Hello, and welcome back to Tomorrow Will Be Worse! Is your head spinning from all the Ukraine-Russia news? Mine is. What a week it's been.

Hopefully, last week's installment helped you understand what happened in the last few days, but since events have really advanced since then—but also haven't—I wanted to share some thoughts with you about what in the hell is going on. If you missed last week's edition of our podcast, The Powers That Be, rectify that—my colleague Peter Hamby and I get into what's at the heart of this conflict. And there will be even more on this week's episode, so make sure you don't miss it. 

As always, remember to subscribe if you haven't already. And if you want to share the love and give the gift of Puck, email fritz@puck.news and tell them Julia sent you.

Putin on the Brink… of What, Exactly?

War? No war? War tomorrow? It looks like Biden has boxed Putin into a trap of his own bizarre design.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Or is it?

We’re now in the second month of talking about an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine that has, thankfully, not yet materialized. And while two months is not even a blink in the time frame of history, it feels like an eternity in our world of 24-hour news cycles. This particular round began on Friday afternoon with a tweet from PBS NewsHour’s foreign policy correspondent, Nick Schifrin: “NEW: The US believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and has communicated that decision to the Russian military, three Western and defense officials tell me.” A follow-up stated: “The US expects the invasion to begin next week, six US and Western officials tell me, as Secretary of State Antony @SecBlinken said last night.” 

As you can imagine, a well-known reporter from such an august outlet reporting something so definitive and stark—yet another tweet warned of unfathomable bloodshed—had the effect of pouring a cup of water on a bucket of Pop Rocks. As Schifrin’s tweet ricocheted wildly around the geopolitical Twitterverse, the rest of us reporting on the Ukrainian crisis raced to confirm the story. I texted one administration official, who texted back another tweet from Schifrin, who was, by this point, live tweeting a press conference by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan addressing this very issue. The tweet, sent to me by this administration source who had first-hand knowledge of what the hell was going on, said: “.@jakejsullivan: ‘We are not saying that a decision has been taken, a final decision has been taken by Putin.’” 

Then my phone rang...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT