Last week’s Revolution article on Volodymyr Zelensky’s trip to the U.S. and speech to Congress (“The Two Big Things From Ukraine President Zelensky’s Trip to Congress”) contained important analysis and orientation about the ongoing war in Ukraine. But in the original version posted, the description of the response Zelensky received from the audience in the Capitol—“The assembled U.S. political leadership overwhelmingly gave him an enthusiastic reception (although a few pro-Russian Republi-fascists remained seated during some of his standing ovations)”—flattened out some key contradictions.
While the statement above was accurate as far as went, it was also the case that a significant number of Republican representatives didn’t attend the joint session at all. An updated version of the article posted during the week noted this fact. The expressed reasons for the absence of many of the Republican House members at Zelensky’s speech varied. They included travel difficulties during bad weather as well as differences, including sharp differences in some cases, that some Republi-fascists have with Biden’s strategy in Ukraine. What this means, and even what the various positions on the war in Ukraine are among different Republicans, is not clear at this point. But the fact that many of them did not attend the speech, and that all the reasons behind this are “known unknowns,” are important parts of the overall picture and should have been mentioned in our article. Revolution will continue to investigate this situation, and address it on our website.