1. The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper called on the nation to support President Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero strategy, showing any shift in policy is unlikely even as lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere threaten to hurt the economy. In a front-page commentary Monday, the People’s Daily said Xi’s strategy to snuff out the virus has proven “correct and effective” and China should be “uniting more closely around the party’s leadership with Xi Jinping as the core.” Citizens should follow the strategy “unswervingly and unrelentingly” with “earlier, faster, stricter and more practical” measures, it said. (Source: bloomberg.com)
2. The Ukrainian War may last through the remainder of the year. U.S. Secretary of State Blinken shared this assessment with European allies. Most military analysts believe that this second phase of the war (after the Russian failure to take Kyiv) will be just as important as the first. The Donbas region and southern Ukraine will be the focus of Russia’s ground campaign. If the future battles do not go well for Ukraine it may face the prospect of being threatened in the future by Russia from three sides. From the north from Belarus, from the east from Russia and the Donbas region, and from the south from Crimea and the shoreline of the Black Sea. Should Russia take Odessa on the Black Sea then Ukraine will have difficulty maintaining its economy in the future and may need to make significant concessions to Russia in the months to come. (Source: sof.news/ukraine)
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