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Russian forces closed in on the capital of Ukraine during the second day of the invasion, as Western officials warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to overthrow the Ukrainian government and announced new efforts aimed at stopping him.
- Missile strikes rained down on Kyiv on Friday, as Ukrainian leaders called on civilians to stay inside and prepare Molotov cocktails to defend against the Russian military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recorded a video from the streets of Kyiv to reassure Ukrainians that he was staying put, contrary to Russian propaganda, and told EU leaders on a Thursday night video conference that “this might be the last time you see me alive.” Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has himself taken up arms to defend the city.
- Putin on Friday urged the Ukrainian military to overthrow its own government and agree to a peace deal, calling Ukrainian political leaders a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.” (Your daily reminder that Zelensky is Jewish. Also, here’s the head of Odessa’s main synagogue tearfully fleeing Putin’s “de-Nazification” operation.) But that proposal seems like a wild misread of the situation: Russian troops have lost momentum in their push toward Kyiv, according to a senior Pentagon official, because Ukrainian forces put up a much fiercer fight than Russia had anticipated.
- In one powerful instance, 13 Ukrainian soldiers defending Snake Island in the Black Sea refused to surrender, telling a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself,” and were killed as a result. Zelensky said that the soldiers would be posthumously awarded with the title “Hero of Ukraine,” the country’s highest honor. Ukrainian officials reported at least 137 deaths in the first day of fighting, including both troops and civilians, and over 50,000 people have fled the country in under 48 hours.
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Russia’s continued advance toward Kyiv triggered a new round of Western sanctions and domestic protests.
- The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would join the European Union in freezing the assets of Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The U.K. said it also planned to directly sanction the two leaders. Western leaders still haven’t moved to kick Russia out of the SWIFT banking system, evidently because Germany, Italy, and Hungary have reservations about not being able to buy Russian natural gas or sell luxury goods to Russian oligarchs.
- Pope Francis got into the anti-war action on Friday, visiting the Russian embassy in an unprecedented break from diplomatic protocol. (Foreign envoys are usually summoned to the Vatican.) Protesters took to the streets in cities across Russia for the second night, in spite of mass arrests, and Russia has moved to partially limit access to Facebook to crack down on dissent.
Ukrainian resistance has slowed Russia’s invasion, but so far Western sanctions have done nothing to alter Putin’s plans. The Biden administration warned Congress on Thursday that Kyiv could fall in a matter of days, unless Putin agrees to Ukraine’s request to negotiate a ceasefire on the terms he claimed to want in the first place.
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It's been quite the week of news, and our daily news team at What A Day has had some great breakdowns of Florida’s passage of the Don't Say Gay bill, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and more. New episodes of What A Day drop every Monday through Friday at 5am Eastern. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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President Biden has nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, delighting progressives and presumably bumming out Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) in a big way. (He’s being cool about it, though.) “For too long our government, our courts haven’t looked like America,” Biden said on Friday. “I believe it is time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation.” If confirmed, Jackson will not only be the first Black woman to serve as a justice, she’ll be the first former public defender on the bench.
Jackson graduated from Harvard twice, clerked for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, and has been a federal judge since 2013. The Senate confirmed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last year—her third bipartisan Senate confirmation—with three GOP votes: Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), though Murkowski made sure to announce on Friday that she won’t be a guaranteed yes vote this time around, and Graham declared that her nomination “means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”
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The CDC on Friday issued a significantly more relaxed set of COVID guidelines which would allow 70 percent of Americans to stop wearing masks in public indoor spaces. Instead of relying on case numbers to decide whether extra precautions are necessary, the new guidelines outline three metrics for determining whether a community is at low, medium, or high risk: New COVID-related hospitalizations, hospital capacity, and new cases per 100,000 people. Only people in high risk areas need to wear a mask, according to the CDC, including in schools. Under the new metrics, more than half of U.S. counties now fall into the low or medium risk categories. Immunocompromised people are advised to continue masking if necessary to protect themselves, but the new guidance aimed at restoring Normal Public Life (™) could force millions of vulnerable Americans to withdraw from it even further.
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A Memphis judge has ordered a new trial for Pamela Moses, who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote.
A guaranteed income program in Washington, DC, lowered rates of food insecurity and improved recipients’ mental health, according to a new report.
More than 100 openly LGBTQ candidates have announced congressional bids this year, the most in U.S. history.
Steven Cravotta, the creator of a game called Wordle! (not that one), has donated $50,000 to a literacy-focused nonprofit after everyone downloaded his app by accident.
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