| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1985, Konstantin U. Chernenko, who had been the USSR's leader for 13 months, died at age 73. He was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev. | | |  | The big idea | | For all Zelensky's charisma, he's not getting all he wants |  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rallied support for his nation, but he isn't getting everything he says he needs from Western allies. (Ukraine Presidency/ AFP) | | | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's passionate appeals for help as his country battles the Russian war machine have made the former actor and comedian an international star and helped galvanize global public opinion against Moscow. That hasn't stopped some of his most urgent requests from falling short in Washington. The latest example came Wednesday, as the Pentagon formally rejected a Polish proposal designed to get Soviet-era warplanes to Ukraine via a U.S. base in Germany. | - "We do not support the transfer of additional fighter aircraft to the Ukrainian air force at this time," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters, saying such a step would provide "little increased capabilities and high risk" of escalating the conflict with Russia.
| | Zelensky had made getting the planes — which his air force's pilots can fly, unlike American jets — one of his top priorities since Russia invaded Feb. 24. He pushed NATO publicly and privately, in videos posted to social media and calls with other leaders behind closed doors. | | Hours before Kirby's remarks, Zelensky scolded Washington and NATO in a speech. "Listen: we have a war!" he said. "This is not Ping-Pong! This is about human lives! We ask once again: solve it faster. Do not shift the responsibility, send us planes." | | He had also directly appealed to Congress this weekend, telling lawmakers "at least get me planes," according to the Wall Street Journal. Zelensky has also been unable to get President Biden to budge from his opposition to creating a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Enforcing such a haven could put NATO members in direct combat with nuclear-armed Russia, something Biden (and the rest of the alliance) wants to avoid. Zelensky pushed again Wednesday, after Ukrainian officials reported a Russian strike devastated a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol, injuring at least 17 people, including staffers and patients. | | As I noted the other day in a piece about Biden's opposition to the idea: A 'no-fly zone' is basically a defined geographic area, over which certain aircraft are forbidden to fly. It needs to be backed up with the use of military force. In practice, that could mean shooting down any violators, targeting their home bases, and taking out any air defenses supporting them. In other words, it would put NATO at war with Russia Ukraine has also met with no success in its quixotic (but inventive) push to boot Russia from the U.N. Security Council, arguing the seat was not properly passed down from the Soviet Union after its collapse. "We don't see that happening," White House press secretary Jen Psaki bluntly declared March 3. Unlike the requests for warplanes or a no-fly zone, that proposal vanished quickly. It's a good reminder of the foreign-policy adage that nations act on their perceived self-interest, not on warm and fuzzy feelings. | | Despite falling short on those three fronts, Zelensky has plainly built up a fan base inside the Beltway, even after annoying Western leaders by playing down the likelihood of a Russian invasion until it happened and scolding them for not doing more to help now. | | He has spoken with Biden at least six times in 2022. My colleagues Shane Harris and Ashley Parker report: "Zelensky and Biden have forged a rapport that seems to have weathered those early tensions. A senior Biden administration official recounted how in one of their early phone calls Zelensky impressed Biden and his team by referencing a 2015 speech Biden had delivered to Ukraine's parliament, the Rada, as vice president, focused on rooting out corruption." "Zelensky's hat tip to Biden's 2015 speech 'demonstrated the level of preparation [he] was doing for these calls,' the official added. 'It was great to see Zelensky quoting back Biden's own speech. It demonstrated to me not just Biden's history there, but also that Zelensky was preparing for this meeting, that he was really taking it seriously.'" Perhaps the best illustration of the way Zelensky's defiant and media-savvy resistance to Russia has won over hearts and minds while not netting him everything he wants came from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters she had spoken with the Ukrainian leader by phone for more than 45 minutes. "It is really an honor to be just be on the call with somebody so courageous, so determined, and so strategic in his thinking about how to protect his country." But when it comes to imposing a no-fly zone, she added, "they know that we can't go there." | | |  | What's happening now | | Prices climbed 7.9 percent in February — and inflation is expected to keep rising |  Gasoline prices are displayed at a gas station, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Jersey City on Wednesday. (Mike Segar/Reuters) | | | Prices rose 7.9 percent in February compared with a year ago, the largest annual increase in 40 years, Rachel Siegel reports. "Prices rose 0.8 percent in February compared to January," and that "doesn't yet reflect the war's strains on global energy markets," which could cause prices to rise faster in the coming months. February's rise in inflation was driven largely by the cost of gasoline, shelter and food, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Average cost per gallon of gasoline: Around $4.30 on Wednesday | The 2020 Census missed an estimated 18.8 million people | | "People who identified as Hispanic or 'some other race' were undercounted three times more in the 2020 Census compared to the 2010 Census," Tara Bahrampour reports. Challenges to the 2020 count: The pandemic, hurricanes, wildfires and efforts by the Trump administration to speed up the timeline. | Putin calls sanctions 'illegitimate,' says Russia can't 'exist in such a miserable and humiliated state' | | "In a meeting with members of the Russian government, Putin claimed, without presenting evidence, that the wide-ranging, historic sanctions levied against Russia would have been imposed at some point — regardless of whether the country had invaded Ukraine," Timothy Bella and Mary Ilyushina report. Other key updates: | White House warns Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine | | White House press secretary Jen Psaki also "rejected Russia's claims that U.S. biological weapons labs are operating in the war-torn country," warning of disinformation campaigns, Mariana Alfaro and Adela Suliman report. On chemical weapons: Psaki said Russia has "maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law," citing its military intervention in Syria in support of the Bashar al-Assad regime and its suspected poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. | Goldman Sachs announces it will exit Russia | Texas flagged 27,000 mail ballots for rejection in primary | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Pro-Russia rebels are still using Facebook to recruit fighters, spread propaganda | | "A pair of whistleblower complaints filed to the Justice and Treasury departments argue that Facebook violated laws by allowing accounts from sanctioned entities on the platform," Cat Zakrzewski, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg report. The claim: "The existence of these accounts, the filings allege, allowed the users to cultivate global legitimacy and spread Russian propaganda." Some posts appeared to recruit fighters and solicit funds to back pro-Russian separatists, which experts say could violate U.S. sanctions laws — not to mention Facebook's rules. Who raised the issue? Joohn Choe, a Facebook contractor who was hired to study extremism on the platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Choe is seeking whistleblower protections from the SEC. | | Joohn Choe | "Facebook is knowingly aiding and abetting in the information war that Russia is waging," Choe said. The social media posts "[legitimize] the pretextual basis of this war." | | | | | | | U.S. and European officials don't see a clear endgame in Ukraine | | The world expected Russia to overtake Ukraine quickly. But as the war has dragged on over the last two weeks, officials are now saying there's no clear end in sight, Ashley Parker, John Hudson, Michael Birnbaum and Paul Sonne report. The current U.S. strategy: Keep economic pressure on Russia high, support the Ukrainian military and keep the United States out of direct conflict. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration ultimately expects "a strategic defeat" of Putin and Russia, despite any "short-term tactical gains it may make in Ukraine." One known endgame: "Any outcome represents a lose-lose proposition, as even an eventual Russian defeat is likely to leave Ukraine decimated and its European neighbors bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis." | Zelensky's magnetism is fueled by his willingness to sacrifice |  MPs listen to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking to them by live video-link in the House of Commons, in London, on Tuesday. (Jessica Taylor/ AFP via Getty Images) | | | "The fact that Zelenskyy — joined by vast numbers of his fellow Ukrainians — is willing to sacrifice everything makes him a clarifying agent in the great contest of the age, between free societies and despotic ones," John F. Harris writes for Politico Magazine, describing Zelensky as a "Churchill for the social media age." Harris notes that "willingness to trade one's life for a cause is not by definition admirable," and argues that "that kind of devotion always comes more easily to the absolutist mind." The key takeaway: This is not about whether the U.S. or NATO will join the war, Harris writes. But "it's becoming impossible to avoid the Zelenskyy test: What are you willing to sacrifice in the name of your ideals?" | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Harris meeting with Polish president is complicated by jet proposal |  Vice President Harris holds a roundtable discussion with people displaced from Ukraine at the American School of Warsaw in Warsaw on Thursday. (Saul Loeb/Reuters) | | | Vice President Harris is meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday, but "the encounter has taken on an unexpected diplomatic sensitivity following Poland's proposal to provide fighter jets to be used in Ukraine," Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports. The controversial idea has sent ripples through the alliance that Harris must now contend with. From Politico: "Administration officials say she's not there to make any deals, whether it be on humanitarian aid or the transfer of military equipment. Instead, her role is to serve as an emissary and an emblem of the administration's commitment to the country and the trans-Atlantic alliance more broadly." Another issue on the table: U.S. aid for the Ukrainian refugees streaming into Poland The broader goal: Harris's team is "working to dispel perceptions that she is inexperienced on the international stage," Wootson explains. (By the end of the week she will have visited five countries in as many months.) | As militant threat intensifies, U.S. military urges Biden to place commandos in Somalia | Study says Biden's climate change agenda could have ended reliance on Russian oil | | "An analysis released Tuesday by the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation finds that the climate change provisions of Biden's now-defunct proposal … would have reduced U.S. oil consumption by 2025 by half of the roughly 200,000 barrels of crude oil from Russia per day that the U.S. imported last year. By 2027, the U.S. would have cut oil consumption by more than it was importing from Russia," Ben Adler reports for Yahoo News. | | |  | The exodus of Ukrainian refugees, visualized | | | "Fighting throughout the country has driven more than 2 million people from Ukraine into neighboring countries, the [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] said. According to border police authorities, the majority of Ukrainians are fleeing to Poland," our colleagues report. Here a more maps that explain the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | | |  | Hot on the left | | Cooper: Why are we still indulging Saudi Arabia's murderous dictator? | | |  | Hot on the right | | The GOP is focused on defending legislative majorities in battleground states | | The Republican State Leadership Committee's target list of legislative chambers outlines where the party has its sights set ahead of the midterms. "Republicans have unified control of legislatures in nearly all of the presidential battlegrounds, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania," Politico's Zach Montellaro reports. But the margins are often small: Across the six chambers in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Republicans have a combined margin of just 24 seats. Other goals: "The party is also emboldened by its 2021 successes in Virginia and narrowing Democratic majorities in New Jersey. Republicans also hope to press the attack in states like Colorado and Minnesota." | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 1:40 p.m., Biden will have a bilateral meeting with Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez. Biden will deliver remarks to DNC members at their winter meeting at 7:15 p.m. at the Washington Hilton. | | |  | In closing | | | The war broke up Kyiv's orchestra. "More than half of its musicians fled the capital. And with that, the music died," Sudarsan Raghavan reports. But on Wednesday, they played again. "The very site of the outdoor concert by the Kyiv-Classic Symphony Orchestra symbolized the defiance: Kyiv's central square, Maidan, the focal point of revolutions including one in 2014 that ousted a pro-Moscow president and helped define Ukraine's Western political path." | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
