treat the burden as a test in order to survive mentally, and Navalny had done that. But even then, he added, “this will not protect you from being killed.”

Cheney urges Johnson to act: Don’t do what Trump and Putin want you to do

Politico

Cheney urges Johnson to act: Don’t do what Trump and Putin want you to do

Kelly Garrity – February 18, 2024

Former Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to call the House back from its recess and introduce the bill that would send desperately needed aid to Ukraine — even if it means risking his speakership.

“He ought to understand that it is worth it if he has to lose his speakership in order to make sure that freedom survives, in order to make sure that the United States of America continues to play its leadership role in the world,” the Wyoming Republican said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Senate last week advanced a $95 billion aid package that included roughly $60 billion in aid for Ukraine as it works to fend off Russia’s invasion, a cause Republicans once broadly backed.

But Johnson, who has a razor-thin majority in the House, has been critical of the bill in the face of pressure from former President Donald Trump, and resisted taking it up before he adjourned the House for a two-week recess. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said.

Cheney, who was ousted from her position in the GOP House leadership after refusing to waver in her criticism of Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection, urged Johnson not to give in to outside pressure.

“He’s going to have to explain to future generations to his kids, to his grandkids whether or not he did what was right, whether or not he was a force for good and aided the cause of freedom, or whether he continued down this path of cowardice and doing what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin wanted him to do,” Cheney told host Jake Tapper, tying their rhetoric together through the death of Putin foe Alexei Navalny.

“When you think about Donald Trump, for example, pledging retribution,” she said, “what Vladimir Putin did to Navalny is what retribution looks like in a country where the leader is not subject to the rule of law, and I think that we have to take Donald Trump very seriously.”

Cheney warns of a ‘Putin wing of the Republican party’

The Hill

Cheney warns of a ‘Putin wing of the Republican party’

Sarah Fortinsky – February 18, 2024

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), an outspoken critic of former President Trump’s, warned of the emergence of a “Putin wing” of the Republican party and stressed the importance of preventing its return to the White House.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Cheney sharply criticized Trump’s recent comments suggesting he would not defend NATO allies in the wake of an attack from Russia and his recent silence following the death of the anti-corruption, pro-democracy opposition leader in Russia, Alexei Navalny.

“I think that we have to take Donald Trump very seriously,” Cheney said on Sunday. “We have to take seriously the extent to which you have now got a Putin wing of the Republican Party.”

“I believe the issue this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House,” she continued.

In the interview, she did not make any presidential endorsements and said she has not yet decided whether she would enter the race herself. She made clear, however, that she would do whatever she could to prevent Trump’s return to the White House.

“Donald Trump, as you pointed out, said just a few days ago that he had told a NATO ally that he would encourage Putin to do whatever he needed to do, whatever he wanted to do,” Cheney told CNN anchor Jake Tapper.

“He’s basically made clear that, under a Trump administration, the United States is unlikely to keep its NATO commitments. And I think that Republicans who understand the importance of the national security situation who continue to support him are similarly going to be held to account,” she said.

Pressed later about Trump’s NATO comments, Cheney said, “It’s disgraceful. I can’t imagine any other American president of either party since the establishment of NATO saying such a thing. And it’s completely uninformed and ignorant and dangerous.”

Cheney also drew a connection between Trump’s frequent suggestions that he would investigate his political opponents in a second term and Navalny’s death.

“When you think about Donald Trump, for example, pledging retribution – what Vladimir Putin did to Navalny is what retribution looks like in a country where the leader is not subject to the rule of law,” Cheney said.