HOWEVER OTHER STUFF IS GOING, UKRAINE IS DEFINITELY WINNING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR: “Ukraine has invited Russian women to come to Kyiv and collect their sons, many of whom appear to be inexperienced and frightened teenage conscripts.”

In a field surrounded by the people he had been sent to fight, a young Russian prisoner of war hungrily gulped down the tea and bread they offered him. A Ukrainian woman calmed him, telling the soldier not to worry. Using her phone, she made a video call to his mother. As soon as his mother appeared on the screen, he burst into tears.

“Everything is OK,” his female captor said, while others stroked his back. “Natasha, God be with you. We will call you later. He is alive and healthy.”

I mean, this is brilliant.

DAVID GOLDMAN: Gold will soar as China seeks US dollar alternatives.

Investors have had little reason during the past dozen years to own gold rather than inflation-protected US Treasuries until now. If the United States and Europe can seize the assets of the Russian central bank by administrative fiat, without a declaration of war, Treasuries become a risky investment for a significant part of the world.

China alone owns $2 trillion of US Treasury securities.

How to respond to sanctions is the subject of intense debate in the Chinese media. “The United States and Europe should realise that sanctions are a double-edged sword,” economist Gao Desheng wrote on March 1 in the “Observer” (guancha.cn) website, a Shanghai-based news and opinion group that often reflects deliberations in China’s State Council.

“While hitting the Russian economy, sanctions will also harm Europe’s interests and weaken the independence and credibility of international organisations, including SWIFT,” the global messaging service for international bank transfers, Gao wrote. “For the United States, the frequent use of the financial sanctions weapon will accelerate the process of de-dollarisation of the world, which is tantamount to digging a grave for dollar hegemony.”

Everything is going swimmingly.

UKRAINE: Ukraine jets hit Russian column; Russia has used thermobarics, Ukraine military says. Plus, from a U.S. spokesman: “We are also picking up signs that they’re having problems feeding their troops, that they’re not only running out of gas, but they are running out of food.”

Usual disclaimers about war information apply.

Meanwhile, you can’t trust this from a U.S. diplomat:

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, confirmed the Russians have used thermobaric weapons, also known as vacuum bombs.

“We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine which has no place on the battlefield,” the U.S. envoy to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the General Assembly, according to The Hill.

“That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, which are banned under the Geneva Convention.”

Cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons are not banned by the Geneva Conventions, which predate both, and the United States employs both kinds of weapons. You might try to argue that use of these weapons against civilian targets is somehow a violation of the laws of war, but to the (questionable) extent that that is true, it’s just as true for any other weapon, depending on how it’s employed.

BAD NEWS FOR LAW SCHOOLS: 75% Through The Fall 2022 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Down 10% And In All LSAT Bands (Especially 170-180 (-15%) And 160-169 (-14%)).

UGH: J6 Defendant Facing Absurd Sentence Kills Himself, the Left Rejoices.

SCHEDULED FOR 9:35 THIS MORNING: Watch live: SpaceX to launch 47 Starlink satellites from Florida.

TRASHING GINNI THOMAS: Someday, people in the mainstream media will have to account for the many lies and distortions they’ve pushed for decades about the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Mark Paoletta dissects the latest such example.

UKRAINE WAR: Charred remains of Putin’s tanks lie smoldering in the street in extraordinary images after convoy was blown to pieces by Ukrainian resistance near Kyiv as Russian troop death toll ‘climbs to 5,840.’

Moscow admits to 500 KIA. Take both figures with an entire box of Morton.

MOST HONEST ELECTION EVER? An investigation found “rampant fraud and abuse” that happened “statewide at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities,” according to the Badger State’s Special Counsel Michael Gableman.

The irrepressible Margot Cleveland has the details. Prediction: Democrats and their mainstream media boosters will soon begin to concede that “there may have been a few problems here and there in individual states, but the 2020 presidential election was still the most honest, transparent election in the entire history of the universe.”

Or something to that effect. You heard it here first.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Stymied in Senate, Biden sets off ‘big bang’ of regulations.

PROCUREMENT MATTERS: How cheap Chinese tires might explain Russia’s ‘stalled’ 40-mile-long military convoy in Ukraine. “Bit of a tire expert here. Those aren’t Soviet-era heavy truck radials. Chinese military tires, and I believe specifically the Yellow Sea YS20. This is a tire I first encountered in Somalia and Sudan; it’s a bad Chinese copy of the excellent Michelin XZL military tire design.”

HE’S NOT WRONG: McConnell: Putin might not have invaded Ukraine if not for Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

HATE COMES TO HASTINGS: UC Hastings law school student protesters shout down Ilya Shapiro.

UNIONIZED CONGRESSIONAL STAFF: Yeah, that’s the ticket, let the 20,000 congressional staff aides working for individual members and committees form a union. That ought to really encourage more civility, more efficiency, more bipartisanship in Congress. Not!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: DeSantis Unmasks the COVID Panic Porn Hypocrisy. “Everything that DeSantis has done to make the citizens of his state more free has brought caterwauling prophecies of mass COVID casualties from the tyrants who have a vested interest in keeping the public frightened. And they’ve been wrong every time.”

GET READY FOR THE DURBIN SWOON: Actually, the swoon by the Mainstream Media over Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) is already getting into full swing, according to Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon.

Among much else worth revisiting from Durbin’s career, Stiles reminds us of the Illinois Democrat’s shameful role in the successful campaign to keep Miguel Estrada from becoming the first Hispanic on the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Perhaps the most egregious example of Democrats blocking a qualified judicial nominee for purely partisan reasons came in 2003, when Durbin and his colleagues repeatedly filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Estrada would have been the first Hispanic judge to serve on the court. After a delay of more than two years, Estrada eventually gave up. Durbin and the Democrats declared victory,” Stiles writes.

“Weeks later, leaked memos from Durbin’s office revealed that left-wing activists groups viewed Estrada as ‘especially dangerous’ because ‘he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.’ Also among the leaked documents were talking points prepared for Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) for a speech to his Democratic colleagues in which he urged them to oppose Estrada’s nomination. The talking points included the line ‘We can’t repeat the mistake we made with Clarence Thomas,’ referring to the first black justice to serve on the Supreme Court.”

SHOCKINGLY NOT BIDEN: ‘I’m Really Jogging My Brain Here’: Dem Senate Candidate Can’t Name His Climate Policy Accomplishments.

ENDORSED: How the Finns Deter Russian Invasion: If you want ordinary people to make your society occupation-proof, you have to teach them to kill well before they need to do so.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic failure because it assumed and required a quick and decisive victory, and at best it will get victory slow and Pyrrhic. But the Ukrainians have failed badly as well, by waiting too long to arm and train their citizens. If you want ordinary people to make your society occupation-proof, you have to teach them to kill well before they need to do so.

The strategist Edward N. Luttwak has proposed that countries aligned with NATO shift in this direction preemptively, as a matter of policy. Instead of buying heavy, technologically advanced equipment, Luttwak told me, they should adopt the Finnish model. In Finland, adolescent males report for a short and intense period of military training, followed by shorter refreshers for most of their adult life. The training is not, as in the Israeli model, a few years of dedicated service. Nor does it emphasize military discipline, such as keeping one’s bunk tidy and shoes polished, or the Prussian-style transformation of citizen-recruit into fighting machine. Instead, it prepares civilians to be ready to join their unit and harass and kill invaders. A country of Finland’s size can rapidly field nearly 1 million trained soldiers. “Ukraine could have done this,” Luttwak said, “and they should have.”

America should do this too.

THE TRUTH HURTS: Trump’s Truth Social bomb. “The vast majority of people downloading the app, me included, were given a waitlist number. Nine days later, most of us remain on that waitlist, with our number unchanged and without a word of communication from the company. A waitlist ‘refresh’ icon doesn’t work.”

I signed up on Day One a week ago Monday, just to check it out and maybe read some classic Trump mean tweets for the first time in over a year.

But just like this Axios report, all I’ve seen in an unchanging waitlist number.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS: Formal Squad SOTU response: You’re darned right we should defund the police — and ban even more domestic oil production.

Is it fair to call the Squad “objectively pro-Putin?”

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Spare Me the Faux Outrage Over Biden Being Heckled. “Actually, it says a lot more about Biden that he didn’t take a moment during his State of the Union address to honor those who died because of his recklessness. It says a lot that Biden didn’t even mention the withdrawal at all. Someone had to call attention to those heroes who are no longer with us.”

Megan Fox: Parents of Mutilated Teenagers Speak Out About the Dangers of Transing Kids. “One father, who is also a scientist, dug into the data after his son told him he believed he was a woman. The distressed dad found out that giving hormones to the opposite sex is dangerous and leads to more mental health problems. In his article, ‘Rise of the Trans Medical Taliban,’ the dad discusses multiple studies that show too much estrogen harms the brain, but he says the scientific community will not acknowledge these known facts.”

Yours Truly: Shrinkwrap a Looter? You Can’t Do That in Real Life! (But We Know You Want To). “Today’s feel-good story comes from my friend Brodigan at Louder with Crowder who reports that Ukrainians are shrinkwrapping looters to electrical poles…What else is it we’re not supposed to do but wish we could? Would you believe I made a little list?”

OUR PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS ARE SILLY PEOPLE: “Guess what’s racist this week? Mainstream media reporting on Ukraine!”

GIVE GERMANY CREDIT, I’M NOT SURE OUR GOVERNING CLASS WOULD CHANGE DIRECTION SO QUICKLY IN THE FACE OF REALITY: Ukraine crisis forces Germany to change course on energy.

WELL, DUH:  How COVID Spending and Green Policies Enabled Putin’s March into Ukraine.

BUT BUT BUT…. THEY FORTIFIED THE ELECTION!  Zuckerbucks declared ‘bribery’ by special counsel in Wisconsin.