The Russian parliament is ratifying the Crimea takeover, and the U.S. is adding more sanctions. The key targets of those sanctions? The oligarchs with close ties to Putin.

+ “Recent events — in particular the Western response to the Crimea invasion — show that Putin might understand the world order and the nature of political systems better than most analysts and policymakers.” The New Republic: Face it, the West is already accepting Putin’s actions.

+ While the world’s attention has been grabbed by the bloodless takeover of Crimea, we’ve completely ignored another region that continues to be a very bloody point of contention between the U.S. and Russia. The Syrian war has reached its third year. InFocus has a collection of images from Syria, where approximately 146,000 people have been killed.