It’s not that often that the president of Russia and the president of the United States give major speeches on the same day, hitting parallel themes and subjects. That it happened today was no accident: Friday is the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden were both interpreting that war to their audiences. But those audiences were very different. So were the visions of the world on offer.Putin spoke for two hours in a large, featureless hall.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Vladimir Putin gave his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly today, and it was a farrago of paranoia and lies; meanwhile President Joe Biden humiliated the Kremlin by walking the streets of Kyiv in broad daylight. The Russian president knows he is losing.

Life is unfair, as a Democratic president once put it. That was John F. Kennedy, at a press conference early in his term.Jimmy Carter did not go through as extreme a range of the blessings and cruelties of fate as did Kennedy and his family. But I think Carter’s long years in the public eye highlighted a theme of most lives, public and private: the tension between what we plan and what happens.

What do you get when you buy something? The thing, of course—a Big Mac, airline transit to Miami, the right to stream Bridgerton. This is the hard product. But you receive secondary goods and services as well: the box in which you can transport your burger, complimentary Wi-Fi with your SkyMiles membership, the kinship of watching a show with your family. Call this the “soft product.” If you don’t get the hard product, you’ve been swindled.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, I asked readers for insights into why teenage girls might be struggling, citing CDC data showing that the percentage who have contemplated suicide is up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago.

An American AWACS began patrolling the skies west of Ukraine last night; Kyiv was locked down this morning. Motorcades crisscrossed the city and rumors began to spread. But although it was clear someone important was about to arrive, the first photographs of President Joe Biden—with President Volodymyr Zelensky, with air-raid sirens blaring, with St. Michael’s Square in the background—had exactly the impact they were intended to have: surprise, amazement, respect.

Sign up for Kaitlyn and Lizzie’s newsletter here.Lizzie: Do they call it a bar crawl because by the end of it you’ll be crawling? Or is it because if you attend one in February, you’ll be crawling out of your apartment wondering why the host, generally understood to be a party genius, decided to throw a bar crawl in the East Village on the coldest weekend of the year?Our friend Andrew (the brain behind last year’s Watergate party) was hosting this bar crawl.

The long-range missiles matter. So do the super-accurate artillery shells, the surface-to-air missiles, and the winter weather gear; the training in the English countryside or the muddy Grafenwöhr maneuver grounds; and the intelligence provided from the eyes in space and the ears on airplanes that circle outside the battle zone.President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv matters just as much as any of these.Other heads of government preceded him, earning deserved credit.