After Getting the Go-Ahead

I don't know if that is factually factual, but does it matter anymore? Putin and his (or Bannon's) puppet talked and then it's all OK to bomb the shit out of Ukraine and poison a dissident.

ONE DAY after President Trump and Vladi­mir Putin held their first phone call, Russian-backed forces mounted their largest offensive in months in eastern Ukraine. Now, days later, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition activists is in a coma in a Moscow hospital, where he was rushed after suddenly taking ill on Thursday morning. Vladi­mir Kara-Murza, a writer and civil- society activist with many supporters in Washington, is believed by his family to be the victim of a poisoning attack — the second they believe he has suffered since 2015.

With the new assault on Ukraine and the felling of Mr. Kara-Murza, the Kremlin hopes to establish that such crimes will be tolerated by the new U.S. president as part of a refounded relationship with Moscow.

So far, Mr. Putin’s gambit is succeeding: Mr. Trump, while sparring with close U.S. ally Australia, has had nothing to say about the events in Ukraine and Moscow. 

It's all coincidental, I'm sure. Buzzfeed.

“Is it just a coincidence that Russian-backed separatists escalating attacks in Ukraine after Trump-Putin phone call?” Michael McFaul, a US ambassador to Russia under Obama, asked on Twitter on Tuesday.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, echoed that question in a statement released on Thursday, prior to Haley’s remarks. “It appears only Russia can escape a harsh word from the President,” Schiff’s statement reads. “What does this say about his ability to be the leader of the free world?”

Putin bought a lot of compliance with just a little hacking.

Robert Bateman. 

Ukranians are also being hit by standard artillery and mortars.

Ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, tallied 2,260 "ceasefire violations," and that was just on Sunday. Starting, or maybe just continuing, in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, the separatist forces launched another attack on the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka. The shelling seems to be continuing to this moment.

Which sort of makes all of us wonder, what is Trump's response?

Probably a tweeted attack on Arnold Schwarznegger.