Evening Update: After fending off Russian troops in Kyiv, these Ukrainian special forces members are processing horrors and appealing for weapons

Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:

Ukrainian resistance fighters are adjusting their tactics after successfully defending the capital of Kyiv from Russian invaders. While drones and small units of special forces played an oversized role in Kyiv’s defence, the battle in the East is shaping up to be an old-fashioned clash of armies.

The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon spoke with two special forces members about their experiences since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion began on Feb. 24. Both men believe that Ukraine will have to adjust its tactics – and receive even more military aid from its allies in the West – in order to stop the new Russian offensive in the East.

Moscow aims for southern Ukraine

Meanwhile, a Russian general says that Moscow wants to seize all of southern and eastern Ukraine, far wider war aims than it had acknowledged as it presses on with a new offensive after its campaign to capture the capital Kyiv collapsed last month.

Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying Moscow aimed to seize the entire eastern Donbas region, link up with the Crimea peninsula, and capture Ukraine’s entire south as far as a breakaway, Russian-occupied region of Moldova.

That would mean pushing hundreds of miles beyond current lines, past the major Ukrainian cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.

Canada sending armored vehicles to Ukraine, in talks to reopen embassy in Kyiv

Canada is sending armoured vehicles to Ukraine and is in talks to reopen the Canadian embassy in Kyiv as allies restore operations at their diplomatic missions in the Ukrainian capital.

The Canadian government also revealed more details on its pledged heavy artillery donation to Ukraine, saying it has already secretly delivered several M-777 howitzer guns from its own inventory. The government did not specify how many but one official said it was four.

Kyiv is asking other countries to reopen embassies now that Russian forces have backed off an attempt to capture the capital city and while Moscow is now redoubling its efforts in Ukraine’s south and east.

Seated beside Ukraine’s Minister of Finance Sergii Marchenko at a press conference in Washington Friday, Ms. Freeland said Canada is actively discussing a return to Kyiv.

Read more Russia-Ukraine coverage:

• How a Silicon Valley boss struggled to protect his Ukrainian employees
• Quickly cutting Russian gas imports to Europe could backfire
• After fending off Russian troops in Kyiv, these Ukrainian special forces members are processing horrors and appealing for weapons

Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur, dead at 70, brought flair to the Canadiens in team’s glory years

Guy Lafleur skated as smoothly and swiftly as an ice catamaran in a winter gale.

Streaking down the right wing with collar-length hair flowing behind him like a comet’s tail, he raised his stick before suddenly snapping down, the shot as devastating as the hammer on a mouse trap. Many a hapless goalie waved at the puck’s black blur.

The Montreal Canadiens star who was known to English-speaking fans as the Flower, a translation of a venerable family name traceable to feudal France, has died at age 70 after a recurrence of lung cancer. In his native French, he was le Démon blond, which better captured his essence.

Of his 618 career National Hockey League goals, including playoffs, perhaps the one that best expressed the right winger’s preternatural skill was scored against the Boston Bruins to tie the seventh game of their semi-final series on May 10, 1979.

Read more on Guy Lafleur:

• Guy Lafleur made hockey appear iconic in a way no one had before

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Ottawa faces blowback for plan to regulate Internet: Newly released documents reveal Twitter Canada told government officials that a federal plan to create a new Internet regulator with the power to block specific websites is comparable to drastic actions used in authoritarian countries like China, North Korea and Iran.

Alterna Savings strikes deal to buy PACE credit union: Toronto-based Alterna Savings and Credit Union Ltd. will acquire most of the assets of troubled PACE Savings & Credit Union in a transaction that is intended to safeguard PACE’s core business but split off more contentious parts that have put it under financial strain.

Experts question whether new $15-billion Canada Growth Fund will repeat past Liberal missteps: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doubling down on one of his government’s biggest – and so far largely unmet – economic promises: that new, arm’s-length federal agencies can entice global investors to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on Canadian projects.

Nova Scotia eyes higher taxes for non-residents to take edge off housing crisis: Nova Scotia is proposing to squeeze out-of-province property owners with two taxes that the government says will help to take the edge off of its burgeoning housing crisis by freeing up units for the province’s residents.

MARKET WATCH

Wall Street slumped to a lower close on Friday, ending a whipsaw week of surprise earnings news and increased certainty around aggressive near-term interest rate rises, which also pushed them into negative territory for the week. The TSX, fully swept up in the action, was down more than 2 per cent – its worst day of 2022.

It was the third straight week of losses for both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, while the Dow Jones posted its fourth weekly decline in a row.

All three indexes were trading more than 2 per cent down for much of the afternoon on Friday.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 121.68 points, or 2.77 per cent, to end at 4,271.84 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 335.09 points, or 2.54 per cent, to 12,839.56. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 973.22 points, or 2.80 per cent, to 33,819.54.

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TALKING POINTS

The LGBTQ community is under attack in the U.S. Is Canada at risk?

“Radical conspiracy theories married to restrictive new laws about what can be taught in classrooms have put progress toward full equality for LGBTQ people in the United States at risk. And because America is so culturally powerful, that puts LGBTQ people in Canada at risk as well.” – John Ibbitson

The Ontario Liberals’ proposed handgun ban is opportunistic – and voters can’t afford to fall for it

“There must be an alarm that goes off in every Liberal Party war room when polling shows support has fallen to undesirable levels: Attention! Electoral success threatened! Please deploy “abortion,” “gun” or “austerity” attack!” – Robyn Urback

Shannon Phillips’s ordeal is yet another reason why women don’t enter politics

“[Shannon Phillips] was an NDP supporter for as long as she can remember. Politics was quite literally in her blood, she often said, and she couldn’t imagine anything that would take her out of the game. But that was before the Lethbridge-West representative and former NDP environment minister learned that she was the target of a deeply troubling campaign of harassment by members of her riding’s police force. In 2017, she was secretly surveilled while a Minister of the Crown because of her policy decisions.” – Gary Mason

My fellow Canadians: Nova Scotia doesn’t want you

“A new Non-Resident Deed Transfer Tax and Property Tax will add a surcharge of 5 per cent to the price tag of a property if it is sold to someone who is not a full-time resident of Nova Scotia, and add the equivalent of 2 per cent of a property’s value to the municipal taxes out-of-province homeowners already pay.” – Noah Richler

LIVING BETTER

What’s a buccal facial and what are the benefits?

A buccal facial uses massage techniques to release the fascia, or connective tissue, surrounding the facial muscles. The difference between this and your typical facial massage is that during buccal massage, the facialist will don a pair of rubber gloves and massage your face from the inside of your mouth.

“I can only feel so much from the outside, but when I’m inside and have the muscles both ways, I can really target and hold on and get different angles,” says Amanda Jeppesen, founder and CEO of Sous La Face, a Toronto spa with seasonal pop-up locations at the city’s Bisha Hotel and in Port Carling, Ont.

She explains that the benefits of buccal massage can sometimes go beyond aesthetic sculpting to include relief of facial pain, tension or headaches caused by long periods of wearing a mask or clenching your jaw. “The only way you can do it is by going inside your mouth and then we’re able to use our thumbs or index fingers to actually feel and pull out the tension.”

TODAY’S LONG READ

Conservation group appeals to Canadians to help buy Ontario land twice the size of Toronto

A conservation group is eyeing an expanse of Ontario woodland more than twice the size of Toronto in hopes of turning it into the largest privately protected natural space in Canada.

The initiative, announced Friday by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, would result in the purchase of three large tracts of boreal forest located to the east and south of Hearst. Together they cover 1,450 square kilometres – more than all but the largest of Ontario’s provincial parks.

“We are really thrilled with the chance to be working at this scale,” said Kristyn Ferguson, a program director with the Nature Conservancy. “And it’s not just the size of the property. It’s what’s there.”

The land, which includes more than 100 lakes and 1,300 kilometres of rivers and streams, provides habitat for a wide array of native species, including large mammals such as lynx, black bear, wolf and moose. Its least disturbed reaches are thought to host woodland caribou, among other species at risk.

Evening Update is written by Emerald Bensadoun. If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday evening, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.