Hello, and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your daily politics newsletter from Tara Palmeri, Tina Nguyen, Peter Hamby, and myself. Tonight, I’m focused on my frenetic weekend at the Munich Security Conference, the biggest to date. I’ll be discussing this story and more this Friday at 2 p.m. ET in a private call with Puck’s Inner Circle members—you can upgrade your subscription ahead of time to join. (Also, we’d love you to fill out our reader survey if you haven’t yet!)

But first…

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Under his predecessor Angela Merkel, Germany had weaved a thick web of economic cooperation with Russia in the hopes of bringing the country into the Western community and away from...