Ukraine

• U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, where she announced that the first tranche of the $45 billion Congress approved for Ukraine in December had been transferred and would go towards Ukraine's schools, firefighters, and doctors. This first tranche was just a sliver of the total committed: $1.25 billion.
• Meanwhile, Pres. Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine's fight in Bakhmut has become "more and more difficult," which could mean he's close to withdrawing Ukrainian troops and giving the city up to Russia.

• Belarusian president (and Putin puppet) Aleksandr Lukashenko is planning to visit China this week. Analysts read his visit as another example of Putin's effort to cozy up to Beijing - this time via an emissary.

• Beijing reacted to news that the U.S. Energy Department found - with "low confidence" - that COVID leaked from a lab in Wuhan by dismissing the claim and accusing the U.S. of politicizing the pandemic.
• Separately, China Renaissance - one of China's biggest investment banks - acknowledged that its missing founder / CEO / controlling shareholder, Bao Fan, was in government custody cooperating with an investigation into possible securities law violations.
• CNBC says investigations like this are driving China's billionaires "under the radar" to avoid catching investigators' attention.

• Bloomberg reports that China's CMOC has hoarded a pile of copper and cobalt worth $1.5 billion as it waits to see whether DRC is going to force it to renegotiate a more onerous mining agreement.
• The $1.1 billion of copper CMOC has stockpiled is just a blip in the global copper market, so selling it won't crash copper prices; however, CMOC is a more significant player in the cobalt market and will have to be wise about timing its cobalt sales to avoid driving already-low cobalt prices further down.

• A new U.S. report estimates up to 3,000 Islamic State (IS) fighters are operating in Afghanistan.
• Hours after that U.S. report came out yesterday, the Taliban announced it had killed two senior IS commanders during a raid in Kabul the previous day.