Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

From London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fassman.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world.

There are lots of reasons that a country's tally of its COVID deaths might be inaccurate,

not every country counts in the same way.

But there's doubtless also been some fiddling of the numbers and some new research shows

how to spot it.

And an eternal question.

How to reduce corruption?

Well, countries can increase funding for anti-corruption officers.

They can make public spending more transparent.

But some places are trying a much simpler solution.

First up though.

Overnight, Russian forces intensified their offensive and hard give.

Ukraine's second city.

The city's police building was destroyed by a Russian missile strike.

And this morning, Russia reported that it seized control of the city of Harrison.

Meanwhile in America, President Biden announced further sanctions in his state of the Union

address on Tuesday.

Tonight, I'm announcing that we will join our allies in closing off American airspace

to all Russian flights further rice-setting Russia and adding additional squeeze on their

...