1. 🇬🇧 The UK is planning a massive rearmament. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his country needs to reach a higher level of “warfighting readiness,” arguing that the UK is under the most serious threat since the Cold War. The buildup will include the purchase of 12 new attack submarines and 7,000 long-range weapons. The United Kingdom spends more than NATO’s benchmark of two percent of GDP on defense, but not by much. Starmer said he would divert funds from aid programs to pay for the increase.

2. 🇺🇸 America sanctioned four judges on the ICC. The move, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last year. The judges will have their assets frozen and will be banned from entering the United States. The United States does not recognize the authority of the ICC, and a law on the books allows the president to invade the Hague to free any Americans detained by it.

3. 🇨🇳 Donald Trump and Xi Jinping made progress on trade. During a roughly 90-minute phone call, which Beijing said was initiated by Trump, the two leaders agreed to send trade negotiation teams to work out a potential trade deal, and both leaders also invited the other to visit their countries. Trump had recently said that Xi is “extremely hard to make a deal with.” The call came amid accusations from both sides that the other was violating a trade “ceasefire.”

4. 🇵🇱 Poland elected a right-wing nationalist as president. Although he had been behind in almost all polling, right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki beat the establishment-backed candidate to win his country’s presidential elections. Nawrocki is an ally of Donald Trump; the two met in the Oval Office some weeks ago. The victory was symbolically important for the Western populist right, as Poland was the first country to kick off the populist wave back in 2015.

Insiders behind the paywall: Poland’s trade minister, Russian opposition leaders, Pakistan’s foreign minister, and Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Earlier this week, Ukraine carried out one of its most daring attacks yet: a complex operation, called Operation Spiderweb, spanning the entirety of Russia’s territory, targeting its strategic bomber force. The Russians have responded with heavy attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities…

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Mentioned behind the paywall: The Economist, NBC News, The European Conservative, and Breitbart.

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