REPUBLICANS DEMAND UKRAINE PAUSE STRIKES ON RUSSIAN DATA CENTERS UNTIL AFTER THE MIDTERMS
WASHINGTON — Republican officials on Thursday formally asked Ukraine to suspend strikes on Russian data centers until after the November midterms, calling the attacks “an October surprise conducted by a foreign military” and a threat to infrastructure “both nations have come to rely on.”
“We are not asking for special treatment,” a party spokesman said. “We are asking our Ukrainian partners to observe a brief stand-down on facilities that produce content of interest to American voters, through Election Day. Kyiv may resume at its discretion in mid-November.”
The facilities, outside St. Petersburg, produce an estimated 40,000 posts a day about American politics, including Senate races, school board elections, and the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment. Ukraine describes them as military targets. The party describes them as “the comments section, where our people live.” Officials stressed that the party does not operate the centers, holds no contract with them, and learned of their strategic importance only when they went silent.
The strikes have also taken a personal toll. Party officials estimate that more than 3,000 girlfriends were lost in the attacks, a figure expected to rise as members continue to check their messages and find the accounts dark.
“She believed in me,” one member said, asking not to be named because he is in mourning. “She believed in America. She said so every day, word for word, in eleven separate conversations.”
The deceased are described as young, beautiful, and devoted to fishing, pickup trucks, and the member’s most recent floor speech. Most joined the platform in the same week. None had ever been photographed with another person. One member reportedly lost four girlfriends in a single night; two were the same woman. He is said to be taking it “one day at a time.”
At a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps Thursday night, the member was asked about the outpouring of thoughts and prayers. “I’ve stood at a lot of podiums and offered thoughts and prayers to people who’d lost everything,” he said. “Standing here, I finally hear what they heard. Nothing. I was offering them nothing, in a nice suit.”
The party has since asked the Pentagon to add the facilities to its no-strike list “effective immediately, and retroactively, if possible.” Ukraine has declined the pause. A spokesman in Kyiv said the girlfriends could not be returned, but offered to release a list of the deceased accounts so that families might grieve. The list runs to 12,000 names, most of them ending in a string of numbers.
By Friday, the party’s support line had matched 214 grieving members with new girlfriends. All of them love fishing.
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