Today's Headlines and Commentary

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Russia’s top warship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, was badly damaged and its crew evacuated, but Ukrainian and Russian officials have given different accounts of what happened, according to AP News. Ukrainian officials claim that their forces hit the Moskva, with one official saying that the missile cruiser sank. Russian officials say that a fire aboard the ship forced the crew to evacuate but that it remains afloat. Cloud cover has made it difficult to locate the ship or assess its condition based on satellite photos.    

The White House announced that it will send an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, reports the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that the Ukrainian foreign minister had previously asked for “weapons, weapons, weapons.” The latest batch of military aid will include armored personnel carriers, helicopters and artillery, among other equipment. The U.S. will also share additional intelligence with the Ukrainian government, but will not share information that could help the Ukrainian military target assets on Russian territory. 

Finland and Sweden are considering joining NATO, reports the New York Times. In a press conference on Wednesday, both the Finnish and Swedish prime ministers said that a decision to apply could be made “within weeks.” Public opinion polls in Sweden and Finland have indicated an increasing interest in NATO. For instance, in Sweden, 50 percent of people favor joining the alliance, a number that increases to 62 percent if Finland also joins. 

French presidential candidate and leader of the right-wing National Rally party Marine Le Pen said that, if elected, she would take France out of NATO’s military command structure, reports the New York Times. The move would stop short of leaving the alliance, but she said “I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a European command.” In the 75-minute press conference, she also criticized Germany, the European Union and multilateralism. At the moment, President Macron reportedly leads by around eight percentage points in polling for the presidential runoff, which will occur on April 24. 

After a 29-hour manhunt, police on Wednesday arrested a man accused of opening fire on a subway train in Brooklyn and injuring at least 23 people, according to the New York Times. Federal officials charged the suspect, Frank James, with carrying out a terrorist attack on a mass transportation vehicle. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Prosecutors and police have not yet provided a motive for the shooting.

Several U.S. government agencies released a joint alert announcing the discovery of malware capable of attacking industrial facilities, reports the Washington Post. The malware system, dubbed Pipedream, was discovered before it was used. Government officials did not say which country they believe developed the system, but private security experts who analyzed the system say it was probably Russian and that the target was likely liquefied natural gas production facilities. The National Security Agency, Department of Energy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI—which jointly released the alert—urged the energy sector to take precautions such as installing monitoring programs and requiring multi-factor authentications for remote logins.

President Biden has authorized the National Archives and Records Administration to turn over a new batch of documents from the Trump White House to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, writes the Washington Post. Biden declined to assert executive privilege over the documents. The National Archives will deliver the records to the select committee on April 28. 

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Jen Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Jacob Schulz spoke with Agneska Bloch about the first round of France’s presidential elections for 2022. 

Howell also shared an episode of Rational Security in which Alan Rozenshtein, Quinta Jurecic and Scott R. Anderson were joined by Schulz to talk about this week’s top national security stories, including the presidential election in France and the U.S.government’s removal of Russian malware worldwide.

Albert W. Alschuler discussed the Justice Department not indicting former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the House of Representatives found him in contempt of Congress and asked to bring his case before a grand jury.