Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-The White House approved an additional $200 million in arms for Ukraine, but Russia warned they would be “legitimate targets,” stirring fears of escalation.
-President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, calling Russia’s actions a “war of annihilation.” Here’s the latest.
-To counter Russia, President Biden is rethinking relationships with allies as well as rivals — including China, Iran and Venezuela.
-Some surrogate mothers are trapped in Ukraine as their due dates near. And parents abroad have no idea how they will pick up their babies.
-Western Ukraine has been a safe haven for Ukrainian refugees, as well as businessmen, journalists and diplomats. But attacks in two cities pierced the sense of security in the region.
-Texas Supreme Court Shuts Down Final Challenge to Abortion Law
The ruling says state officials have no authority to enforce the law, which empowers private citizens: “We cannot rewrite the statute.”
-Cities and states with the longest mask and vaccine mandates are rapidly lifting them. The abrupt shift has unsettled the most vigilant Americans.
-New Deltacro’ variant is rare and similar to omicron, experts say.
Scientists have found a handful of cases of a new, hybrid variant in Europe and the United States. It’s unlikely to cause trouble, they say.
-Lawmakers want President Biden’s administration to come up with a bumper-sticker-worthy slogan. The White House says it’s sharpening its message.
-Pandemic fears give way to a rush for bomb shelters. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, European anxiety has shifted from Covid to nuclear annihilation. Bunkers, survival guides and iodine pills are flying off the shelves.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Russia has warned that it will fire on western armaments shipments to Kyiv, raising the risk of a direct military confrontation between Moscow and NATO during the war in Ukraine.
-As the west steps up its warnings that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine, a broader fear lurks beneath the surface: the same poison gases that killed thousands on the front lines of WW1 could become an ever more familiar part of 21st century conflict.
-Just as the 30,000 people who queued outside the first McDonald’s in Pushkin Square in 1990 symbolized the start of something new in Russia at the end of the cold war, she says, the huge crowds that made one final trip to Ikea’s stores last week “mark the end of an era”.
-So popular are Turkish-made armed Bayraktar drones with the Ukrainian army that the weapons are celebrated in a song. “We took offence at these orcs. Russian bandits are made into ghosts by Bayraktar,” go the words to the tune posted on the land forces’ Facebook page.
-As Russia plunges deeper into a military quagmire and economic crisis, a central question is whether — if the war is not ended quickly by a peace settlement — Putin can be removed (or persuaded to step down) by the Russian elites themselves, in order to try to extricate Russia and themselves from the pit he has dug for them. To assess the chances of this requires an understanding of the nature of the contemporary Russian elites, and above all of Putin’s inner core.
-As of Friday, Mariupol, which had a population of more than 400,000 people before the war, was in its 11th day without heat, gas, electric power or internet service. Intense Russian shelling knocked these out on March 1, then water the following day.
-The US Department of Justice said banks, cryptocurrency exchanges and other financial institutions that serve Russian oligarchs under American sanctions will be in its “crosshairs”, detailing the agenda of a special task force set up to enforce sanctions in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
-Russia has announced it will cut off access to Instagram (part of META) and launch a criminal investigation into its parent company Meta, adding to the country’s growing isolation since the start of its war on Ukraine.
-Former ministers and City grandees who have spent the past decade earning large pay cheques on boards of Russian-backed companies are now racing to cut ties.
-With its unparalleled line-up of big-name speakers, Houston’s CERAWeek conference, now run by its new parent S&P Global, has long been the banner event on the oil industry calendar. This week 6,000 delegates met in person for the first time since 2019. The proceedings opened with John Kerry, the US president’s climate envoy, imploring the delegates not to lose sight of the climate fight. They ended with Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia who helped block Biden’s climate agenda, calling for the US to wield its “weapon” of “energy independence”.
-BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has taken about $17bn in losses on its Russian securities holdings because of the attack on Ukraine. Clients held more than $18.2B in Russian assets at the end of January, the firm said, but shuttered markets and worldwide sanctions imposed after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine have made the vast majority unsaleable, leading BlackRock to mark them down sharply.
-Powerless in other ways, the arts world is doing all it can to express its outrage by focusing on the Russians in their midst. Scores of leading figures have resigned or been dismissed from their posts, and have seen their performances, exhibitions or film showings cancelled. Long-planned visits such as that of the Bolshoi to London’s Royal Opera House have been scotched, and prominent figures of all nationalities have spoken out.
THE NEW YORK POST
-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sounded a hopeful note Saturday as he declared that a peaceful end to the Russian invasion is possible – even as Russian ground forces took up positions about 15 miles from Kyiv’s city center and nearby villages were pounded by enemy air strikes.
-Vice President Kamala Harris promised continued United States support on behalf of Ukraine after the country was invaded by Russia over two weeks ago: “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance,” Harris told a gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Washington D.C. Saturday. “The ocean that separates us will not leave us untouched by this aggression.”