| Good Tuesday morning. It's not too late to have a slice of pi(e) for breakfast, lunch, etc. And please join us in bidding adieu to Dave Jorgenson's Quarantine TikTok. Thanks for waking up with us. | | |  | On the Hill | | Zelensky awaits his virtual Churchill moment before Congress |  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the British Parliament via video-link on March 8. (Photo by UK PARLIAMENT/JESSICA TAYLOR HANDOUT/EPA-EFE) | | | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's joint address to Congress Wednesday will provide the wartime leader with a prominent perch from which to pressure Washington to do more for his beleaguered nation as it faces down intensifying Russian attacks he says need to be met with a more aggressive response from the West. The rare wartime speech to Congress, which will be delivered via video conference, follows Zelensky's virtual appeal to Britain's House of Commons last week in which he asked the West to enact a no-fly zone over his country — a request the Biden administration and NATO allies have so far rejected. Quoting former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Zelensky told British lawmakers: "We will fight to the end… We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight until the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost." Zelensky is expected to bring that same Churchill approach to his speech before American lawmakers, looking to leverage the plaudits and admiration he has won from members of Congress for his leadership into the assistance he is desperately seeking. When Churchill addressed a joint meeting of Congress in December of 1941, just weeks after the United States' entry into World War II, he delivered one of his most rousing speeches. In it, he sold Congress and the American public on the importance of combining U.S. and British forces and laid out a path toward victory at a time when Nazi Germany had already defeated every other European power. | - "The Acting Speaker, Representative Cole of Maryland, summed up the apparent feeling of his colleagues by saying that the address would inspire all to do their utmost in the fight for victory," the New York Times reported at the time from Washington.
| | "When a country's weak, a leader can amplify their strength through example, and through their appeal to the international community," Michael Green, the Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Early, pointing to Churchill as an example. "A nation's power is about military power, economic power, technological power, but willpower matters — and a leader can bend and stretch how much willpower a nation has with strong, determined, courageous leadership." Historian Warren Kimball, who authored several books on World War II, told The Early that Zelensky would be wise to mimic Churchill's appeal: "People love Churchill more in America than they do in England. Churchill said all the right things. He had Congress eating out of his hand anytime he talked to them." But Kimball noted a key difference between now and then: "By January 1941, the United States is in the war. … Zelensky wants to get us into war in some way or another because he knows he can't win." Zelensky is likely to ramp up pressure on the United States to provide air defense assistance and impose a "no-fly zone," which the administration has declined to do so far out of fear that such moves could further provoke Russia. Lawmakers on Monday remained divided about providing U.S. military air assistance. "[Zelensky] is a heroic figure and for good reason — people are giving deference to him and people want to say yes to him," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters Monday. | - "If I were Zelensky, I would ask for the moon. But it's up to us to decide what is in our national security interest," Murphy said, adding he was reluctant to put "Congress in a position of micromanaging" the war and urged his colleagues to "put faith" in the administration's decision-making.
| | Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, conceded to our colleague Mike DeBonis that while a no-fly zone is a red line for Congress, Zelensky should continue to pitch lawmakers on "maximizing the air defense system and making the effort on continuing to close the economic noose around [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's neck." | - "The administration should be giving them the air defense systems that they've suggested," Menendez said, adding they would be more effective for Ukraine than a no-fly zone "at the end of the day."
| | Lawmakers said Zelensky should also use the opportunity to remind people not to become desensitized to the coverage of the violence far away: | - "This opportunity, which is a unique one, will be a powerful one but, you know, he's going to have to keep reminding not only us, but the rest of the world of the realities of the brutality, the criminality and the human loss of life that Putin is putting upon his people. And that's going to be a constant effort, and he's going to have to find different ways to do exactly that," Menendez added.
- "It gives him an avenue to the free world just to underscore the courage of his leadership," said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). "And I think the more we can showcase that, the stronger the international resolve will be."
| | Where things stand: "Talks between Ukraine and Russia are set to resume after what Ukrainian negotiators on Monday described as a "technical pause," our colleagues report. | - The leaders of Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland are also on their way to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and "confirm the unequivocal support of the entire European Union for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine." The visit comes two days after Russian missiles struck a military training base close to Ukraine's border with Poland, a NATO member.
| | Save the dates: "The war in Ukraine is likely to be over by early May when Russia runs out of resources to attack its neighbour, Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, said late on Monday," Reuters reports. "In a video published by several Ukrainian media, Arestovich said the exact timing would depend on how much resources the Kremlin was willing to commit to the campaign." Plus: "The heads of state representing NATO's 30 member countries are discussing meeting in person in Brussels next week as Russia's invasion of Ukraine reaches the alliance's doorstep with missiles fired just miles from the border of Poland, according to U.S. and foreign officials," CNBC's Kayla Tausche scooped Monday night. | - "The meeting, which would be labeled 'extraordinary' by the alliance since it falls outside regularly scheduled engagements, would dovetail with the White House's tentative plans for President Joe Biden to travel to Europe."
| | |  | At the White House | | White House warns pandemic programs could end if Congress doesn't pass supplemental Covid funding |  President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) | | | I am once again asking …: The White House plans to send a letter to congressional leadership today outlining the covid relief measures that the administration will stop taking soon if Congress doesn't cough up more funding, according to a person familiar with the matter. The White House has been lobbying Congress for more money for months. Our colleagues Dan Diamond and Tony Romm reported last week that the country was "poised to run out of tests, treatments and vaccines to fight the coronavirus after a $15.6 billion funding plan collapsed in Congress." The money was stripped from a $1.5 trillion spending bill that Biden is set to sign into law today amid a dispute over whether to repurpose funds previously promised to state governments to pay for it. | | |  | The campaign | | Pence advocacy group to launch more ads this week, targets vulnerable Democrats |  Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence pauses while speaking during the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021. (Bridgett Bennett/Bloomberg) | | | New this morning: Former vice president Mike Pence is ramping up his involvement in the midterms with his advocacy group — Advancing American Freedom — set to run a new batch of ads this week attacking vulnerable Reps. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) and Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) over energy policy. The attacks follows a similar set of ads the former vice president's group ran last week against 16 vulnerable House Democrats that focused on the Biden administration's energy policy as it relates to Ukraine. | | |  | The Data | | | The role Javelin antitank missiles could play in Ukraine's fight against Russia, visualized: "The United States and allies have surged weapons to Ukraine in recent weeks in the face of the Russian invasion," our colleagues Claire Parker, Alex Horton and William Neff report. "Images of destroyed Russian tanks on social media have drawn attention to one particular weapon: the Javelin missile." | - "Experts say the Javelin is a powerful addition to Ukraine's existing arsenal of domestically produced antitank missiles."
- Russian tanks are particularly vulnerable to the Javelin missile "because they were designed to be 'very small, squat and compact,'" Amael Kotlarski, a senior analyst at Janes, an open-source defense intelligence agency, told our colleagues. "A Javelin missile hitting the top of the tank usually means 'instant destruction,'" he said.
| | |  | The Media | | | |  | Viral | | | | AM/PM | | Looking for more analysis in the afternoon? | | | | Weekday newsletter, PM |  | | | | | | |
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