COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Weekend Update 26th / 27th February 2022

There are no UK Daily Statistics today.
World: 435,315,212 reported cases and 5,965,853 losses of life.

There's very little COVID news that has made it's way through, and none of it is particularly urgent, exciting or important (although New Zealand really have cracked now - see the chart at the bottom). The entire world has it's focus on Ukraine, and Russia, including all Western governments and journalists.

Around 1.30pm GMT today Putin announced on Russian TV that because of aggressive statements made by NATO leaders, he was implementing "special mode of combat duty of the deterrence forces".
This refers to his nuclear capability, and is another threat to the West to back off, but according to Tass (Russian news agency) and anonymous online accounts, it hopefully doesn't mean anything else.
"Hard to tell with certainty, but most likely it means that the nuclear command and control system received what is known as a preliminary command"
Within minutes Ukraine's officials agreed to talks just over the border in Belarus. The Kyiv Independent:
"The Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko assured Zelensky that all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory will remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return."
Tragically just after 5pm the Zhytomyr airport was bombed - and the bombs were launched from inside Belarus. That seems very likely to have broken the agreement as well as being the actual bombing of an airport, so sadly it doesn't bode well.