Your Monday Evening Briefing – The New York Times

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.

The next phase of the war will look very different from the battles fought in and around Ukrainian cities. The flatter, more open countryside of Donbas may favor Russia’s armored units and air superiority.

After meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today, Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said he came away feeling pessimistic about peace prospects, and that Putin intended to intensify the brutality of the war.

2. Russian conducted a campaign of terror and revenge against civilians in Bucha, Ukraine.

Our journalists spent more than a week in Bucha, the once-prosperous Kyiv suburb, documenting dozens of killings of civilians, interviewing scores of witnesses and following local investigators to uncover the scale of Russian atrocities.

As the Russian advance on Kyiv stalled in the face of fierce resistance, the occupation of Bucha slid into horror. The evidence suggests the Russians killed recklessly and sometimes sadistically before they retreated.

Related: The Biden administration is debating how much the U.S. should assist an investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague into Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Laws from 1999 and 2002, enacted by a Congress wary that the court might investigate Americans, limit the U.S. government’s ability to provide support.

3. President Emmanuel Macron will face the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the runoff of France’s presidential election.

The final results of Sunday’s first round of voting gave 27.8 percent of the vote to Macron and 23.2 percent to Le Pen, who benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.

That puts the spotlight on Macron’s “dam” of mainstream voters: Those who, time and again, have put political differences aside in the second round and voted for anyone but Le Pen in a so-called “Republican front” to deny the far right the presidency.

Macron is still favored to win re-election, but by a much smaller margin than in 2017, when he last faced Le Pen. The supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist veteran politician who came in a strong third, could now help determine the election’s outcome on April 24.

In Mexico, a nationwide recall vote overwhelmingly supported President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remaining in office but did not draw enough turnout to be binding.

4. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia after leaving the White House, despite a warning that the firm’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”

A panel that screens investments for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund objected to the Kushner deal, documents show. Days later, the full board of the $620 billion Public Investment Fund — led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler — overruled the panel.

5. Elon Musk abruptly backed off plans to join Twitter’s board.

Musk, the world’s richest person, announced plans to join the board last week after becoming Twitter’s biggest shareholder. But he apparently pulled a U-turn over the weekend and then published a series of erratic tweets about the social media company that upset employees.

If Musk had taken the board seat, he would have been restricted from buying more than 14.9 percent of Twitter shares and would have been legally required to act in the interest of all shareholders. But no longer: In a new filing today, he said he was entitled to buy more Twitter shares and reserved the right to “change his plans at any time, as he deems appropriate.”

“I believe this is for the best,” Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, said. He warned employees that “there will be distractions ahead” and advised them to “tune out the noise.”

In other tech news, cryptocurrency lobbyists and executives are going state by state to seek favorable regulations and, in some cases, are even writing the bills themselves.

6. Remote work has thrown the future of commuting — along with much of New York City’s economy — into doubt.

PwC, Verizon and a host of other corporations are permanently changing the way they work, making the five-day-a-week trek into Manhattan feel like a relic. That has enormous consequences for New York, whose economy is especially dependent on filling its forests of office towers.

Eric Adams, the city’s mayor, and Gov. Kathy Hochul have stepped up their urgent messaging that the city’s roughly 1.3 million private-sector office workers need to return to their desks. But they may as well be shouting into the wind as society changes around them.

7. MacKenzie Scott’s path to becoming a billionaire philanthropist includes enough reversals of fortune to fill one of her novels.

Scott grew up privileged, though her family’s wealth was a long way from her current estimated $50 billion net worth after her marriage to the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But her parents declared bankruptcy when she was a teenager, and she needed a loan from a friend to stay at Princeton, where the acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison became her mentor.

After graduation, Scott worked as a waitress and struggled to make rent. She met and married Bezos while working at a financial firm and moved with him to Seattle, where they built Amazon.

Since their divorce, Scott has set about disbursing her enormous fortune with extraordinary speed. She has donated more than $12 billion to 1,257 organizations, with a goal of advancing social justice and equality, all while trying to keep herself out of the spotlight.

8. The freshwater springs of Florida’s underwater caves are at the center of a slow-motion environmental tragedy.

The world’s densest network of underground springs has fascinated humans for thousands of years, but now they are being ravaged by development, over-extraction, climate change and runoff from agriculture and sewage. Their aquifers are depleted and algae blooms have clouded the gin-clear water, depleting the larger ecosystem.

Pollution has also killed the sea grass that sustains Florida’s roughly 7,500 manatees, and many are starving to death. Extreme measures — like feeding them 202,000 pounds of romaine lettuce — may not be enough.

9. Spring is here, along with Easter, Passover and other equinox meals.

10. And finally, how a myth about starlings took flight.

In 1890, an eccentric named Eugene Schieffelin released a few dozen European starlings into Central Park, hoping to introduce all the bird species mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to America. They now number about 85 million.

But two researchers recently concluded that crucial parts of the tale are false. Schieffelin’s portrayal as a Shakespeare superfan was a nature writer’s error, and records exist of earlier European starling introductions. So what else have scientists and naturalists gotten wrong about the much-reviled bird?

Have a lofty evening.

Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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