--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 1st. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, is suffering a devastating military attack. Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video earlier this morning that shows a large explosion directly in front of an administrative building in Kharkiv, right in the city center. In the video, you can see a wave of fire suddenly engulfing this historic building.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Meanwhile, about 300 miles away, Russian troops are closing in on Kiev. The Washington Post reports there's a Russian convoy of troops and artillery more than 40 miles long approaching Ukraine's capital.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A Ukrainian government account posted a video of children taking shelter in a bunker, singing Kiev's anthem. Russia's escalating attacks on a sovereign nation is causing a growing number of countries to join an international effort to, as the LA Times puts it, isolate and punish Russia.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Even Switzerland, which has a long reputation as a neutral country, is taking sides and imposing sanctions on Putin. As the coalition is trying to put pressure on Russia, the LA Times cites some experts who warn that Putin might be driven to use increasingly brutal military tactics.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to two international humanitarian organizations, the Russian military is deploying a type of weapon known as cluster munitions. Many countries ban these because of how much harm they can cause. The way cluster munitions work are, once fired into the air, they rain down hundreds of smaller submunitions, which can inflict tons of damage in a dense urban area like Kharkiv.
--:-- Shumita Basu: NPR reports these weapons can strike targets indiscriminately, which is why many human rights groups say they should be banned or at the very least never used near civilian populations. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are signed on an international treaty that bans their use.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called Russia's attacks, quote, terror, and he calling for an international tribunal to investigate Russia for war crimes This morning he addressed the European Parliament and he asked members to allow Ukraine to be admitted to the European Union
--:-- Shumita Basu: Hear how the translator on CNN gets emotional. [Audio clip plays]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We are fighting just for our land and for our freedom. Despite the fact that all our cities of our country are now blocked, Nobody is going to enter and intervene with our freedom and country. And believe you me, every square of today, no matter what it's called, it's going to be called Freedom Square in every city of our country. Nobody is going to break us. We're strong. We're Ukrainians.
--:-- Shumita Basu: By now, you've heard how ordinary citizens in Ukraine are joining the effort to fight back Russian forces. They're building Molotov cocktails and picking up guns. But there's another group of volunteer fighters that hasn't gotten as much attention.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Wired brings us the story of how Ukraine has enlisted thousands of cybersecurity professionals to build an IT army dedicated to fighting Russia online. Over the weekend, Ukraine's deputy prime minister announced the creation of a cyber army. They're assigning tasks through a telegram channel. And as of Sunday, more than 175,000 people subscribe to that channel to get their cyber marching orders.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Volunteers have been asked to flood more than 25 Russian websites and effectively jam up their traffic to knock them offline. They're targeting things like official government sites and major banks. Websites registered in Belarus, a Russian ally, are also on the list. Plus, the IT Army has asked subscribers to report YouTube channels that are spreading misinformation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As one cybersecurity expert told Wired, it can be easy for cyber attacks to go wrong, to inadvertently take out an emergency system or hospital, moves that could hurt innocent Russian civilians or even further escalate Russia's aggression. But he says, for a country like Ukraine, where people feel like they're facing an existential threat, it's not surprising to see how many people are stepping up.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Tonight President Joe Biden will deliver a State of the Union address that definitely been through a lot of rewrites in the past few days. Before Russia attacked Ukraine, we were expecting to hear a speech about domestic issues. You know, Biden telling the American people that in spite of rising inflation, the economy is coming back, that he's still got legislative priorities.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And while we will certainly hear a lot of that, his speech now comes as Europe is facing its biggest ground war in 75 years. Washington Post reporter Paul Cain spoke with us from Capitol Hill about how Biden will be repositioning his speech in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
--:-- Paul Cain: He is going to try to talk to the domestic audience first and foremost and rally Americans around this concept of fighting Putin, standing up to Russian aggression in Ukraine, and just really, getting people behind him and unifying the country.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Now, typically at the State of the Union, you can see a clear partisan divide. The president's party gives him applause after applause and a standing ovation, while the other party quietly shows their disagreement. This time around, Biden is expected to try a new tactic. He'll be talking about the importance of the United States as a world leader, what it means to stand up for democratic norms. and he's going to be positioning the country as a defender of sovereignty.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I think he's hoping that he'll have a lot of moments in which both Republicans and Democrats will give him standing ovations to show to the domestic audience there is a lot of unity here in America.
--:-- Paul Cain: Biden's first major foreign policy act as president, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, was met with a lot of backlash. Cain says this moment is an opportunity for Biden to change that narrative. It really hurt Biden's standing both here at home and abroad. And now, barely six months later, we're in another high-profile crisis. It's being handled much differently. And instead, with this, the effort to stand up to Putin, Biden and his administration have slowly but surely been in constant contact with all of our allies, getting them to the place where they want to be. And it gives Biden the chance to look like a world leader again.
--:-- Shumita Basu: CNN reports how the Biden administration is working behind the scenes to rally American allies to take action in the Ukraine crisis And it seems that months of phone calls meetings and diplomacy are paying off Within a matter of days more than 30 countries have taken part in sanctions against Russia. And there is a massive effort underway from dozens of countries to supply Ukraine with weapons.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: For tonight's State of the Union, the big question is, can Biden position himself to the American people as the global leader who made all of that possible? Biden goes into tonight's address just as his approval rating has hit a new low. 38 percent, according to a new Harvard-Caps-Harris poll survey.
--:-- Shumita Basu: FiveThirtyEight did some data crunching to see whether, historically, State of the Union addresses do anything to boost a president's ratings. And their conclusion is, it doesn't seem like it. Since 1978, the average State of the Union address has boosted the president's approval rating by just 0.4 percentage points. And it's just as likely a president might see a dip in their approval.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Have you heard about the teenager who made a Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's plane? 19-year-old Jack Sweeney set it up, and it drove Elon Musk so crazy, he even offered Sweeney money to take it down. Now, the teenager has expanded his efforts to Russian oligarchs.
--:-- Shumita Basu: In an interview with Bloomberg News, Sweeney said he started the Twitter account, Are You Oligarch Jets, after getting a number of requests to track Russia's wealthiest people, including Putin himself. See, this teenager tracks the movements of these aircrafts using bots that monitor publicly available air traffic data. Now, it can't tell you who is on the planes, but it does tell you the type of aircraft, when it took off and where it landed.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And according to his tracking, Russia's wealthiest people are flying around in private planes the size of Boeing 737s. The accounts show these aircraft stopping in London, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and St. Jones.
--:-- Shumita Basu: As world governments come down hard on Putin and Russian oligarchs, this account offers a window into where Russia's most powerful people are traveling. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
