A Russian oligarch on what we get wrong about Putin

Good morning! It's Monday, March 21st. I'm Duarte Geraldino.

And I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.

Ukraine is refusing to surrender the city of Mariupol. This comes after a weekend of intense attacks. Ukrainian officials accused Russia of bombing an art school where hundreds of people were sheltering. Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in the city with little food, water and power.

As the United States and other countries in the West impose sanctions on Russia, we're hearing a lot about Russian oligarchs and how cracking down on their fortunes could apply pressure on Vladimir Putin. But we've heard very little from the oligarchs themselves, which is why this new story in "Bloomberg Businessweek" stuck out to us. It has a rare and exclusive interview with a Russian oligarch.

Senior writer Stephanie Baker spoke to Mikhail Fridman. He was one of the seven original oligarchs, people who rose to power after the Soviet Union collapsed, before Putin was in office. Fridman made billions in banking and private equity. But, as Baker explains, because of sanctions, a lot of it is essentially only paper wealth now.

He has no access to any of his accounts. So I really wanted to figure out, you know, what do you do when you're a billionaire with no cash?

Fridman has said he's against the war. In fact, he was born in Ukraine, and he says he's sympathetic to the suffering that's taking place there. But he says sanctions against him and other oligarchs won't influence Putin.

His argument is basically that the way Putin's Russia operates is the oligarchs don't dictate what the Kremlin should do. It's the Kremlin that's dictating what the oligarchs should do. So it's unrealistic and naïve to think that the oligarchs can turn around and put pressure Putin to stop the war.

Easy to say if you're an oligarch, right? Baker points out what a self-serving argument that is. And yet, some of what Fridman says tracks with history. Baker's covered oligarchs over the years and explains how Putin changed things.

In the 1990s, the oligarchs backed President Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign, and they did have sway over the Kremlin. And when Putin came into power in 2000, he turned that whole system on its head and basically told the leading businessmen, if you wanna keep your businesses, you need to stay out of politics. And anyone who violated that implicit deal was basically run out of the country or put in jail.

Fridman thrived under that system. Now he's cut off from his money because of Putin's war. He told "Bloomberg," if the people who are in charge of the E.U. believe that sanctioning oligarchs will embolden them to tell Putin to stop the war, that means they have no understanding of how Russia works, and we're all in big trouble.

The world right now is focused on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. But a lot of other people in different areas are also suffering. Aid agencies are struggling to get the funds they need to help these places. "The Guardian" looks at the situations in Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia. The U.N. says donations are billions of dollars short of what's needed to deliver enough food. As the CEO of the World Food Programme puts it, "We have no choice but to take food from the hungry to feed the starving."

"National Geographic" zooms in on Afghanistan. The situation there has gotten worse, with sharp drops in Western aid after the Taliban takeover. Nearly 9 million people there face emergency-level food insecurity. Reporter Nanna Muus Steffensen told us what this looks like on the ground.

Everything from maternity clinics to local district clinics, like fire fighters in the countryside, they lost their funding. Which means not only that the doctors, the midwives and nurses have not been paid for months, but also, of course, that they really, really struggle to pay for medicine, to pay for very basic supplies.

To fill the void left by the loss of global aid, she says a lot of young Afghans are stepping up to help

They never imagined that they would be aid workers, but actually many of them always aspired to do something for their country and for their countrymen. They always wanted to help build a better Afghanistan, but they imagined it in different ways: as lawyers, as doctors. And now what they're doing is really the most basic work: handing out food, helping, handing out medicine and things like this.

One of them is 24-year-old health care worker Navid Amini.

He's just been seeing this stream of patients coming in. And they're not only suffering from whatever diseases they have, but they're just so poor. And they need everything from medication and treatment to food and money and school for their children.

This "National Geographic" story is also full of excellent photos that show the people affected by the scarcity of global aid and those working to change things. You can see these pics for yourself in the Apple News app.

Oil and gas prices are in the headlines because of jumps tied to Russia's attack on Ukraine. But maybe you haven't heard how wild the nickel market has gotten since the invasion. Price spikes have a few Americans doing unusual things, like hoarding coins.

"The Atlantic" explains what's going on here. Russia supplies 20 percent of the world's high-quality nickel. And it's not just for pocket change. Nickel goes into all kinds of stuff that we use, from pipes to electric car batteries. Since the war started, the price of this metal has been on a wild ride of ups and downs. At one point, it rose 250 percent in 24 hours. The London Metal Exchange halted trading for the first time in decades.

A nickel is worth five cents, of course. But lately, the raw material it's made of has been worth more. That's what's called the "melt value." At one point this month, the stuff that makes up a single nickel was actually worth 16 cents. Oh, and by the way, nickels are mostly not made of nickel. The coins are 75 percent copper.

"The Atlantic" looks at how, among a small set of doomsday-prepper types, nickel hoarding is now trendy. You might consider this a heavy bet against runaway inflation. Literally heavy. A hundred dollars in nickels weights more than 20 pounds. The idea is, if the U.S. dollar totally collapses, the metal inside nickels will be valuable, in a way that paper in paper money won't.

It's not like there's a lot of people who are doing this. Most of them are small timers. But there is one hedge-fund manager who has one million dollars in nickels stashed away in a Dallas vault. A finance professor tells "The Atlantic," he doesn't recommend hoarding nickels. But he says it's not the most irrational investment he's seen people make. Worst case, they'll still be worth five cents.

There's more insight and analysis on the war in Ukraine in the Apple News app. We've also got other stories there, including the crash of a Boeing 737-800 today in southern China. State media report the China Eastern Airlines flight had 132 people on board.

We're also following two developments affecting the Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas is hospitalized with an infection. The court says the longest-serving member expects to be released early this week.

And confirmation hearings are today for Biden's Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. If confirmed, she would be the first Black woman on the highest court. "NPR" has a story on what you can expect from the week's hearings.

We've also got coverage of March Madness, including a story about the men of Saint Peter's University. The Number 15 seed shocked powerhouse Kentucky in the first round. Then the tiny New Jersey school pulled off another upset to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history.

In the women's tournament, check out the story of Lauren Jensen. She transferred from Iowa to Creighton. And this weekend, she was the one that hit the game-winning 3-pointer to beat Iowa.

Like we said, all that's in the Apple News app. And when you're there, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners

We'll talk with you again tomorrow.