To understand the dangers that go along with Western sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia, says Patrick Jenkins in the Financial Times, it’s worth remembering the collapse of Lehman Brothers. When US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson decided to let Lehman go to the wall – while bailing out the rest of the Wall Street banks – he caused “the disorderly collapse of one of the most interconnected financial institutions in the world”. This made the 2008 crisis far worse and escalated the scale of interventions required by governments and central banks. Then, as now, the “moral imperative” to punish “perceived misdeeds” was nearly impossible to resist. But the ramifications of intervening in the ultra-complex and interconnected world of global finance were “dire”.

The UN has passed several major votes criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And in each one, says Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan in The Atlantic, India has pointedly abstained. On the surface, this is a surprising stance. The world’s biggest democracy is a “growing ally” of the US, and has itself been suffering border incursions from “a more powerful and expansionist autocratic neighbour” – in its case, China. But while Indians are divided on most issues, there is a “rare consensus” on Ukraine: they’re not going to abandon Moscow. There have been no big pro-Ukraine protests. Newspaper columnists “compare the Russian invasion to the US war in Iraq”.