Your Two-Week Reminder That Putin REALLY Wants Republicans To Win The Midterms

Like really really really.

A couple Russia/Ukraine stories from the past couple days:

1. Sergei Shoigu, who runs the Russian Pentagon, has been calling his counterparts around the world and gravely breaking the news that he's pretty sure Ukraine is going to do a "dirty bomb," to which Russia might just be forced to respond. Russia has no choice but to bring this up at the United Nations. Oh, those dastardly Ukrainians.

The entire civilized world agrees Russia can fuck off with that nonsense, because the entire civilized world knows that if Russia is accusing Ukraine of this, it means Russia is thinking about doing it. This is what they do, as State Department spox Ned Price explains:  

“We have seen a pattern in this conflict, in this war, in the lead-up to this war, where the Russians have engaged in mirror imaging,” said the spokesman, Ned Price. “The Russians have accused the Ukrainians, the Russians have accused other countries, of what it itself was planning. That is our concern.”

2. Oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin is one of Putin's chief ratfuckers, the guy known as "Putin's chef" who ran/runs the Russian troll farm company that fucked with our 2016 American election and others. He ALSO founded the Wagner Group mercenary company, so he's a pretty big deal when it comes to Russian military matters. Prigozhin reportedly recently reamed Putin's ass on how poorly the war against Ukraine is going, to such a degree that it ended up in Joe Biden's Presidential Daily Brief. Apparently there is also an intel report going around DC about how frustrated Prigozhin is with Shoigu.

So obviously things are going great for Russia.

But there's one date coming quickly that Vladimir Putin is pinning his hopes on, and it is November 8, 2022, when Putin hopes his subservient Republicans are a smashing success in the midterms. Then maybe they'll put a stop to Joe Biden and the Democrats standing in the way of letting him level Ukraine and murder every last man, woman, and child he can find. Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave Putin and Putin-lovers hope when he said that if Republicans take the House, the "blank check" for Ukraine might go away. in response, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said that “The notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing."

 Timothy Snyder, the historian of authoritarianism and just tyranny in general, gave an interview to the Washington Post's Greg Sargent yesterday driving home just how excited Putin really is about the possibility.

Snyder says he "takes very seriously" the threat that Republicans will cut off aid for Ukraine, because "democracy around the world depends on Ukrainians winning this war." He adds:

I also find it puzzling, because the Ukrainians are doing more for declared bipartisan American national security interests than any American foreign policy has done for decades.

By pinning down the Russian army and substantially weakening it, they are weakening China’s cat’s paw, which is Russia . By showing how difficult it is to carry out this kind of invasion, Ukraine is making the scenario for war with China — a Chinese invasion of Taiwan — much less likely.

We're sure Marjorie Taylor Greene has thought all that through.

Snyder says a lot of Republicans are doing just fine on Russia and Ukraine, but notes the propaganda loop that goes from Tucker Carlson's mouth to Russian state TV and around and around in circles, which unfortunately finds its way into Republican congressmen's brains.

He says Ukraine is getting close to winning this thing, but a major thing that could change that would be if Republicans won and then pulled back support. "We could throw it all away if we do the wrong thing after November. Things could go either extremely well or extremely poorly." He says if Ukraine makes it through the winter, they'll win. "But if after the November elections, the Americans pull the blanket away from everyone else, things could go very badly."

And that's where he gets specific about how much Putin is counting on that:

This is no secret. This is what Russian propagandists root for on Russian television practically every night. When they talk about how they’re going to win in Ukraine, what they say is “We’re counting on the Republicans in November.” It’s up to Republicans to prove them wrong.

Snyder expresses hope that if Republicans do win, instead of just lying down and begging for belly scratches from Uncle Vladimir, that they'll instead try to compete with the Biden administration over who is doing enough for Ukraine and who needs to do more, which there is precedent for.

We'll see.

One thing we know for sure is that Putin will exploit any fracture in Western support he can find. This Snyder interview happened yesterday. Now a lot of the headlines are about a letter signed by 30 House Progressives over the summer, which oddly was released yesterday, that many read as a call to appease Putin in some way for the sake of ending the war. (The letter has now been officially withdrawn, per House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, and people are rightfully demanding a better explanation than "staffer fucked up.") Of course, by definition, if Ukraine doesn't win the war, it loses the war. And that would have devastating consequences. What the House Progressives did is nowhere near what Kevin McCarthy did, in threatening to cut off funding, and unlike with Putin's Republican caucus, there's no reason to assume nefarious anti-American purposes. Let's call it more of an abject failure to read the room.

Unfortunately, it will also almost certainly also end up on Russian state media, if it isn't already, as evidence that even Joe Biden's party is coming apart over whether it should continue supporting Ukraine.

That's what Putin's looking for. Literally anything he can point to as evidence that the American government's resolve in stopping him is weakening.

But really, though, he's rooting for Kevin McCarthy's party. Lord, he'd be signing up as a MAGA poll watcher   himself if he could.

Let's stay focused on the prize here.

[ New York Times / Washington Post ]

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