Your Wednesday Briefing

European leaders visit a Kyiv in flames

The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine’s besieged capital, in a defiant show of support yesterday, even as a relentless Russian artillery bombardment left apartment towers in the city ablaze, forcing terrified residents to flee into the street with only the clothes on their backs. Follow the latest updates.

The dramatic visit, which unfolded in secrecy, caught other European leaders off guard, angering some and baring uncomfortable divisions in how best to demonstrate Western solidarity with Ukraine. President Biden has announced his own plans to travel to Europe next week to showcase the unity of the NATO alliance in the face of Russian aggression.

But for all the symbolism of Europe’s leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukraineunder the threat of Russia’s rockets, the country is facing the devastating barrage largely on its own. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, repeated his plea for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over the country. “It is an attempt to destroy our future, our nation, our character.”

Capitol Hill: The crisis in Ukraine is upending policy and political thinking on both the left and the right, empowering the political center. Zelensky will address Congress today at 9 a.m. Eastern time in a virtual speech that could increase pressure on the Biden administration to send fighter jets to Kyiv.

In other news from the war in Ukraine:

• There was some relief in the besieged city of Mariupol: An estimated 20,000 people fled after Russia and Ukraine opened a humanitarian corridor.

• Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, slapped retaliatory sanctions on the U.S. and disparaged the second day of negotiations with Ukraine, undercutting the faint glimmers of hope raised from talks the day before.

• Two journalists working for Fox News were killed when their vehicle came under fire outside Kyiv.

• Overflowing morgues and daily shelling: This is life inside Mykolaiv, a port city where residents refuse to give in.

A refugee crisis threatens Europe’s strained economy

More than three million refugees have fled Ukraine in less than three weeks, according to the U.N. International Organization for Migration, and millions more are likely to follow. Though many hope to return home, it is unclear whether such quick turnabouts will be possible — one of many uncertainties hanging over Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.

What happens over the next few months will determine if Europe will face the additional costs of a huge resettlement that has the potential to reshape the economic landscape. Some early estimates put that bill at $30 billion in the first year alone. And over the long term, the expense of integrating millions of people may put immense strain on social systems, even as these workers are likely to increase a nation’s output over time.

While rights advocates say the moral urgency of helping save lives and keep families together outweighs the costs, European economies are still recovering from the pandemic and coping with stubborn supply chain shortages and high inflation. Roughly 13 million people were unemployed in the E.U. in January. Those costs will affect how Europeans live and could raise pressure on leaders to find an end to the crisis.

Plans to return: Officials, migration experts and economists say it is too early to determine whether most displaced Ukrainians will end up staying in Europe. Of the 431,000 Ukrainians who have crossed into Romania, for example, only 3,800 have asked for asylum.

Pfizer seeks authorization of a second booster shot

Pfizer and BioNTech said that they had sought emergency authorization in the U.S. for a second booster shot of their coronavirus vaccine for adults 65 and older, based on data from Israel, where such shots are authorized for a somewhat broader group.

The request comes amid a tortuous debate among scientists over when and how often the vaccines’ protection should be bolstered, and for whom. Some public health experts opposed booster shots for the general population altogether and only changed their minds because of the Omicron variant.

Some officials say that a fourth shot for all older Americans may make sense now but that the general population should probably wait until the fall. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to convene a meeting of its expert advisory committee next month to discuss the issue of fourth shots.

Justification: Recent studies from Israel, which have not yet been peer reviewed, found that those who got a fourth dose of Pfizer’s vaccine were less likely to become infected with the virus or to develop severe illness than those who had received just three doses. But it was too early to say how long that protection would last.

Quotable: “The protection that you are getting from the third, it is good enough, actually quite good for hospitalizations and deaths,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive. “It’s not that good against infections.”

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

• In Africa, Covid vaccines are now plentiful, but in the poorest countries, they arrive in a hodgepodge that makes planning difficult.

• The Johnson & Johnson vaccine appears more effective than previously believed.

• Britain will lift its remaining international travel restrictions this week, one of the first major economies to do so.

• Oil prices dropped below $100 per barrel as Covid outbreaks in China threatened demand from the world’s largest oil importer.

THE LATEST NEWS

Around the World

• The once-perilous highway between Afghanistan’s two largest cities, still dotted with destroyed vehicles and bullet-riddled homes, has come back to life under the Taliban.

• Impunity for war crimes in Syria bodes poorly for future measures against Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

• A top court in India upheld a government order barring Muslim girls from wearing head scarves inside schools, a ruling that is likely to heighten tensions between Muslims and Hindus.

• The son of Turkmenistan’s leader won the country’s presidential election after an unusual vote-counting delay.

Other Big Stories

• Intel will spend at least $19 billion to begin to manufacture chips in the German city of Magdeburg, continuing an expansion aimed at reducing its dependence on Asian factories.

• Sept. 11 prosecutors are considering a plea deal for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the terrorist attacks.

• Ticket sales for domestic U.S. flights in February exceeded those for the same month in 2019, the first such increase since the pandemic began.

What Else Is Happening

• Daylight saving time might become permanent in the U.S., as senators passed legislation that would eliminate the biannual ritual of springing forward and falling back.

• Anna Sorokin, who posed as an heiress to swindle elites under the pseudonym Anna Delvey, will be deported from the U.S. to Germany.

• For the first time since 1940, Rockefeller Plaza in New York City will have a roller rink.

A Morning Read

Swiss cartographers are especially busy these days. As climate change melts glaciers in the Alps, a team of specialists is erasing them from the country’s maps — often by hand.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The world’s top architect

Growing up in a poor village in Burkina Faso, the architect Francis Kéré went to school in classrooms so warm that they made him dream of building cooler buildings. After attending architecture school in Berlin, he eventually fulfilled his childhood dream by building an elementary school in his hometown, Gando.

Instead of air-conditioning, the school used cement-fortified bricks and an elevated, overhanging roof to counteract conditions of extreme heat and poor lighting, allowing it to expand to 700 students, from 120.

Yesterday, Kéré received the most prestigious prize in architecture, the Pritzker Prize, for his work spanning buildings across West Africa as well as a technology campus in Kenya, a pavilion in Montana and 12 colorful towers for the 2019 Coachella Festival. Even after earning international acclaim at exhibitions like the Serpentine Pavilion in London and the Venice Biennale, Kéré has continually directed his attention toward home.

Reached by telephone, Kéré said that he cried when he heard he had won. “I still don’t believe” it, he said. “I’ve been pushing this work in architecture to bring good quality architecture to my people.”

For more: See more photos of Kéré’s work. Last year, T Magazine named the Gando school one of the 25 most significant buildings built since World War II.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

These savory hamantaschen, eaten for the Jewish holiday of Purim, feature crumbled feta tucked under thyme-scented caramelized onions.

What to Read

“In the Margins,” a new book from Elena Ferrante, is both a philosophical and a practical meditation on writing and reading.

What to Watch

A new animated film tells the story of the Catalan illustrator Josep Bartolí, who lived in French internment camps and exchanged love letters with Frida Kahlo.

Now Time to Play

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Zero, nothin’, nada (five letters).

Here’s today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for joining me. — Natasha

P.S. The Times will open more than a dozen new data roles in the newsroom over the course of the year.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is on a defining war photo from Ukraine.

You can reach Natasha and the team at [email protected].