Welcome to week three of Fighting Words, a newsletter about the things that got me steamed this week. Plus, some culture and trivia and fun.

Item one: Good gawd, y’all

The biggest tell in Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric in the run-up to his invasion of Ukraine was his use, in a speech the night before hostilities commenced, of the words “de-Nazification” and “genocide.” These were lies, obviously. There are no Nazis in Ukraine, and no genocide is being perpetrated there against anyone.

But he knew just what he was doing in speaking those words: stirring up decades-old ghosts and raising age-old resentments. Some Ukrainians did sympathize with the Nazis during World War II—not entirely unreasonably, given that Russia (that is, Stalin’s Soviet Union) had been starving Ukrainians throughout the 1930s, a campaign that led to the deaths of nearly four million people. In fact, a planned census, intended to measure the extent to which the population had been decimated at Stalin’s hands was suppressed by the Russian strongman, and the census takers—and this was a very Stalinesque touch—were killed.

Now that was a genocide (Google Holodomor). Sixteen nations, including the United States, have recognized it as such. Even so, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought with the Soviet Union and the Red Army during World War II. So Putin’s words weren’t merely monstrous lies, they were tinged with a unique cruelty, and undoubtedly heard by many Ukrainians as a reminder of a time of ceaseless misery in their homeland—and a time when Ukraine was, of course, in essence a province of Russia.

Where is all this going? We know only one thing about wars: Unpredictable things happen. The men who’ve started wars throughout history have always been so very certain about the course that events would take after their fateful decisions. Hitler knew the Wehrmacht would be in Moscow before winter set in. What is Putin so certain of at the moment? A good guess, combining several things I read Thursday, goes something like this: Russia seizes control of Donetsk and Luhansk, perhaps fairly easily (or perhaps not). Putin installs puppet regimes. Maybe he settles for that. That would be terrible, but let’s face it—it’s a reality the broader world, preoccupied with its own crises, would likely learn to live with in time.

Another, grimmer guess is that Putin tries to occupy the whole country. Remember, Ukraine was a Putin appendage until the Maidan Revolution of 2014. So maybe he wants that back. Already, Russian Army troops are on the outskirts of Kyiv, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy is suggesting that Putin wants him deposed—or worse, if you get my drift. Zelinskiy also said he’d consider adopting a “neutral status,” and Putin said he might negotiate. It’s worth watching whether the NATO alliance will hold (and some cracks have already formed on the extent to which everyone is willing to go in sanctioning Putin). Joe Biden, to his credit, has handled all this very well so far. But tougher times are probably ahead.

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Item two: Putin’s Americans

Of greater concern here at home is Putin’s American amen chorus, led by Donald Trump, who praised the invasion as an act of “genius.” Nothing about that man is astonishing anymore, but the idea that a former president of the United States is siding with Russia against his own country is, well, pretty damn astonishing, or would be if that ex-president weren’t Trump. And you undoubtedly saw Mike Pompeo’s humiliating testimonial to Putin on C-SPAN.

This shameful pair has been joined by Tucker Carlson, whose now-infamous Putin-never-called-me-a-racist riff was as direct a statement of his worldview as he could possibly have made: Putin, he was saying, is not my enemy. Liberals are my enemy, viewers, and they should be yours.

Now look at these tweets by right-wing members of Congress.

What can you say about people who think like this? Of course, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was president. He didn’t “need” to, because Trump—aside from not exactly bringing peace to the Middle East—was helping Putin corrupt Ukraine. He got impeached for trying to extort the country, threatening to hold up some military aid unless President Zelenskiy agreed to interfere corruptly in the 2020 election. Also, Trump was helping Putin achieve other objectives. Putin wants NATO and the European Union to be weak and beset with internal strife, which both were under Trump. Putin was achieving his objectives through a pliable and like-minded U.S. president. As Steve Benen put it Tuesday: “Had Putin launched an invasion, it risked upsetting the course he was already delighted to see. Why would the Russian leader get in the way of the progress Trump was already delivering?”

Plenty of Republicans are taking the more traditional anti-Russia position, but make no mistake here: Trump and Carlson—the most powerful Republican politician in America and the most influential right-wing television host—are both making clear to their considerable followings that when it comes to global conflict, the world is divided into democrats and authoritarians, and they are unambiguously on the side of authoritarians, against even their own countrymen and women. This is the global war Steve Bannon is seeking to foment. If Trump and Carlson keep beating this drum, how long before the bulk of the Republican Party marches to it?

Item three: No Bragg, just fact

Finally, and quickly, let’s not lose sight of what to me was the second-biggest story of the week: the apparent collapse of the case the Manhattan district attorney’s office is making against the Trump Organization.

The New York Times broke the story late Wednesday that the two lead prosecutors on the case—experienced and respected people—abruptly quit. It was obvious from the way the story was written that the prosecutors took the story to the paper. In other words, something happened in that office that really, seriously pissed them off.

The new district attorney is Alvin Bragg, who inherited the case from Cyrus Vance. He’s only seven weeks into the job. What exactly happened, the story didn’t say. But it looks like the case is dead. Bragg has good credentials and has prosecuted public corruption. Maybe he just thought that without a songbird like former CFO Allen Weisselberg, he couldn’t get a conviction. But I don’t know. I used to cover New York politics, and I’ve been watching prosecutors for 30 years, and I have never seen anything like these abrupt, angry departures. (Four Justice Department prosecutors abruptly resigned on the Roger Stone case, but that was a totally different kind of circumstance, after Stone was convicted.) Assistant district attorneys never go to the press to air internal complaints. Ever.

There’s another shoe to drop here, in other words.

Culture note: George Harrison would have turned 79 today. Now there’s a good place to go and hide from war and fascism. In which spirit I offer you this lovely cover of “Long, Long, Long.”

This week’s quiz

African geography quiz: The nations in the west take a long time to learn and remember. Name these four countries in correct order from west to east: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal.

Transportation quiz: What is the fastest train in the world? No, it’s not in China! This is kind of an obsession of mine. High-speed rail, that is. One of these days, we’re going to have a big cover story on how high-speed rail could transform America economically.

Pop culture quiz: Why did I headline the first item above “Good gawd, y’all”?

Answers to last week’s questions: I named three sets of five people and asked you to identify what they were famous for.

S.Z. Sakall, Una Merkel, Franklin Pangborn, Beulah Bondi, and Charles Coburn were all brilliant character actors from the golden age of Hollywood. Sakall was Karl the waiter in Casablanca, for example.

Giorgio de Chirico, Méret Oppenheim, Dan Flavin, Raoul Dufy, and Lyubov Popova were modern artists.

Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Vinnie Bell, and Leon Russell were all members of the Wrecking Crew, the famous L.A. session musicians of the 1960s who were the people who played actual music on Beach Boys records, as opposed to the Beach Boys, who did not.

Finally, I asked you to rank these U.S. cities from easternmost to westernmost: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee.

This was tough, as they’re close together, longitudinally. Answer: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Memphis. If you just look at a map, Cincinnati looks east of Atlanta. But Atlanta’s longitude number is 84.38 W, and Cincinnati’s is 84.51 W, and yes, that means Cincy is further west (the numbers increase as they head west, away from the Greenwich Meridian—for example, New York is 74, Los Angeles around 118).

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—Michael Tomasky, editor

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