All right, let's start today with news out of Russia and Ukraine.

These headlines are sort of unbelievable.

I've been a stop short of calling them Kafka-esque, but it's almost appropriate.

The Associated Press reports that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has declared

martial law in the annexed regions of Ukraine.

Now that headline might make sense if that there was really an annexation that took place.

What we're really talking about is occupied regions of Ukraine in which Putin is claiming

sovereignty, but in which there really is no sovereignty.

And so it's kind of a weird thing to say.

I'm declaring martial law in parts of a different country, which is fundamentally what Putin

is doing, but of course his perspective would be a different one.

Let's look at a little bit of this article and we'll talk about the reasons for this and

the implications and sort of what comes next.

Associated press once again, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared martial law Wednesday

in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow annexed and gave additional emergency powers to

the heads of all regions of Russia.

Putin didn't immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law.

I think we can guess some of them, but said his order was effective starting Thursday.

His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals and orders

the creation of territorial defense forces in those four annexed regions.

The statement here from Putin, again, it's all extremely dystopian.

Quote, we are working to solve very difficult large scale tasks to ensure Russia's security

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