No one knows how many people have fled Russia in the last two weeks, says Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar in Der Spiegel, but it’s definitely in the “hundreds of thousands”. In “perhaps the least visible exodus in history”, Russia’s middle classes are fleeing the country however they can. At least 20,000 have gone to Georgian capital Tbilisi, where disgruntled locals have launched a petition to introduce new visa requirements. With European airspace closed to Russian aircraft, ticket prices for flights from Moscow to countries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan and Mongolia have increased almost tenfold.

Plenty of politicians have started their life as actors, says Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. But Ukraine’s President Zelensky is more unusual – he was a clown. Before his 2019 election win he was known for “little else except his clowning”: his claim to fame was playing a bumbling politician in a Ukrainian sitcom. His opponents made jibes, but Zelensky embraced his comic capabilities. In one campaign video he sported a large (digital) red nose. “They called me a clown,” he said. “I am a clown, and I am very proud of it.” When asked in an interview if he could make Vladimir Putin laugh, he said of course he could, adding: “Laughter is a weapon that is fatal to men of marble.”