In a conflict in which Ukraine repeatedly claims victories which in reality turn out to be defeats, Ukraine did win finally win a genuine victory over Russia at the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal on Wednesday 28th February 2018.

The victory came in the litigation between Russia's monopoly gas exporter gas exporter Gazprom and Ukraine's national gas company Naftogaz.

After having previously rejected all of Naftogaz's arguments against the legality of its gas supply contracts with Gazprom, and after having ordered Naftogaz to pay Gazprom $2 billion for unpaid gas, the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal ordered on Wednesday 28th February 2018 that Gazprom owed Naftogaz $4.7 billion for its failure to supply agreed volumes for transit.

Though the situation in Eastern Ghouta has been deteriorating day after day, ever since February 18, the Syrian regular army appears to be seeing at least some light at the end of the tunnel.

The Syrian government says it has achieved "significant" progress in its ongoing military operation in Eastern Ghouta, a vast suburban area around the capital, Damascus. The authorities reported having seized about one third of the total area held by different armed militant groups scattered all around Ghouta.

Syria's Central Military Media says troops are continuing to advance from the east and are only within 3 kilometers, or 1.8 miles, from the military regiments moving in their direction from the west, which means Eastern Ghouta has been in essence divided into two parts. Syria's SANA news agency reported that the success of the Syrian army has sent terrorists into a state of disarray and collapse.

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The US embassy in Ankara will be shut down starting Tuesday due to a security threat, it said in a statement. The reopening date is yet to be scheduled. The move comes amid tensions between the US and Turkey.

Starting March 5, the Embassy will provide "only emergency services," the Monday announcement said. Routine actives, including visa interviews will not be held during the period of restrictions. The notice also advised US citizens in Turkey should avoid large crowds, keep a low profile and otherwise be cautious.

Also on Monday, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported the arrest of 12 people in Ankara as part of an investigation into suspected jihadists. The 12 were among 20 people in the case, for whom arrest warrants were issued by the state prosecutor's office, the report said. It was not immediately clear whether the arrests were connected to the closure of the embassy. The Anadolu report was published hours after the US announcement.

The Russian military has said allegations of "hospital bombings" in Eastern Ghouta are false, in a statement issued in response to accusations from the White House that Russia is "killing innocent civilians" in Syria.

Washington's claims came after the Syrian Army repelled an attack of the US-backed groups, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

It is the US and not Russia that is violating the UN resolution on the ceasefire in Syria, the ministry added. It accused Washington of doing nothing to constrain the militants it supports in Eastern Ghouta while they regularly shell Damascus, killing civilians.

Trump resumed his now daily trade war and tariff tweetstorm, blasting on Twitter that "we have large trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. NAFTA, which is under renegotiation right now, has been a bad deal for U.S.A. Massive relocation of companies & jobs." Specifically, the president added that "Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed."

"Reminder that there are two kinds of Trump-Russia stories: those we pay attention to because they serve a narrative, and those we ignore because they don't," tweeted The Real News' Aaron Maté ‏yesterday in response to the news that the Trump administration had authorized the sale of hundreds of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. "This one falls into latter category."

"That piss-tape kompromat surely dropping any day now," added journalist Mark Ames, a sarcastic reference to the fact that backing off on calls to arm Ukraine was an explicitly named part of the allegations in the notorious Steele dossier as one of the benefits Russia was supposed to have received from its "collusion" with the Trump campaign.

"If US media attitudes re: Russia weren't so hopelessly blinkered, this could be identified as the dangerous escalation that it is - rather than ignored or spun because it doesn't comport with the narrative that so many are now wedded to," said The Young Turks' Michael Tracey.

The press is reporting that Jared Kushner's days as a White House power may come to an end, due to a flurry of reports about his meetings as a Trump adviser with foreign officials and corporate execs who are in a position to help out his family's troubled real estate company - as well as Kushner's considerable innocence when it comes to foreign policy. The knives are out, and the latest reports are that Donald Trump himself wants his son-in-law to disappear.

The New York Times editorial board says Kushner "flames out." It says his only legacy ought to be anti-nepotism laws that would forbid the ascension of someone so unschooled in the ways of Washington.

At this point, the right question to ask is why Mr. Kushner still has any diplomatic role at all.

The Washington Post predicts "the fall of the House of Kushner" (a good Poe pun):

Once the prince of Trump's Washington, Kushner is now stripped of his access to the nation's deepest secrets, isolated and badly weakened inside the administration, under scrutiny for his mixing of business and government work and facing the possibility of grave legal peril in the Russia probe.

Kushner's tensions with chief of staff John F. Kelly have spilled into public view, while other dormant rivalries have resurfaced. Some colleagues privately mock Kushner as a shadow of his former self; one official likened the work of his Office of American Innovation to headlines in "The Onion," the satirical news website. Others said fear of the Russia probe has made some officials wary of interacting with Kushner on sensitive matters. And his reputation as an interlocutor for foreign governments has been undermined by the lowering of his security clearance level, which generated embarrassing headlines worldwide.

One state is fighting back against the unconstitutional powers granted by the NDAA with a bill that would make it illegal for the government to indefinitely detain citizens without due process.

A state is considering a bill that would counter one law that is rarely mentioned by the mainstream media - which just happens to be the one that gives the president the power to enforce indefinite detention of American citizens - the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

While most states ignore the overreaching power granted by the NDAA, the state of Idaho is fighting back against it. The Idaho House of Representatives passed House Bill 473, the Restoring Constitutional Governance Act, in a landslide vote of 63-4 this week. The bill specifically targets the most egregious constitutional violations that are allowed by the NDAA:

"The purpose of the Restoring Constitutional Governance Act is to restore the constitutional protections usurped by certain provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act ("NDAA"). Sections 1021 and 1022 of the 2012 NDAA, Public Law 50 U.S.C. 1541, authorize the violation of no fewer than 14 provisions of the Constitution including over half of the Bill of Rights. The sovereign government of the Great State of Idaho has a duty to protect the rights of citizens and other persons within Idaho's jurisdiction against such violations and from Federal overreach."

Marine Le Pen could face up to three years in prison after a French judge opened a criminal probe into her posting of graphic images to her Twitter feed in 2015. The tweets showed victims of Islamic State executions.

Three images, one showing the decapitated body of US journalist James Foley, were posted to the National Front leader's social media account. The pictures were captioned: "Daesh is THIS!"

Le Pen later removed the image of Foley following protests from Foley's family, but left another showing a tank running over a man in an orange jumpsuit and another of a man being burned alive in a cage. The far-right politician posted the images in response to some French media equating aspects of her political party and the terrorist group.