As The Atlantic continues its editorial focus on exposing the crisis facing democracy and the rise of global authoritarianism, today the editors announced that the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa is joining the magazine as a contributing writer. Read more in a note to staff from editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, executive editor Adrienne LaFrance, and editorial director Denise Wills.

Updated at 5:00 p.m. ET on February 22, 2022In the space of a month, Vladimir Putin has effectively managed to transform a former Soviet state into an extension of Russian territory, in full view of the United States and Europe, without firing a single shot in the country.

The weatherman’s striped tie is still snug on his neck as he starts an evening bath for his three kids, one of whom bolts naked from the bathroom and does a lap around the kitchen before running back, feet slapping on the hardwood floor. “Okay,” Shel Winkley says, walking into the kitchen where his wife is loading the dishwasher. “I love you,” he tells her, and then he walks outside to his gray Prius, gets in, and drives to the TV station. Dinner’s over.

The actor Julia Fox met Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, on New Year’s Eve in Miami, and by the following week she was on the phone with Interview, providing behind-the-scenes commentary on all of the photos of them wearing dramatic outfits, going on expensive outings, and kissing on the floor.The first flashy celebrity romance of 2022 was glamorous to some and unsettling to others.

When I found out this morning that Paul Farmer had died, I thought first of his wife, Didi, and their three children. I thought of his colleagues, and of everyone whose life was saved or changed for the better by him. And then I thought of all the people who know and care about global health because of Paul, far too many to count.Paul is a hero, and I was fortunate to call him a friend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a long speech full of heavy sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now he has declared war against the international order of the past 30 years.Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope.

Vladimir Putin likes to associate today’s Russian Federation with the old Russian empire, and in one sense he is right. The Russian empire was the most repressive state of its era, with the most refined state police: the Okhrana. Russian revolutionaries, the men and women who would establish the Soviet state, were educated by its methods. It did not simply hunt them down; it ensnared them, often without their knowledge, in a complicated dance of incriminating their comrades.