Ukraine live briefing: Congressional Progressive Caucus withdraws Ukraine letter; Brittney Griner appeal rejected

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of liberal Democrats, withdrew on Tuesday a letter to President Joe Biden urging negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported. Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said the letter, which triggered backlash among other democrats and in Ukraine, was prepared by staff and sent on Monday without proper vetting.

A Russian court rejected U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner’s appeal against her more than nine-year prison sentence on drug charges Tuesday. The WNBA star has been imprisoned since her Feb. 17 arrest on charges of entering Russia with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which her lawyers said were prescribed to her as part of treatment for chronic pain and other conditions.

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling: U.S. officials said that Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon behind the mercenary group Wagner, personally told Putin that his military chiefs are mismanaging the war, The Post’s Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson and Paul Sonne report.

Prigozhin’s criticisms echoed what he has been saying publicly for weeks, the officials said. But the revelation that he felt comfortable sharing such a harsh rebuke of the Russian military effort with Putin in a private setting shows how his influence is rising as Moscow’s war falters. It also highlights the shaky standing of the Russian defense establishment’s formal leadership, which has come under fire from Prigozhin and others after months of battlefield errors.

A separate U.S. intelligence report that has been circulating among officials in Washington stated that Prigozhin has expressed his view that the Russian Defense Ministry relies too much on Wagner and is not giving the mercenary group sufficient money and resources to fulfill its mission in the conflict, said the people who read the report.

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Mary Ilyushina, Michael Miller, Loveday Morris, Emily Rauhala and Jeff Stein contributed to this report.