The Week Magazine March 11, 2022

In a perverse and terrible way, Vladimir Putin has done the world a great service. As he ruthlessly tries to brutalize Ukrainians into submission, Russia’s mad czar has reminded Europeans and Americans of the fragility of the liberal international order. History is not over. Authoritarians are ascendant. Democracy and freedom are in peril. Even the unthinkable—nuclear war—is back in our nightmares. At this hinge point in history, Ukraine’s suffering and incredible courage should provide some moral clarity. “We’ve hardly slept for seven nights,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told his countrymen this week, as shells and missiles rained down on Kyiv. “The time will come when we’ll be able to sleep, but it will be after the war, after the victory.” Though we haven’t fully recognized it until now, Putin has also…

What happened The Russian army rained rockets, missiles, and shells on cities across Ukraine this week, escalating an invasion that has met condemnation from around the world and unexpectedly effective resistance from Ukrainian forces. A week into the campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin was reportedly deeply frustrated that Kyiv and other major cities had not fallen to an assault involving more than 100,000 Russian troops and thousands of tanks and armored vehicles. In response to the fierce Ukrainian resistance, Russia changed tactics, encircling and laying siege to Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mariupol and bombarding civilian areas, government buildings, and critical infrastructure. In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, residential neighborhoods were under intensifying fire that was “killing and maiming innocent citizens,” said Mayor Igor Terekhov. Ukraine said that more than 2,000…

What happened President Biden was in bridge-building mode this week, with a State of the Union address that hailed international and bipartisan unity on Ukraine and acknowledged the toll of inflation on American families. Biden spoke of the “countless hours” he spent getting allies to agree on sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, saying free nations must make dictators “pay a price for their aggression.” He announced the release of 30 million barrels of oil from America’s strategic reserves to blunt a rise in gas prices and called controlling inflation “a top priority,” insisting that “we are going to be OK.” He also reiterated some of his goals from the stalled Build Back Better bill, including expanded manufacturing and affordable child care. With his approval rating at…

“Could Putin go nuclear?” asked Eric Levitz in New York magazine. The idea that even a “paranoid,” “homicidal dictator” like Vladimir Putin would launch an unprovoked nuclear strike seemed unthinkable—until last week. As Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Putin bragged about his country’s nuclear arsenal and new hypersonic missiles, and warned that any nation that “tries to stand in our way” would suffer consequences “you have never seen in your entire history.” He said he was putting his nation’s nuclear forces on “special combat readiness.” Most Russia and military analysts think Putin is bluffing, to ensure that NATO doesn’t get involved in the war. But “given the scale of devastation that a nuclear conflagration would entail,” Putin’s threats are causing alarm in both Europe and the U.S. If…

Good week for: Payback, after a Ukrainian mechanic opened valves and partially sank the $7.7 million luxury superyacht owned by his boss, Alexander Mikhee, the CEO of a Russian weapons company. “My boss is a criminal who sells weapons that kill the Ukrainian people,” Taras Ostapchuk, 55, told police in Mallorca, Spain. After being arrested and released, he left to fight in Ukraine. Gay men, who academically outperform straight men and all other groups in high school and college, according to a new Notre Dame study. The lazy, after a new study found that sedentary people could boost their biceps strength by 12 percent by doing three seconds of resistance exercise a day. Bad week for: Smugglers, after border officers in Southern California seized 1,336 pounds of methamphetamine disguised as…

A Black student at Harvard who broke a bone in his foot didn’t realize it for a day, which he blamed on “white supremacy.” Writing in the Crimson student newspaper, Gordon Ebanks said he assumed he’d merely suffered a sprain because society had taught him that “my pain didn’t matter.” A doctor who X-rayed his foot the next day informed him of the fracture. A Houston man allegedly opened fire at restaurant workers after he said they didn’t give him enough barbecue sauce with his takeout order. Andre Thomas, 36, called Dickey’s BBQ Pit to complain he’d been shorted on sauce. Police say he waited in the parking lot for workers to leave, firing at them in their car, breaking one worker’s arm and missing the other. In other news…