Heal the Brokenhearted.

Bind up their wounds.

1. The shooting began in the parking lot. At about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, after driving from hours away, a heavily armed man appeared outside a Tops supermarket. He was wearing tactical gear and body armor, with a video camera fixed to his helmet. He was carrying an assault weapon, with an anti-Black slur written on the barrel. Then he opened fire. Three of his victims outside were killed, the police said later. One was wounded. Then he entered the busy grocery store and continued his rampage, broadcasting the footage live online. A retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard fired multiple shots at the gunman. The authorities said that the suspect was struck but was wearing body armor and managed to return fire, killing the security guard. He shot shoppers and employees, according to the police, leaving a trail of bodies in the aisles. Screenshots of the broadcast circulating online appeared to show the gunman, at one point, holding a gun and standing over a body. (Source: nytimes.com)

---

2. Russia has probably lost around a third of the ground forces it deployed to Ukraine and its offensive in the Donbas region “has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule”, British military intelligence said. “Despite small-scale initial advances, Russia has failed to achieve substantial territorial gains over the past month whilst sustaining consistently high levels of attrition,” the British defense ministry said on Twitter. “Russia has now likely suffered losses of one third of the ground combat force it committed in February.” It said Russia was unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days. (Source: smh.com.au)

---

3. Sweden will jettison 200 years of military non-alignment and apply to join Nato alongside its neighbor Finland, a move that would change the geopolitics of Europe and underscore the unintended consequences of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In a momentous day for the Nordic nations, Finland said on Sunday that it would formally apply for Nato membership in the coming days, while the ruling Social Democrats in Sweden broke with tradition and said they would follow suit. “Europe, Sweden and the Swedish public are living a new and dangerous reality. The European security order that Sweden builds its security on is under attack,” said Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s prime minister and Social Democrat leader. “We Social Democrats think that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we join Nato.” (Source: ft.com)

---

4. Eurointelligence:

North-Rhine Westphalia is Germany’s largest state, almost as large as the Netherlands. It was a traditional SPD fiefdom during the time of Helmut Kohl, with changing governments since 2005. The big news from yesterday’s bellwether elections is that the SPD scored its worst ever result in that state, under 27%. The CDU won with 35.5%, and will probably form a coalition with the Greens. The FDP also lost badly, down 7pp to just over 5%. The so-called traffic light coalition in Berlin seems to work only for one party, the Greens, and only for two politicians: Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, both Green. This fundamental imbalance will inform German politics going forward.

We will spare you the details of the local politics in that state, but focus instead on the big picture. What the results shows is that the secular decline in the support of the SPD is continuing. It is best to look at last year’s election result as a fluke. We expect the SPD’s nationwide support to drop to below that of the Greens shortly. This is where it was at the start of last year’s election campaign. Olaf Scholz became chancellor because the media had been busy destroying his two opponents. They didn’t get to him in time for the election. The Germans ended up voting for the last man standing. It took a war to reveal what many of us suspected before: that Scholz is not a leader. (Source: eurointelligence.com)

---