Photos and reports of a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian military vehicles wending its way toward Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv may be outdated. According to a Reuters report, the U.K.’s defense ministry issued a “military intelligence update” early Tuesday morning claiming that the “Russian advance on Kyiv has made little progress over the past 24 hours probably as a result of continuing logistical difficulties.”

The update goes on: “Russia has failed to gain control of the airspace over Ukraine prompting a shift to night operations in an attempt to reduce their losses.” The news agency also said it has been unable immediately to verify the report.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters this morning that “We will protect … every inch of NATO territory.”

NEW – #NATO Secretary General is at Łask airbase, where 🇺🇸 has deployed more F-15 Eagles for @NATO’s air policing mission. He announces “today, French troops are arriving in #Romania as the lead element” of the NATO Response Force. “We will protect…every inch of NATO territory” pic.twitter.com/jkhmDr44FF

— Rehanna Jones (@RehannaJB) March 1, 2022

Reuters also reported this morning quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said that the West “must not build military facilities in any countries of the former Soviet Union.” Russian news agencies RIA and TASS also report that Lavrov said that the Russian government “found it unacceptable that some European countries hosted U.S. nuclear weapons and [Russia] was taking measures to prevent Ukraine from acquiring similar weapons.”

Crypto exchange Binance has rejected a Ukrainian request to block all Russian user accounts. According to a report from CNBC, the exchange will block the accounts of Russians “who have been sanctioned.” A Binance spokesperson told CNBC:

We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has said that the country is temporarily banning foreign companies from exiting their Russian investments, essentially nationalizing those companies and investments. This is certain to have a chilling effect on future foreign investment in Russia and could be a sign that the sanctions already imposed on the country have worked much more effectively and faster than expected.

Russia is temporarily banning western companies from exiting Russian investments, PM Mikhail Mishustin says. pic.twitter.com/g2E0kC3eim

— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 1, 2022

It is not clear if this would apply to BP or the Norwegian state wealth fund, both of which said on Monday that they were withdrawing from investments in Russia.

China may be especially startled by the speed and effectiveness of the sanctions on Russian. Bill Bishop, a co-founder of MarketWatch and a long-time China watcher, writes in his Sinocism newsletter this morning:

The financial sanctions against Russia, and especially the ones against the Russian Central Bank, must have confirmed every fear of the US’s ability to wage financial war. How the PRC [People’s Republic of China] can protect against similar sanctions is unclear.

On Monday, Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote on the company’s official blog that just before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last Thursday, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center detected “a new round of offensive and destructive cyberattacks directed against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure.” He goes on:

We immediately advised the Ukrainian government about the situation, including our identification of the use of a new malware package (which we denominated FoxBlade), and provided technical advice on steps to prevent the malware’s success. (Within three hours of this discovery, signatures to detect this new exploit had been written and added to our Defender anti-malware service, helping to defend against this new threat.) In recent days, we have provided threat intelligence and defensive suggestions to Ukrainian officials regarding attacks on a range of targets, including Ukrainian military institutions and manufacturers and several other Ukrainian government agencies. This work is ongoing.

A late-session buying spree pushed the Nasdaq to a gain of 0.4% on Monday. The S&P 500 closed down 0.3% and the Dow Jones industrials fell by 0.5%. Energy stocks posted the day’s biggest gain, up 2.6%, as West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled at $95.72, up about 4.4% for the day. In early trading Tuesday, WTI traded up another 4.4% at $99.96. Brent crude settled at $97.97 yesterday and traded up 5.2% early this morning at $103.09.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury note settled at 1.83% on Monday, down 14 basis points, and the two-year note closed down 11 basis points at $1.44. The 10-year/two-year yield curve narrowed from 0.42 to 0.39.

Gold settled at just over $1,900 an ounce on Monday and traded up 1.3% at $1,925.10 early Tuesday.

Bitcoin surged on Monday to close at $41,000. The cryptocurrency has added another 6.2% Tuesday morning to trade at around $44,242. Bitcoin traders may be in for a surprise though, according to a new study from Singapore-based QCP Capital. According to a report on the study at Coindesk, “in four of the previous five wars involving a superpower the S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark equity index, dropped on early headlines anticipating a military conflict only to chalk up lasting rallies in the months following the outbreak of hostilities.” If cryptocurrencies trade in line with equities, as some have suggested, and have only a limited role as a safe haven, then the sudden jump is unlikely to have any lasting effect on crypto prices.

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