Crooked Media - What A Day: Bridge to blowhere

Another Monday, another slew of discouraging news from the front lines of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. 
 

• The Kremlin announced on Monday that Russia will no longer participate in an agreement that allowed Ukraine to work around Moscow’s naval blockade so Kyiv could export its grain by sea in an effort to keep global food prices stable and decrease food scarcity resulting from the war. The United Nations secretary general António Guterres said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, as millions of people who face hunger or are being crushed by inflation will be forced to suffer yet more hardship.
   

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said on Monday that the agreement had been “halted” until Russia’s demands were met. The deal was initially brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last year, but Russia has agreed to extend the expiration date twice. Russia’s demands are largely meant to roll back sanctions imposed by western countries since it invaded Ukraine last year. U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal “completely irresponsible.” 
   

• So what are Russia’s demands? First, to get the country’s agricultural bank back on the SWIFT payment system, an international messaging service critical for processing payments between countries. Since the war began, western banks, insurance providers, and shipping companies have repeatedly refused to work with Russia, so the Kremlin also wants to normalize those relationships. Russia is also demanding an end to western sanctions against fertilizer companies and their associated executives. The country has also demanded for months that it be allowed to resume exporting ammonia through the Tolyatti-Odesa pipeline (a section of which was damaged last month).

Just a few hours before Russia announced it was pulling out of the deal, another wrench was thrown in the works. 
 

• On Monday, just before dawn, Ukraine reportedly carried out an attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge—a 12-mile structure linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia. The bridge is a primary supply route for Russian forces fighting in Southern Ukraine, and is also deeply symbolic for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who personally presided over the bridge’s opening in 2018, four years after seizing Crimea from Ukraine. The bridge has become a physical symbol of Russia’s illegal occupation. 
   

• The full extent of the damage wrought by the attack is still unclear, but the bridge is temporarily closed, and Russian officials claim that two people were killed. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, offered no further comment, but had previously said that the bridge was a potential target because of its vital role in the logistics of the Russian war effort. Later in the day, a Kremlin spokesperson said that pulling out of the Black Sea grain deal had nothing to do with the attack. Back in October 2022, an explosives-laden truck attacked the bridge and killed three people, forced the closure of one lane of traffic, and damaged railroad attacks. 
   

Russia’s bellicose posture towards not only Ukraine but the west more generally over the last decade has destabilized the world. Again, as in the past, it will also increase suffering beyond Ukraine’s borders.

What would happen if you were wrongfully arrested, simply because you wanted to bring avocados to your motherland? That’s the story of Jason Rezaian, an American-Iranian journalist, who was held hostage for 544 days in an Iranian prison, and accused of being an American spy. On Crooked’s “544 days,” Jason recounts his experience, injecting humor into an unimaginable situation. Want to hear the full story? Listen to “544 Days” for free on all platforms.

After months of protests last year following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amin, the country has redeployed its “morality police” to enforce the conservative dress code for women. 

No-shot-in-hell Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was captured on video at a private gathering in New York ranting that the COVID-19 virus was genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. 

Speaking of RFK Jr., new financial disclosures show that most of his donations come from Republicans. 

Former senator, current co-chair of the No Labels Party, and full-time centrist Joe Lieberman told The Atlantic that he does not believe a third-party ticket would help Trump, despite No Labels’ own data concluding that it would. Gotta respect this guy’s lifelong commitment to being wrong. 

Taking some brief time off from his busy schedule of obstructing President Biden’s agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) gave a speech in New Hampshire on Monday to the No Labels organization, sparking rumors that he may be the group’s third-party candidate of choice. Manchin said he’s not “taking anything off the table,” and will make his final decision next year. 

A new ProPublica report (you probably know where this is going by now) indicates that billionaire Harlan Crow may have violated tax law in setting up a shell superyacht company that was seemingly not a business at all. 

A new analysis shows that the WGA and SAG contract demands could be met if studio CEOs—who are paid 384 times more than the average writer—agreed to share just two percent of studio profits with their workers.

Chief executives of major U.S. chip companies like Intel and Qualcomm held meetings with President Biden’s commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Monday to discuss China policy.

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The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously denied disgraced former president Donald Trump’s bid to block an investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. 

A pandemic-era program that forced landlords to try mediation in good faith with tenants if they owed less than $3,000 in back rent before evicting them has been wildly successful in Philadelphia—America’s poorest big city—in both keeping tenants in their homes and landlords receiving payment.

Former president Barack Obama penned an open letter in support of the nation’s librarians combating right-wing efforts to censor certain books. 

Ford cut the price of its base model F-150 electric truck by 17 percent in an effort to boost its share of the E.V. market. 

A sailor and his dog were rescued in the South Pacific Ocean after more than three months lost at sea. 

Data presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference shows that a new drug currently in trials has the potential to slow the progression of memory and cognitive impairment by 60 percent when the drug is given to patients in early stages.