Poverty of Dignity.

Call of Duty.

1. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Friday in an effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine, with U.S. officials warning that a Russian invasion could be imminent. The meeting will follow a week of intense diplomacy as the top U.S. diplomat heads to Ukraine and Germany for discussions on the crisis, the State Department said. Adding urgency to Blinken’s talks is Russia’s fresh deployment of troops to Belarus to conduct major military exercises that will further strengthen the number of Russian forces along Ukraine’s border. The troop movements, coupled with statements from Moscow that it was unsatisfied with meetings held with U.S., European and NATO officials last week to address its security concerns, have had some officials in Washington fearing the worst. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

2. Thomas Friedman: “If Putin decides indeed to take another bite out of Ukraine, it will be first and foremost because Putin thinks it will strengthen his chance of staying in power in Russia, which for him is always paramount. To understand how invading Ukraine again could serve that end, one has to go back to the shift Putin made in the last decade: He went from selling himself to the Russian people as the leader who would enable them to overcome their poverty of wealth in the post-Cold War era to the leader who would enable them to overcome their poverty of dignity in the post-Cold War era.” Read the rest. (Source: thomaslfriedman.com, nytimes.com)