Today is Monday, March 7th, and you're listening to the Morning Announcements presented by

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I'm Sammy Sage, and this episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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This was a pivotal weekend in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Putin stays a maniac, even on the weekend.

Which is a good place for us to start, because if I were living in Russia right now, as

of this weekend, I could receive 15 years in prison for calling Putin to maniac.

The Russian parliament passed a law on Friday that will criminalize sharing what the

Kremlin determines is fake information about the country's armed forces, with punishments

ranging from fines of $45,000 to prison terms of up to 15 years.

I will try to remember that next time I complain about Twitter.

Twitter, Facebook, Visa, MasterCard, Amix, Netflix, TikTok, and numerous news websites,

such as the BBC, are now blocked in Russia as of this weekend.

Samsung also announced that they are suspending sales of chips and phones.

And it seems the more that Russia is cut off, the more detached from reality that Vladimir

Putin becomes, as well as the narrative of the war that he is insisting upon.

For example, in a Friday phone call with Germany's Chancellor Olaf Schultz, Putin flat out

denied that his troops were bombing Ukrainian cities, and told Schultz that the ongoing

airstrikes of Kiev and other large cities are gross propaganda fakes.

Also over the weekend, he said that he wants normalization of global relations and an

end of sanctions, as if that wasn't something that he could easily achieve if he just

...