A full-fledged information battle

The NYT: “In recent weeks, the Biden administration has detailed the movement of Russian special operation forces to Ukraine’s borders, exposed a Russian plan to create a video of a faked atrocity as a pretext for an invasion, outlined Moscow’s war plans, warned that an invasion would result in possibly thousands of deaths and hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin. …

“The hope is that disclosing Mr. Putin’s plans will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy, or even giving Mr. Putin a chance to reconsider the political, economic and human costs of an invasion.

“At the same time, Biden administration officials said they had a narrower and more realistic goal: They want to make it more difficult for Mr. Putin to justify an invasion with lies, undercutting his standing on the global stage and building support for a tougher response. …

“One U.S. intelligence official said that when the country’s spy agencies have information that could help the world make better judgments about Russian activity, it should be released, as long as the government can avoid exposing how the information was collected or who passed it along.

“It is, according to some strategists, a full-fledged information battle.”

How not to handle a pandemic

On an epidemiological map of the world, the Czech Republic shows up as a tiny island of doom and gloom. While the global number of new coronavirus cases has been dropping for six consecutive weeks, the Central European nation of 10 million has been experiencing near record levels of new infections.

Stock up on the popcorn

“For all his [Johnson’s] bluster, history suggested that the negotiations were less likely to collapse than to enter a climactic final act, promising even more of the theatrics and brinkmanship that have characterized the Brexit drama from the start.”

The prime minister blew up over what he called Europe?s insistence that Britain make all the compromises. But Europe says it still wants to talk.