The War Room: Stumbling so far in his effort to take over Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a threat yesterday to countries that might interfere with his invasion.

 “If someone intends to intervene in what is happening from the outside and creates unacceptable strategic threats for us, they should know that our response to oncoming threats will be swift, lighting fast,” Putin said. He ominously threatened that, “We have all the tools for this, ones that no one can brag about, and we won’t brag. We will use them as needed.”

  You can interpret this in two ways. They are the words of a determined winner, or the threats of a loser.

  While Putin complains, “more than half” of the 90 Howitzers the US pledged to Ukraine have been delivered, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced. 

  The fighting has slipped over the border into Russia in recent days, with at least three strikes on Russian ground, one of them 200 miles inside the border. Myhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky, taunted the Russians saying, “How can this be explained? Very simply. If you decide to attack another country en masse, kill everyone there en masse, crush peaceful people en mass with tanks and use warehouses in your regions to provide the killings then sooner or later the debts will have to be paid back.” He said, “Karma is a cruel thing.”

Economic War: The European Union’s top official says that the Russian cutoff of natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria is “blackmail” over support for Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion. It’s the Kremlin’s toughest retaliation yet.

  Russian media also announced that residents of the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Kherson will have to start using the Russian ruble for currency.

  Here in the US, the House passed a mostly symbolic bill urging President Biden to sell the frozen luxury assets of Russian oligarchs and use the money to provide more military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Of course, most of the people with money to buy those things are Russian oligarchs.

Swap Meet: In what the Biden administration calls a “prisoner exchange,” Russia has swapped former US Marine Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot sentenced to prison in the United States on charges of cocaine-trafficking. 

  It’s remarkable given the current state of US/Russia relations.

  Reed was arrested in 2019 near the end of a trip to visit a Russian girlfriend he had met online. He got drunk and rowdy at a party and was accused of endangering the lives of the two cops who arrested him. Reed’s family said in a statement that they would now concentrate on “the myriad of health issues brought on by the squalid conditions he was subjected to in his Russian gulag.” Reed looked pale and weak as he was released. 

  Other Americans are still held in Russia, including Paul Whelan, who was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage charges,  and Brittney Griner, a professional basketball star arrested on drug charges in February.

Viral News: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease adviser, says the US no longer appears to be in the “pandemic phase” of the coronavirus infection. The European Union also says the emergency phase is over. 

  “We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity,” Fauci told the Washington Post. 

  Even so, new infections are up 61 percent over the past two weeks, but deaths are down 32 percent. Nearly one million Americans have died of Covid-19 during the pandemic.

  In another development, the drug company Moderna has asked the FDA to approve its coronavirus vaccine for children under age 6. It would be the first for children that young.

The Spin Rack: New York state’s top court voided the legislature’s new congressional district map, ruling that it was the result of partisan gerrymandering to favor Democrats. Republicans are not the only guilty party in gerrymandering. — Lawyers for the New York State Attorney General’s Office say they are nearly finished with their civil investigation into the “Russian nesting doll” of the Trump Organization’s business and financing. — Meta, the parent company of Facebook, reported a 21 percent drop in profits in the first quarter of the year. They’ve been unfriended. — A water emergency has been ordered for Southern California, restricting outdoor water use to one day a week.

A Free Man: British authorities continue to strip Prince Andrew of honorary titles in the wake of his sex scandals. The latest is the northern city of York which cancelled the prince’s “freedom of the city,’’ a ceremonial honor that dates back to medieval times when “freemen’’ enjoyed special privileges. Andrew has already been stripped of his honorary military roles after he was accused of having sex with a 17-year-old girl.

  So far, there’s no Johnny Depp/Amber heard angle to the Prince Andrew story.

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