Plan B.

What is Web3?

1. Ten million people – more than a quarter of the population – have now fled their homes in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, the United Nations refugees chief said Sunday. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said nearly 3.4 million of the total had fled to neighboring countries, mostly to the Polish border. “Among the responsibilities of those who wage war, everywhere in the world, is the suffering inflicted on civilians who are forced to flee their homes,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said, implicitly holding Russia. “The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled, either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad.” (Sources: scmp.com, unhcr.org)

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2. Ukraine has rejected a Russian deadline to surrender control of the besieged port city of Mariupol, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting since Moscow launched its invasion more than three weeks ago.

The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday it would open humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol from 10am local time on Monday and told Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms and leave. It demanded Kyiv respond in writing to its ultimatum by 5am on Monday.

But Ukraine’s government said it would refuse to hand over the city. “There can be no question of surrendering the city and laying down weapons. We demand that the corridor be opened,” deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk was quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda news site as saying early on Monday. (Source: ft.com)

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3. Report from Mariupol:

People are now so hungry they are killing stray dogs for food.

Dmytro, a businessman who left the city on Tuesday, said friends told him they resorted to this desperate measure in the past few days after their supplies ran out.

“You hear the words but it’s impossible to really take them in, to believe this is happening,” he said. “It is hell on earth.”

Once one of Ukraine’s most important ports, Mariupol is now a charnel house, a city of ghosts. For more than two weeks it has been subjected to a Russian bombardment of such intensity that it has turned whole neighborhoods into piles of smoldering rubble.

Read the rest. (Source: ft.com)

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4. Michael Gordon and Alex Leary:

After Russian forces failed to secure a quick victory over Ukraine, senior U.S. officials see signs the Kremlin is shifting to a new strategy to secure key territorial objectives while seeking leverage to compel the Ukrainian government to accept neutrality between Russia and the West.

The U.S. and its allies had widely interpreted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initial objectives to include the seizure of Kyiv in a matter of days, and the replacement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government with a pro-Russian regime.

None of that has come to pass. A senior U.S. official said indications suggest more than three weeks of grueling combat—in which Ukraine has put up fierce resistance to Russian forces—has prompted Mr. Putin to adjust his tactics.

The new assessment of Mr. Putin’s intentions, which is shared by senior officials within the Biden administration, is to compel Kyiv to accept Russian claims to Ukraine’s southern and eastern territories. Having seized both Crimea and regions of Donbas in 2014, Russia seeks to secure a “land bridge” between western Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, and to expand Russian control of the Donbas region.

Mr. Putin would also continue his military pressure, including the pummeling of Ukrainian cities, calculating that it will lead Mr. Zelensky to abandon his hopes of joining the West and agree to a neutral status and other Russian demands. (Source: wsj.com)

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5. Thomas Friedman on Putin’s “Plan B.”

Putin, I suspect, is thinking that if he cannot occupy and hold all of Ukraine by military means and simply impose his peace terms, the next best thing would be to drive five or 10 million Ukrainian refugees, particularly women, children and the elderly, into Poland, Hungary and Western Europe — with the purpose of creating such intense social and economic burdens that these NATO states will eventually pressure Zelensky to agree to whatever terms Putin is demanding to stop the war.

Putin probably hopes that although this plan most likely involves committing war crimes that could leave him and the Russian state permanent pariahs, the need for Russian oil, gas and wheat — and for Russia’s help in addressing regional issues like the impending Iran nuclear deal — would soon force the world to go back to doing business with “Bad Boy Putin” as it always has in the past. (Source: nytimes.com, Opinion)