On Thursday, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s historic address to the U.S. Congress, conservative writer Nick Catoggio tore into the wing of the Republican Party that has increasingly embraced Russia and Vladimir Putin rather than the cause of fighting for the preservation of global democracy, in a scorching article for The Dispatch.
“If you’re a post-liberal populist, particularly of the Very Online variety, watching Putin go belly-up in Ukraine has dashed all sorts of political illusions,” wrote Catoggio. “Your faith that strongmen are the best, most competent instrument for achieving political prerogatives is shaken. Your belief that woke Western militaries are no match on the battlefield for fascist machismo looks silly. Your hope of a great authoritarian victory over Ukraine that might inspire Americans to embrace nationalism and reject the global liberal order has disappeared along with 100,000 or so Russian soldiers.”
“Even your sense of Putin as a champion of traditional Christianity has been … complicated by the Kremlin’s babbling about ‘desatanization’ while bombing schools and hospitals,” continued Catoggio.
“Putin has embarrassed you in every conceivable way,” concluded Catoggio. “Naturally, you hate Zelensky for it.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, originally sold to the Russian people as a “special military operation” that would “denazify” the country, has quickly spiraled into a quagmire as Ukraine has blocked their strategic objectives and launched successful counteroffensives, and as the Russian economy takes a massive hit from sanctions against them from the Western world.
All of this comes as former President Donald Trump and some of his closest allies have spoken favorably of Putin, and shifted the party’s traditional anti-Russia views, although this has led to fracturing within the party as large but dwindling numbers of them still support the defensive effort in favor of Ukraine.
