Ukraine

• NATO leaders committed to offering Ukraine an invitation to join the alliance but were so vague about when that might happen that Pres. Zelensky called the lack of clarity "absurd."
• The opacity was probably deliberate: some of NATO's 31 member states don't think this is the right time for Ukraine to join - whether because Ukraine is "not ready" (in Pres. Biden's words) to meet the pre-requisites for membership or because NATO is not ready to admit a new member that's currently at war with a non-member.

• Two separate UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on extending humanitarian aid for opposition-held areas in Syria failed yesterday: Russia vetoed one that Brazil and Switzerland proposed, and the U.S., UK, and France vetoed another that Russia put forward.
• An estimated 4.1 million Syrians depend on humanitarian aid that will be cut off if the UNSC can't negotiate a compromise that all permanent members can agree on.

• North Korea fired what seemed to be a long-range ballistic missile in the sea, and NATO responded by urging Kim Jong Un to give up on his ambitions to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

• Azerbaijan accused the Armenian Red Cross of smuggling goods into Nagorno-Karabakh and temporarily closed the only road linking Armenia with the disputed territory, cutting off aid to areas controlled by Armenian and Russian peacekeepers.

• Israel's legislature took the first of three steps toward approving a controversial bill that would strip the Supreme Court of its power to void certain government decisions, thus shifting power away from the Court and towards the right-wing government. Protests erupted across the country.