Today is Thursday, March 3, 2022. The Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine has entered Week 2 and it shows no signs of ending anytime soon, despite the vigorous resistance from the Ukrainians. An unsettling development with the war is that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the country is on fire after it was shelled by Russian forces. It is the largest nuclear power plant in all of Europe. This disturbing news was confirmed by Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar. According to Orlov, firefighters were unable to reach the fire at the nuclear power plant.

Attacks are mounting on civilian targets in Ukraine as an article about the shelling is found on my CNN smartphone app by Gianluca Mezzofiore, Katie Polglase, and Paul P. Murphy entitled “Russia sends a message to all of Ukraine by hitting these civilian areas in this city.”

Thus one of those targets include three schools, with one of them sustaining a gaping hole on the side of the building. Other targets include a supermarket where panicked shoppers had to run for their lives. Another civilian target was a park where parkgoers had to rush to safety as shells exploded around them.

These assaults occurred in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, where Russian forces have focused on hitting civilian infrastructure such as schools, shops, hospitals, apartment blocks, and churches. Most of the attacks took place in the northeastern part of Kharkiv in the residential area of Saltivka. The city’s Freedom Square, the center of public life in Kharkiv, was hit with what was believed to be a cruise missile, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said.

In just 24 hours, 34 civilians were killed and 285 injured – including 10 children – in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said this morning.

As this offensive ramped up, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced yesterday that he had launched an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine by one enemy to freedom, Vladimir Putin.

Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to Russia’s relentless bombardment of Kharkiv as a “war crime” in a late-night address on Monday. As for people leaving the country, at least one million refugees have fled Ukraine in just a week.

Maybe the only way this terrible conflict might end is if those voracious Russian oligarchs’ pleasure toys are seized by authorities like their football-field yachts which could deliver a death blow to these elites who have profited under the corrupt government of Vladimir Putin. As would be expected, these billionaires’ yachts have been on the move in the days since the Russian offensive began.

In President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union address, Biden put the Russian elite on notice in Tuesday’s speech when he declared, “To the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: No more.” Biden forcefully added, “We are joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets. We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains.” Could this declaration of intent against Russian oligarchs ever be made if the puppet of Putin were still president? I doubt that very seriously. Dumpf would have no resolve to take such a move against Russia’s plutocrats. We are fortunate that Biden is president at this fraught moment in history.

To help put Biden’s words into action, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a new task force – dubbed KleptoCapture – to do just that. The effort includes prosecutors, federal agents, and experts in money laundering, tax enforcement and national security investigations from the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. Marshalls Service, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced yesterday.

Generally speaking, it might become a difficult task to seize these assets, as yacht ownership is extremely hard to confirm, with the ships often registered to management companies or shell corporations in an apparent effort to disguise ownership, experts say. But that doesn’t mean authorities shouldn’t attempt to do just that in order to drive a wedge in Putin’s deranged plans of invading Ukraine. A nice scenario from this is that these Russian billionaires’ assets are somehow seized which will make them so angry at their leader for getting them involved in an unpopular war that they try to convince Putin to withdraw from Ukraine or even worse – maybe put a bounty on this ugly, little evil man for getting them divorced from their baubles and other ostentatious displays of wealth.

On the domestic front, a bombshell was dropped by the January 6 committee today when it was alleged that they have enough evidence to suggest that the former president and his attorney, John Eastman, were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States with their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. This not-so-shocking news story is part of an Independent article written by John Bowden entitled “Trump accused of ‘criminal’ attempt to overturn election. How bad could it get for the ex-president.”

According to the article, “such an accusation is still a long way from actually resulting in a criminal charge.” However, this is no doubt the most significant development of the January 6 committee’s work to hold those responsible for the attack on Congress accountable.

In the meantime, the January 6 committee is fighting the Orange Blob’s attorney who is arguing that he deserves claims of attorney-client privilege as he attempts to shield his communications with Dumpf from the committee’s grasping subpoenas. The panel has argued in a filing that Eastman did not simply serve the role of Dumpf’s lawyer, he was really a member of the effort to overturn the election as a political adviser to the president. That claim could easily hold up in court, as it was well known that Eastman was involved in the efforts to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the Electoral College count on January 6. Eastman also was vocally present at the rally outside the White House on the day of the riot, a role that could hardly could be defined as that of a typical attorney.

Not only could Dumpf now face charges of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the country, he could also face obstruction of an official proceeding charge (through his efforts to disrupt the count of the Electoral College vote) and common law fraud charges (referring to his false statements about the 2020 election).

Now the committee can ask the Justice Department to review the evidence it has obtained and consider issuing charges targeting the ex-president himself. We’re still a long way off from seeing Donald Trump inside a courtroom answering for the January 6 attack on Congress. “But Wednesday’s filing by the congressional committee investigating that attack is the first real sign that it’s a possibility.” Let’s hope so – finally. We cannot drop the ball on this one, as the former president remains a threat to our democracy as long as he’s able to go unchecked for all of the damage he’s inflicted on our fragile republic.

I wonder when the news becomes less depressing. It’s gotten to the point where I fear putting on the news nowadays. Maybe the news on COVID is a tad more optimistic, as many municipalities are considering lifting mask mandates and other precautions in a short time. Mayor Eric Adams has announced that indoor mandates will be lifted on Monday, March 7.

Some people might debate whether this move is a bit premature right now, especially when, as it’s argued in an op-ed by Dr. Jay Varna, former senior adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio for public health and COVID-19, in today’s edition of the Daily News, that this action could be harmful in the long run, as new variants could emerge just when everyone has removed his or her face covering out of exhaustion with dealing with the virus these past two years. I will feel somewhat unsettled when these new protocols go into effect next week. I’m sure many people will not doff their masks inside a venue. They will still depend on having them on. Businesses will no longer ask for proof of vaccination now. I just hope this will not prove to be an unwise move. As these last two years have shown, the coronavirus does not follow a predicted pattern generally. It does what it hell wants to, despite our best efforts.

Enough from me.

Stay safe and be well.