Morning Update: Canadian troops retreat from Ukraine amid threat of invasion from Russia

Good morning,

Canadian troops are pulling out of Ukraine and the few remaining diplomats are moving from Kyiv to this cultural centre in the country’s west, where local workers spent their Sunday stocking up on bullets.

Ruslan Vodoviz, 52, walked out of the Ibis gun store with new supplies of shotgun shells. After serving with the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, he built a business in Lviv selling cars. “I’m not frightened. But I’m deeply worried, and I’m actively preparing for possible war,” he told The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon.

Lviv, a city of 725,000 closer to Warsaw than Kyiv, has long been the cradle for a strengthening Ukrainian identity, with the colourful facades of its Habsburg-era centre visually underscoring its connection to Europe.

Read more:

• Chechens and Georgians in Ukraine preparing to continue fight against Putin on a new front
• Ukrainian President Zelensky asks for U.S. evidence on warnings Russian invasion days away

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Ambassador Bridge reopens after police clear Windsor blockade

The Ambassador Bridge reopened late Sunday, nearly a week after demonstrators opposed to pandemic restrictions brought daily commercial traffic across the important trade link between Canada and the United States to a halt.

A spokesman for the Detroit International Bridge Co. issued a statement that said “the Ambassador Bridge is now fully open allowing the free flow of commerce between the Canada and US economies once again.” Esther Jentzen, spokeswoman for the company, said in a later text to The Associated Press that the bridge reopened to traffic at 11 p.m. EST.

Earlier in the day, police made more than two dozen arrests as they cleared protesters that were blocking access to the bridge. The standoff at the bridge, which had blocked traffic between Detroit and Windsor, Ont., was cleared two days after a court injunction against the protest came into effect. Protests and road blockings continued in several other parts of the country, including blockades at border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba.

More coverage:

• Border blockade damaged Canada’s reputation, business leaders say
• For Ottawa’s Chief Peter Sloly, police response to protests pits his progressive views against a complicated threat
• Convoy protests’ key figures count liberal ideas, ‘political Islam,’ Ottawa’s indifference toward the West among their grievances
• Remember: Those who wave the Canadian flag do not get to define it for everyone else

Poland’s steel border wall threatens old-growth ecosystem

Bogdan Jaroszewicz tries to shut out the drum beat of war as he carries out his research deep in the heart of Poland’s ancient Bialowieza Forest.

Jaroszewicz has spent 30 years studying the ecosystem of this unique woodland – the last remaining parcel of virgin lowland forest in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And like many people in this part of eastern Poland near the border with Belarus, he’s learned to live with geopolitical tension.

The area had already attracted global attention because of the thousands of Middle Eastern migrants who tried crossing from Belarus into Poland, only for many to be pushed back by Polish soldiers and then left trapped in the forest between both countries. Now, scores of Russian troops have poured into Belarus as part of Moscow’s military buildup for a possible invasion of Ukraine.

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Christine de Bruin wins bronze in monobob: Canada’s Christine de Bruin won silver in the inaugural Olympic monobob race at the Beijing Games on Monday. Kaillie Humphries – the Stony Plain, Alta., native’s former Canadian teammate – took gold in her first Olympics competing for the United States.

• Daily Olympic guide: Canada roars into women’s hockey final: Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva cleared to compete

Oil-sands CEOs are working together in the race to get to net zero: Every Friday at 7 a.m., the chief executives of Canada’s six largest oil-sands companies set aside their competitive differences and jump on a conference call. The topic? How to bring emissions from their sites to net zero by 2050.

Does COVID-19 testing at airports still make sense?: With the disease now widely circulating in the community, testing all incoming air travellers for COVID-19 is of low value, medical experts say. Instead, they say, Canada’s limited testing resources should be used on random sampling to identify variants.

Canada’s Auger-Aliassime wins first ATP title: Félix Auger-Aliassime won his first career title at the ninth attempt, upsetting Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4, 6-2 in the Rotterdam final on Sunday to deny his top-seeded opponent an eighth title.

Listen to The Decibel: How Colombia makes Valentine’s Day bloom in Canada: Freelance photographer Yader Guzman documented the journey of some of Colombia’s flowers, sharing with us how they go from the greenhouses in Bogota to local stores in Canada and how Colombia came to become the second-largest exporter of flowers in the world.

• Getting roses for Valentine’s Day? Thank these Colombians, and their massive annual flower airlift

MORNING MARKETS

World shares skidded on Monday as warnings that Russia could invade Ukraine at any time drove oil prices to seven-year peaks, belted the euro and sent investors scuttling back to the safe-haven government bonds they have been dumping all year. Europe’s STOXX 600 share index tumbled 2.5%, Wall Street futures were down 0.6%, though it was Ukraine’s government bonds that understandably showed the most alarm as they slumped 10%. The Canadian dollar was trading at 78.35 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Don’t give up on Canadian cities just yet

“Some people sold their city homes and moved to the country. Why not, when real estate was cheaper and they could telecommute for work? Those worries may have been overdone. In fact, the problem we’ll find when we come out of this may be quite the opposite: Not managing the decline of Canadian cities but coping with their explosive growth.” - Marcus Gee

An elegy for the office romance

“Without office romances, my children wouldn’t exist. Perhaps yours wouldn’t either. It’s worth looking at what makes office romances special, and intoxicating – and in some cases discouraged by human resources.” - Elizabeth Renzetti

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

Open this photo in gallery:

LIVING BETTER

Leanne Brown’s cookbook aims to take the chore out of cooking

We’ve all encountered people who make the art of entertaining look effortless. Then there are many others who find the act of preparing a meal an extremely stressful assignment.

It is for the second group – the ones who would love to be better cooks, but put way too much pressure on themselves to have each dish turn out perfect – that Leanne Brown wrote Good Enough: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection & Practicing Self-Care in the Kitchen. Brown’s second cookbook features 100 easy-to-follow recipes that use simple ingredients and aren’t time-consuming.

MOMENT IN TIME: The 2002 judge scandal in figure skating

Open this photo in gallery:

For more than 100 years, photographers and photo editors working for The Globe and Mail have preserved an extraordinary collection of news photography. Every Monday, The Globe will feature one of these images. This month, we’re looking at memorable Winter Games stories.

Though they had silver medals hung around their neck after the pairs figure skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier were a picture of dejection as they skated off the ice after the medal presentation. Earlier, the crowd had booed its displeasure when it learned that the judges had surprisingly given higher scores to the Russian duo Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze over the world champion Canadians. After the medal presentation, a scandal erupted when French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne admitted she had been pressured into favouring the Russians. Subsequently, Salé and Pelletier’s silver medals were upgraded to gold. Brad Wheeler

Subscribers and registered users of globeandmail.com can dig deeper into our News Photo Archive at tgam.ca/newsphotoarchive

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