ISW: Russian forces building 30-km wall of freight cars in occupied Donetsk Oblast
Abbey Fenbert – February 11, 2024
Russian forces in occupied Donetsk Oblast are assembling a barrier of train cars that stretches 30 kilometers long, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its Feb. 11 report, citing satellite imagery and Ukrainian Telegram channels.
The barrier, nicknamed the “tsar train,” may be intended to serve as another defensive line against advancing Ukrainian troops.
Satellite images show the line of train cars stretching from Olenivka, south of the city of Donetsk, to Volnovakha, north of Mariupol. The barrier is reportedly constructed from over 2,100 freight cars.
The train barrier is about six kilometers from the current frontline at Novomykhailivka, the ISW said. Analysts said the line “is in an area of the front that was relatively inactive when Russian forces reportedly began construction,” though Russian troops have made “marginal” advancements in the area more recently.
The barrier appears to be a new Russian defensive line, but the ISW said occupying forces could have “other purposes” in mind for the structure.
Russia’s lines of defense in the occupied regions have proved difficult to penetrate, stalling the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive operations on the eastern and southern fronts.
Ukrainian troops are now also on the defensive in Donetsk Oblast, fighting off the Russian assault on the city of Avdiivka, whick lies kilometers away from occupied Donetsk. The military reported Feb. 11 that Russia has been deploying more armored groups in its attempt to overwhelm the city.
ISW analyses why Russians need 30km long “tsar train” barrier in Donetsk Oblast
Ukrainska Pravda – February 11, 2024
The location of the barrier on the map. Photo: DeepStateMap
Experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) have suggested that the 30km long so-called “tsar train” between the settlements of Olenivka and Volnovakha in occupied Donetsk Oblast has likely been created as a defensive line against future Ukrainian offensives.
Details: Analysts believe that Russian forces have built a 30km barrier, dubbed the “tsar train”, in occupied Donetsk Oblast, likely to be used as a defensive line against future Ukrainian offensives.
The ISW report notes that satellite images dated 10 May 2023 and 6 and 10 February 2024 reveal that Russian troops have constructed a long line of railcars over the past nine months, stretching from occupied Olenivka to Volnovakha.
DeepState reported that Russian forces have assembled over 2,100 freight railcars into a 30km long train.
Russian troops reportedly began putting the train together in July 2023. The Russians likely intend to use it as a defensive line against future Ukrainian offensives.
The railway line between Olenivka and Volnovakha is about six kilometres from the front, which ISW estimated to be southeast of the village of Novomykhailivka at its closest point, and is located on a section of the battlefield that was relatively quiet when Russian forces began construction.
Analysts noted that Russian forces had recently made minor territorial gains in the area.
At the same time, the ISW suggests that “the Russians could have assembled the train for other purposes as well”.
To quote the ISW’s Key Takeaways on 11 February:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavliuk as Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander, replacing current Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Russian forces appear to have constructed a 30-kilometre-long barrier dubbed the “tsar train” in occupied Donetsk Oblast, possibly to serve as a defensive line against future Ukrainian assaults.
Ukrainian military observers indicated that the Russian defence industrial base (DIB) is not as productive as Russian authorities portray it to be, but that the Russian DIB is still capable of sustaining Russia’s war effort.
Russia’s current limited DIB production capacity and insufficient serial tank production lines are not guarantees that Russia will struggle to produce enough material to sustain its war effort at its current pace or in the long term.
Russian forces made confirmed advances near Avdiivka and in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline.
CNN reported on 11 February that Russia has recruited as many as 15,000 Nepalis to fight in Ukraine, many of whom complained about poor conditions and lack of adequate training before their deployment to the most active frontlines in Ukraine.
Russian authorities continue efforts to solidify social control over youth and students in occupied Ukraine and to culturally indoctrinate them into Russian identity and ideology.
In Tucker Carlson interview, Putin’s plans for Ukraine appear to echo Trump’s
Kim Hjelmgaard and Rachel Barber – February 9, 2024
Former Fox News host and divisive conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday released a lengthy and carefully stage-managed interview with President Vladimir Putin − the first Western media figure to do so since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago.
Carlson published the video interview on his personal website. It was also posted on his X social account. The interview took place in a gilded hall at the Kremlin palace in Moscow.
It covered a variety topics from the war in Ukraine to President Joe Biden, from the fate of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to Elon Musk. The interview did not break meaningful new ground. Carlson has consistently spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. He’s also been a strident critic of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.
“If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons,” Putin said when asked by Carlson about the prospect for peace in Ukraine, referring to Western aid. “It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it.”
Putin said he didn’t see a point in calling Biden, whom he had not spoken to since before the invasion. Biden has refused to speak to the Russian leader unless genuine conditions for negotiating a peace deal are put forward.
Instead, Putin’s answers about the fighting in Ukraine seemed to echo with the U.S. president he said he had a positive relationship with: Donald Trump.
Putin called on the U.S. to “make an agreement” to end the war, likely involving Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a Manchester, New Hampshire, rally last month.
Trump has not explained how he would achieve this.
The interview comes as momentum on the battlefield appears to have swung in Russia’s favor while fresh U.S. aid for Ukraine remains uncertain in Congress. Polls show the majority of Americans believe the U.S. should be supporting Ukraine, but many are concerned it may be doing too much at the expense of domestic priorities. Republicans are far more skeptical than Democrats over the utility of sending Ukraine more wartime aid.
At times, the interview, which lasted more than two hours, became somewhat confrontational. However, Carslon did not explicitly challenge Putin’s many false assertions, nor did he push Russia’s leader on his military’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine or political repressions at home.
When Putin said he believed Russia and the U.S. could potentially reach a deal to free Gershkovich, an American journalist Russia detained last year, Carlson pressed him: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super spy, and everybody knows that.”
Putin’s government has been holding Gershkovich for more than a year for reporting on the invasion. Gershkovich has been charged with espionage, an allegation he and the U.S. State Department deny. The U.S. government has determined that Gershkovich is being wrongfully detained.
The U.S. made an offer late last year to secure Gershkovich’s release but said Moscow rejected it. Putin appeared to indicate Thursday that he would consider swapping Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who killed a Georgian-born dissident in a park in Berlin in 2019. Krasikov followed his victim to the park on a bicycle. He’s serving a jail sentence in Germany.
Putin dominated the conversation. He also appeared to occasionally joke and snarl at Carlson’s expense.
“Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin said in response to a question about why he had previously said he believed the U.S. could, via NATO, launch a “surprise attack” on Russia.
“Your basic education is in history, as far as I understand,” Putin added. “So if you don’t mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history to give you a little historical background.”
Putin then went on to speak for more than 20 minutes about the history of Eastern Europe, including references to Catherine the Great, the 18th century empress of Russia.
Carlson struggled to interrupt Putin during his personal overview of Russian history.
At one point, the conversation took a turn to discussing the U.S. reputation in the international community. Putin claimed the U.S. is more afraid of a “strong China” than it is of a “strong Russia.”
And he lavished praise on Tesla’s founder, who also owns X.
“I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk,” he said.
In a social media monologue prior to releasing the interview, Carlson said he wanted to sit down with Putin because “most Americans are not informed” on how the war in Ukraine is “reshaping the world.” He blamed U.S. mainstream media for this, alleging that “no one has told them the truth.” He has previously claimed, without providing evidence, that the U.S. government has thwarted his attempts to sit down with Putin.
Carlson said Western journalists have, by contrast, interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy many times. He described these interviews as “fawning pep sessions” aimed at amplifying Ukraine’s need for more U.S. weapons and ultimately directed at getting the U.S. more involved in the war.
There was no immediate official reaction to Carslon’s interview with Putin from Ukraine’s government.
International media outlets have sat down with Zelenskyy dozens of times since the war’s start. However, there is little merit to Carlson’s other claims. Journalists in Russia face extreme reporting restrictions. They can be arrested for labeling Russia’s invasion a “war”; instead, they have to call it a “special military operation.”
Russia’s crackdown on free speech extends to regular citizens as well as journalists. They can be arrested or fined for criticizing the war in Ukraine. Carlson promotes his show on social media platform X as a defender of free speech. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has issued an arrest warrant for Putin. It accused him of war crimes in Ukraine including deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
Since news of the interview broke, many Western journalists have been posting on social media how they have repeatedly attempted to secure interviews with Putin over the last two years. The last time Putin was interviewed by an American journalist was in June 2021 with NBC’s Keir Simmons.
“Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour wrote on X. She called his claim “absurd.”
Putin himself has made many speeches and public appearances during which he’s commented at length on the war in Ukraine and his “objectives.” At various times, he’s described these as “denazification, demilitarization and its neutral status.” There is no evidence to indicate that Ukraine has a systemic problem with neo-Nazis. Putin has long been vehemently opposed to Ukraine and other neighboring nations joining NATO.
Putin has said that Western countries have been “stupefied” by anti-Russian propaganda.
Before the interview ran, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Americans shouldn’t believe anything Putin said in the interview.
“Anybody (who) watches that interview you need to make sure to remember that you are listening to Vladimir Putin. You shouldn’t take at face value anything he has to say.”
As the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, Carlson was one of the network’s biggest stars. The show was canceled last year following a series of controversies. Carlson drove ratings at the network but, his critics say he pushed extreme right-wing views and trafficked in racist and misogynistic themes and conspiracy theories.
“Tucker Carlson isn’t a journalist, he’s a propagandist,” wrote Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy, on X.
“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.” Carlson described Ukraine as a “a pure client state of the United States State Department” and the then looming war as a “border issue.”
Prior to his interview with Putin, one of the topics Carlson addressed on his X account, which posts material from his subscription streaming service, was about male-pattern baldness.
Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone
Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves – February 7, 2024
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., left, the lead GOP negotiator on a border-foreign aid package, holds hands with his wife Cindy Lankford, center, joined at right by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who has been central to Senate border security talks, during procedural votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Senate Republicans have blocked the bipartisan border package, scuttling months of negotiations between the two parties on legislation intended to cut down record numbers of illegal border crossings. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator on the Senate border and foreign aid package, does a TV news interview at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just before the Senate voted Wednesday to kill the border deal he spent the last four months negotiating, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford climbed a set of marble stairs outside the chamber and joined his wife in the visitors’ gallery.
As the Republican quietly watched from a floor above, briefly the outsider after defending his legislation in a last Senate floor speech, fellow negotiator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was down on the floor excoriating the Republicans who had abandoned Lankford, one by one, after insisting on a border deal and asking him to negotiate a compromise on one of the country’s most intractable issues.
“Less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues changed their minds,” said Sinema, a former Democrat turned Independent. “Turns out they want all talk and no action. It turns out border security is not a risk to our national security. It’s just a talking point for the election.”
Walking out of the gallery with his wife close by his side, Lankford was asked by a waiting reporter if he felt betrayed by his party. He sighed, deeply, and waited a few beats.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t get it done,” Lankford said, diplomatically. “I don’t know if I feel betrayed, because the issue is still there. It’s not solved.”
He then walked back down the stairs with his wife and Sinema, who had come up to greet them after her speech, and walked into the chamber to watch the bill’s defeat.
In the end, all but four Republicans voted against moving forward on the legislation — including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who had delegated Lankford to negotiate the bill combining Ukraine aid and border security and had been closely involved in the negotiations.
A former youth minister in the Baptist church, Lankford, 55, is known as one of the most sincere and well-liked members of the Senate. He’s a conservative who rarely votes against his party, has long championed stricter measures at the border and has been supportive of former President Donald Trump. So his colleagues’ swift and outright rejection of the deal he has spent weeks and months negotiating — and their willingness to completely abandon Lankford in the process, after many of them indicated they were supportive of the direction of the talks — is all the more remarkable.
“They reacted to it like it was a poison,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the third negotiator with Lankford and Sinema, of Senate Republicans who had previously signaled they were supportive. “I think it’s unforgiveable what they did to James.”
“They really threw the man overboard,” President Joe Biden said of Lankford at a fundraiser Wednesday evening.
While some Republicans were always going to vote against the compromise, arguing that no policy is better than what they saw as weak policy, others made clear they were encouraged by the talks as Lankford briefed them on the emerging details. But his colleagues’ eventual, quick rejection of the bill highlights the deep divides in the GOP as Trump, the party’s front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has made immigration a top issue. Some senators who had previously been open to a deal became more skeptical after Trump made his opposition clear.
It is also a sign of dysfunction and paralysis in the Senate as its traditionally bipartisan image fades in favor of more partisan, House-like battles.
When he took on the job negotiating a border compromise, Lankford laughed that “he drew the short straw.” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., joked later that if Lankford can’t get a deal done: “Moses couldn’t get a deal done. He’s one of the most kindest, compassionate people I’ve met in my lifetime.”
His fellow negotiators described him as an earnest, smart legislator who was willing to spend long hours digging into the intricacies of immigration law — and spent weeks away from his family in the process. Murphy said senators often negotiate the broad policies and let staff do the “dirty work” of putting the ideas into legislative text.
“James does both,” Murphy said. “It’s a sign of how sincere he is and how in the weeds he is on policy. But it probably means he’s maybe a little less attuned to the politics.”
The Oklahoma Republican has spent the last three days desperately trying to explain the bill after many of his colleagues put out statements opposing it without even reading the full text. Some Republicans put out misleading statements about what it would do, claiming it was designed to let more people into the country. Trump, who has strongly opposed the bill and said he doesn’t want to give Democrats a win on the issue, gleefully bragged that he helped kill it.
“I think this is a very bad bill for his career, and especially in Oklahoma,” Trump said of Lankford on a radio show earlier this week.
The bipartisan compromise would overhaul the asylum system at the border with faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with the number of people applying for asylum, among other measures to reduce the record numbers of migrants crossing the border. It would also send billions to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Asia-Pacific.
Lankford’s work on the issue could have lasting political consequences. A group of about 100 people within the Oklahoma GOP put out a statement condemning him for crafting the bill even before it had been released. And in his Senate floor speech Wednesday, Lankford spoke of an unidentified “popular commentator” who told him that if he tries to move a bill to solve the border crisis, “I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”
Even more stunning was how quickly his Senate colleagues turned against it.
As the bill was released late Sunday night, Lankford was on an airplane flying to Washington. By the time he landed, an onslaught of criticism from conservatives was already underway. He was on a call with reporters, trying to explain the details of the bill, when House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X that the bill would be “ dead on arrival ” in his chamber.
Lankford’s frustration was palpable as he responded, listing off how the bill would accomplish several conservative goals like building more border wall, hiring more Border Patrol agents, expanding detention capacity and speeding deportations.
“We’ve got to be able to find a way to stop the chaos at the border,” Lankford said.
Almost no Republicans endorsed it, save McConnell. And by Monday night, seeing the writing on the wall, McConnell told the conference it was OK to vote against it.
“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of a field in a thunderstorm holding up the metal stick,” Lankford told reporters shortly ahead of the bill release. “This is a really intense thing. It’s been divisive.”
Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Will Weissert, Jill Colvin and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Sen. Lankford says a ‘popular commentator’ threatened to ‘do whatever I can to destroy you’ if he negotiated a border deal during a presidential election year
Bryan Metzger – February 7, 2024
Sen. James Lankford was the top GOP negotiator on the failed border security deal.
He claims a “popular commentator” warned him not to solve the crisis during an election year.
“I will do whatever I can to destroy you,” Lankford said.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma spoke on Wednesday about the political challenges he’s encountered while serving as the top GOP negotiator on a bipartisan border security deal.
In a speech shortly before the expected failure of the deal, Lankford bemoaned the fact that some fellow Republicans were objecting to the bill for purely political reasons.
“Some of them have been very clear with me,” Lankford said of his GOP colleagues, “they have political differences with the bill. They say it’s the wrong time to solve the problem. We’ll let the presidential election solve this problem.”
Lankford went on to say that a “popular commentator” — without naming any names — threatened to “destroy” him if he negotiated the deal during a presidential election year, regardless of what was in it.
“I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election,” Lankford recounted the commentator saying.
“By the way, they have been faithful to their promise, and have done everything they can to destroy me,” he added.
Ahead of the release of the text of the deal — which was negotiated following GOP demands to attach border security provisions to a bill to provide billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel — right-wing media outlets like Fox News promoted false claims about the deal, claiming it would amount to “amnesty.”
And some Republicans admitted that politics was a key factor for them.
“I cannot vote for this bill,” said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-highest ranking GOP senator, in his statement on the deal. “Americans will turn to the upcoming election to end the border crisis.”
Following the expected failed vote, the Senate is expected to take up a bill to send billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel, but without any border security provisions.
Putin tells Tucker Carlson the US ‘needs to stop supplying weapons’ to Ukraine
Adam Gabbatt and Andrew Roth – February 8, 2024
Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin were in the spotlight on Thursday night, as the divisive, Trump-supporting rightwing commentator interviewed the reclusive Russian autocrat.
The rambling, two-hour interview, filmed in Moscow, was Putin’s first with a western media outlet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
It marked a new level of infamy for Carlson, who has frequently criticized US support for Ukraine, has referred to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, as a “Ukrainian pimp” and “rat-like”.
Carlson’s tone was less pugnacious in the interview with Putin, who he referred to as “Mr President” throughout.
The decision to interview Putin had been widely criticised ahead of the interview. But the opening of the conversation between the former Fox News host and Putin was a let down.
Putin spent more than 30 minutes giving a history of Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, in a monologue that took viewers from the ninth century rule of Oleg the Wise, to the struggles of the 1300s, through to a critique of Lenin’s foreign policy.
When a baffled-looking Carlson finally coaxed Putin into the 21st century, the Russian president accused the US and other western countries of prolonging the war in Ukraine.
There were peace talks with Ukraine that were “almost finalized”, Putin said, but then Ukraine “threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end”.
Putin laid the blame at the feet of Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, in particular. Johnson was forced out of UK parliament in June 2023, but Putin claimed that as prime minister he had dissuaded Zelenskiy from signing a peace deal in the early stages of the conflict.
“The fact that they [Ukraine] obey the demand or persuasion of Mr Johnson, the former prime minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous,” Putin said.
In a video released ahead of the interview, Carlson said he was driven to speak to Putin, in part, because the American public has “no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now”.
It’s unclear whether viewers will come away with a clearer sense of either.
In December, the Kremlin said engaging in peace talks with Ukraine is “unrealistic” – Ukraine has said peace can only be based on a full withdrawal from the territory Russia has seized since it invaded in 2022.
But in the interview, Putin told Carlson that Russia and the US still speak “through various agencies” about ending the conflict.
Russia’s message to the US, Putin said, is: “If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks.”
Putin said the last time he spoke to Joe Biden was before Russia invaded Ukraine.
“I said to him, then, I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away,” Putin said.
Carlson did, at least, press Putin on Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia since 23 March having been accused of espionage – which Gershkovich and the Journal deny.
Putin claimed Gershkovich, 32, was “caught red-handed when he was secretly getting confidential information”, and alleged he was “working for the US special services”.
Russia is “ready to talk” about releasing Gershkovich, Putin said, but added: “We want the US special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing.”
The claim seemed to contradict the White House, which said in December that Russia had rejected a substantial proposal for the release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine serving a 16-year sentence in Russia on espionage charges.
In a video published ahead of the interview, Carlson claimed he was conducting the interview because English-language “media outlets are corrupt – they lie to their readers and viewers”.
“There are risks to conducting an interview like this obviously, so we’ve thought about it for many months,” Carlson said.
“Most Americans have no real idea what is happening in this region. Here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine. But they should know. They’re paying for much of it.”
Followers of Carlson over the past two years will be less surprised than others that Putin accepted the interview request.
Carlson was an early, notable defender of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Putin amassed up to 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s border in mid-February 2022, Carlson appeared to echo Putin’s talking points by claiming the brewing conflict was a mere “border dispute”.
In the week following the attack, Russian state media played clips of Carlson’s rants about Ukraine and against the US providing military aid to the country.
The interview was aired on Tucker Carlson Tonight, a streaming service which Carlson launched in December 2023. Notably, Carlson was fired by Fox News in April 2023 – for getting “too big for his boots”, a book later claimed.
The rightwing commentator faced criticism for the interview before it aired. On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton said Carlson was a “useful idiot” for Putin.
“He says things that are not true,” the former US secretary of state said of Carlson.
“He parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine, so I don’t see why Putin wouldn’t give him an interview because through him, he can continue to lie about what his objectives are in Ukraine and what he expects to see happen,” Clinton said on MSNBC Wednesday.
In his video announcing the interview, Carlson claimed that “not a single Western journalist has bothered” to attempt to interview Putin.
Abby Phillip, an anchor for CNN, said that was untrue.
“Serious outlets, including CNN, have requested Putin to interview over and over again,” she said in her show on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin also debunked Carlson’s claim.
“Mr Carlson is wrong,” Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, said in a briefing. “We receive many requests for interviews with the president.”
Putin last gave an interview to a western outlet in 2021, when he spoke with a reporter for CNBC. He has largely ceased speaking with independent media, both Russian and international, since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2021, he has only given interviews to Russian, Kazakh and Chinese media.
Press freedoms have largely disappeared in Russia over the past two decades, as pressure has grown on independent media and the danger of arrest has increased for local and foreign journalists working in the country.
The arrest of Gershkovich last year was a watershed attack on a foreign reporter in the post-cold war era.
But Russian journalists had already faced long prison sentences for their work and for angering Putin’s allies and friends.
In a particularly egregious verdict in 2022, Russian journalist Ivan Safronov was sentenced to 22 years in prison on treason charges widely seen as politically motivated. Safronov, who had previously worked at Kommersant, was thought to have angered the military by reporting on secret negotiations with Egypt, but all the information in his trial was secret. According to a lawyer, Safronov had been offered just a 12-year sentence if he incriminated others, but refused to cooperate.
Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also sped up the crackdown on independent media. More than 1,000 journalists have fled the country, a number of high-profile criminal cases have been opened against reporters for discrediting the Russian army or spreading “fake news”, and legacy broadcast media like Ekho Moskvy have been forced to close down, despite having powerful backers in the government.
Russia was one of the world’s top five jailers of journalists in 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, with 22 reporters in prison.
At a protest of military wives near the Kremlin this week, police arrested more than 20 journalists in order to prevent them from reporting on the demonstration in an “unprecedented” move, according to Reporters without Borders.
• This article was amended on 9 February 2024 to correct some misspellings of Evan Gershkovich’s surname.
Republicans are sticking to Trump — they’re about to reap the whirlwind
Brian Karem – February 8, 2024
Donald Trump; Mike Johnson Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Welcome to the whirlwind.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional lawyer, says he doesn’t believe the Republicans can win this fall. “They are floundering to find something to run on,” he said. “They’re losing all over the place. They don’t want solutions, they want problems. With them it’s rule or ruin. Either they want to rule everything or ruin our chances of progressing. That’s a fascistic strategy.”
According to Raskin, the Republicans won’t accept the result of elections unless they win, and are using immigration as a campaign issue for Donald Trump — who may well be ineligible to run for office. “I don’t think he’s legally qualified to be on the ballot,” Raskin said. “It’s clear to me that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Donald Trump because he participated in an insurrection or rebellion. He violated his oath.” Raskin hopes the Supreme Court will come to the “unavoidable” conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency.
Like I said, the whirlwind.
In 1984, in a place called Rio Bravo just south of Laredo, Texas, a double-wide trailer burst into flames.
As the flames grew in intensity they became a whirlwind of fire that consumed the trailer and another structure nearby.
That serves as an apt metaphor for today’s Republican politics, and not just on the southern border.
The trailer owners were unable to do anything about the fire because the subdivision they lived in had no running water, or even electricity. At the time of the fire they were also busy fishing a friend’s trailer out of the Rio Grande, where it had been swept after a sudden deluge of rain.
Rio Bravo was, at the time, a subdivision situated next to the Rio Grande, carved out of rented land by a greedy Texas land developer who sold parcels in “open contracts” to undocumented immigrants. Business was so good, he opened a second illegal subdivision (later called “colonias” — a common term in Mexico — as they became popular throughout the Southwest). He named the second one “El Cenizo.”
That’s right. He called the second one “The Ash.” You can’t make that up.
Covering the border between Texas and Mexico was one of my earliest assignments as a reporter. One of my first run-ins with the Trump administration occurred because of Trump’s incredibly obtuse policies regarding the border. At the time I confronted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders — now the governor of Arkansas — about the practice of caging young immigrant children.
She, of course, claimed to be a Christian and also claimed to be more credible than most reporters. She lied then. She lies now. And Don the Con did not understand, either then or now, the root cause of illegal immigration or how to solve that problem. Trump is not alone. It is an emotional issue, one that nearly every politician has fumbled and few of us understand. It isn’t about criminals marauding through the countryside. It is about hope, despair and disinformation. The U.S. government and the businesses that want a constant supply of cheap labor are responsible for continuing the problem.
There has been no meaningful legislation concerning illegal immigration since the Simpson-Mazzoli Act in 1985, which, for the first time, made it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants. In the 40 years since that became law, few if any large companies have ever been prosecuted for hiring any of the millions of immigrants who work in agriculture, construction, thoroughbred racing and numerous other industries. It’s the promise of jobs and a chance to live out the American Dream that drives the “crisis” on the border that has been with us for at least 40 years.
America needs cheap labor. Immigrants from Mexico and Latin America (and other places much farther away) need jobs. In response, there has been a steady deluge of political garbage out of every White House since the Reagan administration, aimed at criminalizing a story of hope in search of votes.
As the rain continued to fall in Los Angeles this week, causing catastrophic mudslides and flooding, the political rain in Washington also continued, and with similar results.
It engulfed the GOP shortly after sunset on Tuesday, when the House failed by four votes to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — for reasons that even some Republicans could not fathom. Rep. Tom McClintock of California, for instance, voted against impeachment for the simple reason that House Republicans failed “to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed.” To proceed, he said, would “stretch and distort the Constitution.”
The world is in disarray right now. But nothing is in more disarray than the Republican Party, as it suffers both the whirlwind of fire brought about by its own need to generate issues for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the deluge of stupidity unleashed by those who do his bidding in Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led the charge in that latter deluge, one of the few things she does with aplomb. She even claimed that Democrats had hidden members on the House floor to confuse the GOP majority as they voted to impeach Mayorkas. Apparently she can’t count to four even if she uses all of her toes. House Speaker Mike Johnson is so inept that he appointed Greene as a spokesperson. He also can’t count votes. Majority Whip Tom Emmer couldn’t find a way to get four more votes from his own caucus. Republicans have vowed to go after Mayorkas again once they figure out how to count. Is there a better definition of incompetent?
None of this has anything to do with “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional necessity for impeaching officeholders. There is nothing more grimly amusing than watching the GOP’s three-ring circus — which is both led by Donald Trump and staged exclusively for his benefit.
Trump lost twice on Tuesday. He couldn’t get the votes he wanted to impeach Mayorkas and he lost his bid for “total immunity” in his Jan. 6 criminal case, when three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court delivered circuit judges offered a unanimous and airtight opinion against him.
To understand the depth of Trump’s despair, you may be tempted to count the ketchup bottles at Mar-a-Lago. Or you could read at least part of the 57-page court decision which found that Trump can be criminally charged. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn’t muster anyone brighter than Greene to speak up about it. “When they came to Washington to protest, you called that an insurrection,” she said. “But when Biden was inaugurated and this Capitol was surrounded with National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection.”
The congresswoman from Georgia proves, once again, that you can be a whirlwind of fiery rhetoric while deluging the populace with extreme ignorance. Oh, and she wants the House to pass a resolution stating that Trump was no insurrectionist. So there is that.
At the same time the House GOP was trying to impeach Mayorkas, it was also just saying no to a Senate compromise bill that would provide more money and infrastructure on the border along with more support for both Ukraine and Israel. A standalone bill to fund aid to Israel, backed by the GOP, also failed on Tuesday. The border bill failed in the Senate Wednesday, and now that robust body, dominated by aging white men who suffer from incontinence, will have to take up separate funding bills for Ukraine and Israel.
“All of this is just to give Trump something to run on,” Raskin told me. “My colleagues in the Republican Party are subverting the process for a man who embraces fascism.”
The failures keep mounting, but don’t expect Mike Johnson to take any responsibility for his part in the fiasco on the House side. He told reporters, “I don’t think that this is a reflection on the leader, I think this is a reflection on the body itself.” Well, here’s a reminder: He’s the head of that body.
Johnson has promised that any bipartisan legislation sent to the House from the Senate regarding immigration will be “dead on arrival.” Of course Johnson says the border is “an overwhelming emergency” and should be dealt with promptly — but apparently not so much of an emergency that the GOP is willing to accept a compromise solution to a problem that has been ongoing since the last century. The Senate plan — negotiated by James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican; Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat; and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent — would strengthen border security and reduce illegal immigration. The Border Patrol union even supports it – and those folks are not liberal Democrats.
Don’t expect a solution anytime soon. We will get nothing but empty words as Trump’s tempest in a very nasty teapot continues. He wants to delay border legislation indefinitely, so he can run on the issue and take credit for any solution — but only after he wins, which is looking increasingly uncertain the closer we get to Election Day. The decision to deny him immunity seems ironclad, and relies on one of the oldest landmark Supreme Court cases — Marbury v. Madison — to do so. That decision gives courts the ability to strike down laws deemed unconstitutional. So it could be argued that if the Supreme Court takes up Trump’s immunity case and rules in his favor, it will overturn more than 200 years of judicial decisions and eliminate the Supreme Court as an equal partner in government.
To quote the D.C. Circuit decision: “As the Supreme Court has unequivocally explained: No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. … That principle applies, of course, to a President.”
The court also found that the president is “amenable to the laws for his conduct,” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them.
Finally, the court found that Trump was a “citizen,” not a king: He “lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.”
Harry Litman of the Los Angeles Times offered an explanation on X of what took the D.C. circuit so long: “They opted, probably from the start, to make it per curiam — basically one voice. That gives it even added force. And that might have required extensive compromising negotiation to get it just right.”
That means the Supreme Court might actually refuse to hear Trump’s appeal on the immunity case — something he fears and that many court watchers say is possible now that the D.C. Circuit has done the heavy lifting and penned an exquisite opinion. At any rate, even if the Supreme Court takes up the case, many experts believe Trump will still face a criminal trial, at the latest, by fall.
In the short term, do not expect any legislation regarding immigration to pass the Senate or House. Expect Donald Trump to use the time to raise money while he continues to fight his battles in court and keeps his political party running interference for him.
Trump’s last wild ride in the public domain is in its death throes. His whirlwind is consuming him. His supporters are holding on, and those who need him the most, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are defending him so they can stay as relevant as possible (and perhaps evade criminal charges) in a world that increasingly sees Trump and his minions for what they are; soulless hacks with a need and desire for great personal power at the expense of humanity.
What this means for the GOP is obvious: After Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson; after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; after its inability to pass any legislation, the party is undeniably broken, unable to lead and woefully lacking in common sense. It is dedicated to the edification and protection of one of the worst politicians ever to rise to prominence in our republic.
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, described him as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.”
Lead? The GOP is incapable of that. Follow? It won’t follow anyone except Trump, and it will never get out of the way — unless we collectively kick it to the curb. Or right into that whirlwind.
Behind the border mess: Open GOP rebellion against McConnell
Burgess Everett – February 7, 2024
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks during a news conference on border security, following the Senate policy luncheon at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Conservative hardliners once celebrated Mitch McConnell for wrestling the federal judiciary to the right and thwarting progressive hopes.
Now he is under open attack from the right for even trying to work with Democrats on the border.
The Senate GOP leader is facing internal resistance not seen in more than a year as Republicans descend into discord over two issues they once demanded be linked: border security and the war in Ukraine.
McConnell, now nearing his 82nd birthday, is determined to fund the Ukrainian war effort, a push his allies have depicted as legacy-defining. But now that his party is set on Wednesday to reject a bipartisan trade of tougher border policies for war funding, his far-right critics are speaking out more loudly: Several held a press conference Tuesday where they denounced his handling of the border talks, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) calling on McConnell to step down.
In an interview, McConnell rejected the criticism and said his antagonists fail to recognize the reality of divided government.
“I’ve had a small group of persistent critics the whole time I’ve been in this job. They had their shot,” McConnell said, referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) challenge to his leadership in 2022.
“The reason we’ve been talking about the border is because they wanted to, the persistent critics,” he added. “You can’t pass a bill without dealing with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.”
Despite that pragmatism, McConnell’s job is only getting harder. If he runs for another term in leadership next year, a tougher fight than Scott gave him seems almost inevitable.
That is in part because of Donald Trump, whom McConnell barely acknowledges after criticizing his role in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. The former president played a leading role in killing the border deal and has called consistently for McConnell’s ouster. And at this time next year, Trump could well be back in the White House.
More and more of Senate Republicans’ internal strife is seeping out into public view, exposing years-old beefs that are still simmering. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted a fundraising link asking donors to “kill this border bill” in the middle of a closed-door GOP meeting on Monday and demanded “new leadership,” while Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) memed McConnell as Charlie Brown whiffing on an attempt to kick a football held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).
“I’ve been super unhappy since this started,” Johnson said in an interview. “Leader McConnell completely blew this.”
Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson helped squash the border bill’s prospects in the House while Ron Johnson, Lee, Cruz, Scott and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) pummeled it on TV and social media. The intensity of that assault turned many GOP senators sour on a border security deal that would have amounted to the most conservative immigration bill backed by a Democratic president in a generation — a bill they once said was the key to unlocking Ukraine aid.
Though McConnell touted the work of Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and the bill’s endorsement by the Border Patrol union, he conceded what was obvious by Monday night: This legislation is dead.
“The reason we ended up where we are is the members decided, since it was never going to become law, they didn’t want to deal with it,” McConnell said in the interview. “I don’t know who is at fault here, in terms of trying to cast public blame.”
At Tuesday’s party meeting, Cruz told McConnell that the border deal was indefensible, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) questioned why the GOP would walk away from it, according to two people familiar with the meeting. That followed a Monday evening private meeting where Johnson got into a near-shouting match with Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of several senators who has tried to rebut Trump’s influence on the party.
Young played down the spat afterward: “Ron and I have a very good relationship. We can be very candid with one another.”
McConnell’s loud critics are among those most responsible for raising opposition to the border deal, attacking its provisions while the text was being finalized. They raised such a ruckus that none of McConnell’s potential successors as leader — Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — offered to support it.
McConnell can’t be ejected spontaneously like a House speaker, meaning his job is safe until the end of the year. He also has major sway over the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that may have to help Cruz, Scott and other Republicans win reelection.
And McConnell is not without defenders. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said any attempt to blame McConnell for the border crackup is “a bit misplaced.”
Indeed, McConnell was OK with just approving foreign aid back in the fall, but agreed to link it to border security after rank-and-file Republicans grew eager to extract concessions from Democrats in order to get Ukraine money.
“It’s not James’ fault, he did the best he could under the circumstances. It’s not Mitch’s fault,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
The historical record holds plenty of quotes from McConnell’s current critics asking for stronger border policy during the Trump administration. Many of them now have since changed their tune to say Biden doesn’t need new laws at all to enforce border security.
“We all wanted to see border security. And I think a lot of our members were demanding that in exchange for the rest of the funding. That’s an issue our conference needs to be aware of,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the No. 4 leader. “The conference wanted border security.”
The animosity McConnell now faces from Ron Johnson, Lee and others isn’t new either: They’ve questioned Senate GOP leadership’s decisions for years.
Ron Johnson’s been a thorn in McConnell’s side for years, particularly after many Republicans abandoned his reelection bid in 2016. Cruz has sparred with McConnell since getting to the Senate in 2013, Lee frequently breaks with leadership and a number of newer GOP senators voted for Scott over McConnell in 2022.
One GOP senator, granted anonymity to assess the situation candidly, said that the new wave of attacks could be happening because McConnell’s opponents sense weakness — or just out of “personal pique” over years-old disagreements.
“For three months it’s been nothing but border and Ukraine, border and Ukraine, border and Ukraine. I don’t know how many speeches I’ve heard … and now all of a sudden, it’s: ‘We’re not going to do that,’” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another of the McConnell critics. “It just seems like total chaos to me.”
Either way, the 180 among many Republicans is evidence of a major drift away from McConnell’s style of Republicanism and toward Trump’s. McConnell hasn’t talked to Trump since the Jan. 6 riot and tried to turn the party in a surprisingly deal-centric direction during the first two years of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
Just two years ago, debt ceiling increases, gun safety and infrastructure laws passed with McConnell’s blessing — all a reflection of his view that protecting the filibuster requires working with Democrats on bipartisan bills.
Now the reality is that Trump, the likely nominee, doesn’t want a deal that Republicans set out to secure four months ago. Deal-making without Trump’s blessing appears impossible, and that’s a challenging dynamic for the longtime GOP leader.
“This wasn’t good for him. This wasn’t good for any of us,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) of McConnell, whom he backed in 2022. “And I’m not gonna say he’s the total cause of it, but we got to have a better plan. This didn’t work out for us.”
74 percent of Republicans say it’s fine for Trump to be dictator for a day
Lauren Irwin – February 7, 2024
A new survey found that a majority of Republicans say it is fine for former President Trump to be a dictator for the day if he wins the presidential election.
The survey from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov found that 74 percent of Republican voters said it would be a good idea if Trump follows through on his remarks in which he said he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. Twenty-six percent of Republicans say it would be a bad thing.
Thirty-six percent of independent voters said it would be good, while 65 percent said it would be a bad idea.
Democrats were much more opposed. Only 13 percent of Democratic respondents said it would be a good idea for the country if Trump fulfilled his vow to be dictator for a day, while 87 percent said it would be a bad idea.
Trump has said in the past that he would not be a dictator if he were reelected, “except for day one.” On the campaign trail in Iowa in December, Trump doubled down on his claims that he would close the border and be “drilling, drilling, drilling” on his first day back in office.
“After that, I’m not a dictator,” he told Sean Hannity of Fox News.
The remarks have fueled concern for Democrats and even some Republicans that a second Trump term could threaten democracy, as he has threatened to abuse power and target people who have disagreed with him.
The former president is currently defending himself against 91 criminal charges among four state and federal criminal indictments. He is the front-runner to become the GOP’s nominee for the 2024 presidential election.
According to the survey, voters are split on whether they believe Trump is guilty of charges that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents said Trump is likely guilty, while 42 percent said they believe he is innocent. Seventy-two percent of Republican voters said they think the former president is innocent.
The survey was conducted Jan. 25-30 among 1,064 respondents. It has a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
Biden blames Trump for sinking bipartisan immigration bill
By Steve Holland – February 6, 2024
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the bipartisan immigration bill is falling apart under political pressure from Republican rival Donald Trump and vowed to hit the road to remind voters who was to blame if it fails.
“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? The simple reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said. “Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically.”
Concerns over immigration have become a top issue in this year’s election campaign, with Trump preparing for a likely November rematch with Biden. Trump has been pushing congressional Republicans to reject the bipartisan border security deal unveiled on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s vow to make the Republican ex-president’s efforts to kill the bill a major theme of his reelection campaign is a risky bet given polls showing that Americans give Biden low grades for his handling of border security and immigration.
The Democratic president’s approval rating sank to 38% in January as concerns over immigration flared, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend that Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Trump.
In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to U.S. government statistics, but have dropped steeply in about the last month.
Biden will test whether blaming Trump for thwarting a bipartisan compromise can help change American minds.
“I’ll be taking this issue to the country and the voters are gonna know that…just at the moment we’re going to secure the border and fund these other programs Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Biden said at the White House.
The $118 billion bill, which also includes aid for Israel and Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, is quickly losing support on Capitol Hill. House of Representatives Republicans have declared it dead on arrival, and more than 20 Republican senators have said the measure is not strict enough.
Several Democrats have also opposed the bill because they say some of its measures treat migrants too harshly.
Biden didn’t mention the Democratic opposition, but blamed Republicans for buckling under the pressure from Trump, who he said was reaching out to Republican lawmakers to “intimidate them to vote against this proposal.”
“Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right,” Biden said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday also took aim at Trump over the mounting opposition to the border security deal.
“Donald Trump would rather keep the chaos at the border so he can exploit it on the campaign trail instead of letting the Senate do the right thing and fix it,” Schumer said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Trevor Hunnicut and Leslie Adler)
