A Ukrainian counterattack drove Russian troops back over Ukraine’s northeast border and McDonalds announced plans to leave Russia after 30 years.
Summary
A Ukrainian counterattack drove Russian troops back over Ukraine’s northeast border and McDonald’s announced plans to leave Russia after 30 years.
- Ukrainian forces pushed Russian soldiers from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, and in some areas retook their northeast border zones from their invading neighbor.
- The apparent Ukrainian success in the northeast comes as the Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas region has faltered, according to UK and US intelligence agencies.
- McDonald’s announced it would begin selling its business in Russia. The company currently runs 850 restaurants employing 62,000 people.
- The American fast food giant has operated in Russia for 30 years and the 1990 opening of the first McDonald’s in Moscow was considered a symbolic indication that the Cold War was ending.
- On Sunday, the governing parties of Sweden and Finland confirmed their plans to join the NATO military alliance after decades, and in Sweden’s case centuries, of neutrality.
- The New York Times called Swedish and Finnish entry into NATO a “rebirth” for the Western military alliance and the “strongest indication yet of a profound change in Europe in the face of an aggressive Russian imperial project.”
- CNN reported from Georgia, another ex-Soviet state previously attacked by Putin nervously watching for Russia’s next move.
- The Washington Post investigated why Turkey is dissenting from Finland and Sweden’s admission into NATO and ‘why it matters.’
- Fox News covered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement calling Russia ‘bankrupt’ and saying the invaders faced a ‘dead end’ in their invasion of his country.
- The Wall Street Journal reported Ukrainian refugees are returning home in droves as Ukrainian forces have retaken more ground and Russian troops have retreated from large swaths of the country.
- The Washington Examiner reported on the Russian withdrawal in Ukraine’s northeast and the moment Ukrainian troops planted their flag on their northeastern border once again.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
