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 Hello, and welcome back to Tomorrow Will Be Worse, your regular dispatch from the American capital! Wow. I’m still on book leave and I just sent you a pretty meaty interview with the one and only Fiona Hill on Friday afternoon to see you through the weekend, but given all that’s happened in the Russia-Ukraine standoff, I felt like I couldn’t leave you hanging...
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 Notes on a crazy 36 hours, brinkmanship, Ted Cruz, and a bewildered Ukrainian premier. On Sunday, the British government announced that Moscow was cooking up a plan to topple the government of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and install a pro-Kremlin government in his place. Later that night, the New York Times reported that President Joe Biden was weighing sending thousands of troops to NATO countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. An hour or so later, the Washington Post broke a story that the U.S. State Department ordered diplomats’ families and non-essential staff to leave Kyiv, citing the “threat of Russian military action.” By Monday afternoon, the Pentagon announced that it was putting 8,500 troops on alert so that they could be moved into NATO territory in Eastern Europe.
It’s been a pretty wild 36 hours, given how tense the situation has been since Russia pooled over 100,000 troops, including materiel and logistical support, along its border with Ukraine, surrounding the country on three sides. More ominously, two weeks of shuttle diplomacy have failed to release any of that tension. Russia could invade at any moment, and it’s hard to see how Vladimir Putin, after calling up such a large force and publicly and angrily making his demands, can back off now without losing a lot of face. This whole thing feels like 100,000 of Anton Chekhov’s guns hanging on 100,000 walls. Once they’re introduced, they have to go off. And that—as well as the very real threat of a full-out land war in Europe for the first time in decades—is absolutely terrifying.
Here are some thoughts on the developments of the last two days...
FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT  With apologies to Wall Street, the streamer's stock price apocalypse is a market problem more than a business problem. MATTHEW BELLONI  A conversation with Fiona Hill about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Putin's next move, and where the White House goes from here. JULIA IOFFE  The inside conversation about Silicon Valley’s favorite charity and Jeff Bezos’ latest effort to perfect his physique. TEDDY SCHLEIFER  Notes on Peloton’s market value collapse, Netflix’s future, M&A arbitrage, and Apollo’s next potential pound of flesh. WILLIAM D. COHAN
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