-Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, praising Putin's U.S. propaganda arm

The thing about an international effort to isolate a deranged dictator and get him to stop attacking a peaceful country is, it works a whole lot better when other dictators and right-wing billionaires aren’t poking holes in it.
 

• President Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping for nearly two hours on Friday, pressing him not to provide any military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden warned that China would face (unspecified) consequences from the U.S. and the wider world, but it’s not clear that Xi made any assurances. In a readout following the call, China’s Foreign Ministry quoted Xi as being sharply critical of global sanctions, and while he called for an end to the war, he didn’t assign blame to Russia for the invasion. 
   
• At the same time, there have been some interesting shifts in China’s official discourse about the war. The country’s state-run media coverage has focused slightly less on the power of Russia’s military, and slightly more on peace negotiations and the civilian toll in Ukraine. CGTN America, the global arm of China’s state-run media, on Friday tweeted (and later deleted) some decidedly non-Kremlin-approved language: “The dead bodies of people killed by Russian shelling lay covered across much of Ukraine.” That doesn’t necessarily signal a shift in Chinese foreign policy, but it’s a notable sliver of daylight between the Chinese and Russian governments.
   
• Meanwhile, as Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at a surreal pro-war rally in Moscow on Friday, Russian forces expanded their airstrikes to the western city of Lviv, near the Polish border. Until now, Lviv had been a relatively safe destination for Ukrainians fleeing harder-hit areas. In Mariupol, 130 people have been rescued from the bomb shelter below a destroyed theater, while an estimated 1,300 more remain unaccounted for.

As Putin’s war grinds on, other authoritarian leaders aren’t the only ones undermining Western efforts to maximize the economic punishment. 
 

• Koch Industries announced this week that it won’t stop operating its factories in Russia, ignoring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s pleas for all American companies to leave the country immediately. “Koch Industries is shamefully continuing to do business in Putin's Russia and putting their profits ahead of defending democracy. The noxious stench of Trump still hangs over Koch Industries,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden. 
   
• With Russia’s economy crumbling under Western sanctions, the country was this week teetering on the brink of a historic default on foreign debt, but appears to have avoided it after making a $117 million interest payment to foreign bondholders. (U.S. sanctions allow American investors to continue receiving interest on Russian debt, at least through May.) That doesn’t put Russia permanently out of the default woods: It still has about $4.6 billion in dollar and euro debt payments to make this year, according to JPMorgan analysts. 

The overwhelming majority of world leaders and dozens of large American corporations have taken a united stand against the invasion of Ukraine, but the sides that a few powerful fence-sitters choose could determine how much longer the war drags on, and how many more lives are senselessly shattered in the process.

Check out a brand new episode of X-Ray Vision recorded live at SXSW in Austin! This week, Jason and Rosie discuss the upcoming Moon Knight series, the new trailer for Marvel Studios’ Ms. Marvel, and explore the historical and narrative importance of multiverses across fiction and comics. New episodes of X-Ray Vision drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

A covert CIA training program helped the Ukrainian military prepare for the current Russian invasion, according to former U.S. officials. The now-terminated program reportedly began in 2015, after pro-Russian rebels began a secessionist war in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. A handful of veteran CIA operators taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques, how to operate U.S.-supplied equipment, how to prevent Russians from digitally triangulating and targeting their locations, and other skills that have helped the Ukrainian resistance unexpectedly hold off a Russian takeover into the invasion’s fourth week. “We tried to really focus on operational planning, then really hard military skills like long-range marksmanship—not just the capacity to do it, but to know how to do it on a battlefield, to really deplete the leadership on the other side,” said a former senior intelligence official. The small program operated for years, despite concerns that a wrong move could trigger a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, until the Biden administration pulled all CIA personnel out of Ukraine last month.

• North Carolina officials have begun investigating former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for voter fraud, in response to the allegation that he registered to vote at a mobile home where he never lived. 
   
• Ken Cuccinelli, a top political appointee at Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, directed the agency to investigate imaginary voter fraud months ahead of the 2020 election.
   
• Moderna has asked the FDA to approve a second booster shot for all adults over 18. Pfizer sought authorization for a second booster for people over 65 earlier this week. 
   
• A large trial found that Ivermectin is no better than a placebo at preventing serious illness in COVID patients. Pour out a shot of horse goop for Joe Rogan. 
   
• Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) said he will veto a GOP-drawn congressional map that would have established one safe seat for each party, instead of keeping both districts competitive.
   
• Three Russian cosmonauts arrived safely at the International Space Station on Friday, amid heightened tensions between Russia's Roscosmos space program and its international partners. 
   
• In equally high-stakes space(-adjacent) news, Pete Davidson will no longer be on the next Blue Origin flight to almost-space, after the launch was postponed to March 29. It is unclear whether Jeff Bezos will be able to find another famous white guy on such short notice. 

After Wisconsin Republicans radicalized their base with endless voter-fraud bullshit, the base is now turning on party leaders it has deemed insufficiently unhinged. State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos spent Wednesday meeting with GOP voters who are demanding that lawmakers decertify the 2020 election, a move that he opposes, and also, isn’t a thing. Vos has come under fire from a growing number of Republicans who feel he didn’t do enough to investigate fictional voter fraud, and who have rallied around GOP state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, who’s running in the GOP gubernatorial primary on a platform of decertifying the election (again, not a thing). Ramthun’s candidacy has pushed his opponents to more conspiratorial extremes, and seems to be having the same effect on other party leaders: After his Wednesday meetings, Vos told reporters that he believed there was “widespread fraud” in the election (there wasn’t), in an effort to appease the conspiracy theorists calling for his resignation.

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The three big credit-reporting firms announced Friday that they’ll remove nearly 70 percent of medical-debt information from consumers’ credit reports.

The House has passed the CROWN Act, which would ban race-based hair discrimination.

California lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make California a safe haven for trans kids and their families who might face separation or prosecution in their home states. 

Fiona Apple has a cool request for you. (Particularly if you live in Maryland.)