Rat u Ukrajini

#BREAKING EU proposes sanctioning head of Russian Orthodox Church: document

#BREAKING Brussels seeks to exclude Russian bank Sberbank from SWIFT network: von der Leyen

#BREAKING EU chief proposes 'orderly' Russian oil import ban

“It will not be easy […] But we simply have to do it,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says.

“We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion […] Thus, we maximize pressure on Russia and we minimize the collateral damage on us.”#OOTT

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 4, 2022

Next? Secondary oil sanctions à la Iran

(yes, yes, yes... just give it time. Or do you really think EU/US/UK will take the pain of higher oil prices, and let some other countries buy discounted Russian oil and undermine their foreign policy objectives vs the Kremlin?) #OOTT

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 4, 2022

Signs of practicing black magic were found at the headquarters of Ukrainian mortarmen on the outskirts of the village of Trekhizbenka: adherents of otherworldly forces tried to “consecrate” the weapon and made marks with blood, RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
Military unit A4472 was based in this headquarters. A satanic seal was found on its wall, evoking associations with Hollywood films about evil spirits.

Pope Francis said Tuesday that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told him Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be over by May 9, but that he was pessimistic.

...

“Orban, when I met him, told me that the Russians have a plan and that on May 9 it will all be over. I hope that is the case,” the pontiff told Italy’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper.

Ukraine's ambassador to Budapest requested a meeting with the Hungarian MFA after Pope Francis revealed that Orbán told him about a "precise plan" of Russia to end the war by May 9 & following Oleksiy Danilov's claim that Russia had shared its plans of invading Ukraine w/ Hungary

— Szabolcs Panyi (@panyiszabolcs) May 3, 2022

Bleeding Blitva wrote:https://ria.ru/20220504/magiya-1786707582.html

Signs of practicing black magic were found at the headquarters of Ukrainian mortarmen on the outskirts of the village of Trekhizbenka: adherents of otherworldly forces tried to “consecrate” the weapon and made marks with blood, RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
Military unit A4472 was based in this headquarters. A satanic seal was found on its wall, evoking associations with Hollywood films about evil spirits.

Izgleda da nacistički narkomani prakticiraju i crnu magiju.

Russia Seeks to Annex Occupied Ukraine as Invasion Goals Shift
Kremlin plans referenda to absorb Donbas into its territory

3. мај 2022. 22:56 CEST

Nearly 10 weeks into the war and with its troops making only marginal gains in Ukraine’s east, Russia is focused on cementing both military and political control over the territory it has taken so far.

The Kremlin is installing occupation governments, ordering locals to use rubles for transactions and, according to three people involved in the efforts, planning hastily organized referendums in some areas to open the way for full annexation. The people spoke on condition of anonymity given the risk of retribution discussing sensitive information. The Kremlin did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Though far short of President Vladimir Putin’s original aims of ousting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and installing a pro-Russian regime in most of Ukraine, the latest efforts pose a new obstacle for already-stalled peace talks, in which Kyiv has insisted Russia give up the ground it has taken since invading on Feb. 24. Zelenskiy’s military, backed by infusions of heavy weapons from the U.S. and its allies, plans a push to retake territory.

Kremlin officials, in public and private, are still confident their advance will pick up speed and Russian forces will at least conquer the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Moscow is also seeking to tighten its grip in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, parts of which it has seized. That would leave about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and most of its coast under Russia’s control -- and create a land link to Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

In recent days, Russian officials have started talking down public expectations for a major battlefield breakthrough by May 9, the World War II Victory Day holiday and military parade that have become a touchstone of the Kremlin’s campaign to whip up public support for the invasion.

Still, in a sign of its ambitions for Donetsk and Luhansk, the Kremlin has turned responsibility for them over to its domestic politics division from the one that was responsible for neighboring countries, according to people familiar with the situation. Sergei Kiriyenko, the deputy chief of staff responsible for domestic politics, visited the region late last month to lay out his plans with officials there.

Russia’s recognition of the breakaway republics in late February - including swathes of territory it does not control - paved the way for the invasion.

While a U.S. official said Monday that votes on becoming part of Russia could be held in Donetsk and Luhansk as early as mid-May, people familiar with the planning in Moscow said they’re likely to be put off until Russian forces extend control at least to the administrative boundaries of the regions. That could take weeks or months.

Formal annexation of those two territories would make them irrevocably part of Russia, in the Kremlin’s view, permanently fracturing Ukraine as other occupied areas moved to secede.

In the interim, Moscow is replacing local officials loyal to the government in Kyiv, rerouting the occupied regions’ internet connections through Russian servers and censors and mandating the use of the ruble instead of Ukraine’s hryvnia. Kyiv has accused Russia of stealing 400,000 tons of grain from the areas it controls.

“We’ll absorb Ukraine region by region,” Konstantin Malofeev, a wealthy backer of Putin who’s helping fund the war effort including by sponsoring an army of volunteer soldiers, said in an interview.

He conceded that the scale of military aid to Kyiv from the U.S. and its allies “has been far greater than anticipated.” Together with determined Ukrainian resistance, that means a grinding war that “will drag on at a slow pace” for at least months to come, he said.

Sanctioned Tycoon

The U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Malofeev in April for violating sanctions first imposed on him for his role in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. At the time, the Treasury Department said he was “one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea.”

The Evolution of Sanctions as Financial Warfare: QuickTake

While Russia since Feb. 24 has increased its grip on Donetsk and Luhansk from 30% to 75% of the territory of the two Ukrainian regions prior to 2014, according to London-based defense research group Janes, the offensive is currently making relatively little progress.

Russian troops are still fighting to complete the takeover of the port city of Mariupol, where a pocket of Ukrainian resistance is holed up in a giant steel plant after a brutal weeks-long siege that leveled much of the city to ruins.

The Kremlin is preparing for a long, grinding campaign, according to people close to the leadership. With the U.S. and its allies steadily increasing sanctions - reaching the Russian oil and gas exports that had long been thought too vital to touch - Moscow sees little reason to compromise. A Russian general said in late April that Moscow’s goals are now to take over the south as well as the east of Ukraine, which would cut off the country from the sea and its main export routes. No senior official has publicly endorsed that ambition, however.

Privately, some Russian officials concede the situation on the ground in the occupied territories is chaotic and they haven’t yet been able to assert control and impose order.

Kherson, where a military-civilian administration headed by a former mayor of the region’s main city was appointed by Russia on April 26, will follow Luhansk and Donetsk in joining Russia, Malofeev said. At a minimum, the Kremlin should incorporate the entire southeast of Ukraine, a chunk of territory historically known as Novorossiya (New Russia) that Czarist Russia captured from the declining Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, he said.

Ambitious Goals

Without its ports and main export routes for wheat, coal and metals, “Ukraine will lose any economic independence,” Malofeev said.

He’s boosting propaganda and dispensing largess. His pro-Kremlin channel, Tsargrad, has correspondents fanning out across newly-occupied areas including Mariupol and Kherson, and he’s donated a billion rubles ($15 million) to buy generators, medicines, minivans and other supplies. The Russian government is also preparing to fund reconstruction, he said.

Alexander Borodai, a Russian legislator who briefly served as head of the Donetsk People’s Republic and leads the “volunteer” force set up by Malofeev fighting alongside Russian troops, said the Ukrainian state should be “dismantled and disappear from the face of the Earth.”

At least for now, it’s not clear that Russia is capable of exerting full control of Donetsk and Luhansk. In the south, Odesa, the biggest Ukrainian port, remains firmly in Ukrainian hands. Kharkiv, the major north-eastern city, is also holding out.

Zelenskiy has urged Ukrainians in occupied territories not to cooperate with Russian authorities.

Even in Kherson, which fell with little fighting in March, Russian forces still don’t have total authority. Russia has set up filtration camps targeting men of military age or who served in the country’s security forces, Ukrainian officials said.

The city has seen protests with participants holding up Ukrainian flags. The region’s Kyiv-loyal governor, Hennadiy Laguta, in mid-April visited an area freed by Ukraine’s army and oversaw the restoration of electricity, police patrols and health services. Schoolchildren in the Kherson region are continuing to study in Ukrainian schools online.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-03/russia-seeks-to-annex-occupied-ukraine-as-invasion-goals-shift?srnd=premium-europe

Iz ruskog ministarstva vanjskih poslova jutros su ustvrdili da se izraelski plaćenici bore uz krajnje desničarsku pukovniju Azov u Ukrajini.
'Izraelski plaćenici su praktički rame uz rame s militantima Azova u Ukrajini', rekla je Marija Zaharova za radio Sputnjik.

Europe Scrambles for Energy Before Cutting Itself Off From Russia
Imports of crude, diesel and natural gas have leaped, as Europe stocks up for a Russian-energy free future

The hunt for new supplies is a boon for energy companies able to sell into Europe.

By Joe Wallace
May 4, 2022 5:04 am ET

Europe is racing to stock up on oil and natural gas before it imposes tighter sanctions on Russian energy, showing the dash to reorganize global energy supplies in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

Terminals to import liquefied natural gas took in a record amount of the superchilled fuel for the time of year in April, according to commodity-tracking firm Vortexa. Oil imports from non-Russian suppliers, meanwhile, hit their highest level since the start of the pandemic.

Governments and companies are preparing for Russian imports to slow by seeking alternative sources in the U.S., Africa, the Middle East and Asia—as well as squeezing more supply out of Europe itself.

The hunt for new supplies is a boon for energy companies able to sell into Europe’s starved market at historically high prices. Immediate beneficiaries include commodity traders, American LNG exporters, West African crude producers and Indian oil refiners.

Europe is shoring up supplies ahead of a likely embargo on Russian oil and a potential severing of gas exports by Moscow. Both steps would rewire an economy that has run on affordable Russian energy dating back to the Cold War. Berlin says 12% of German oil imports now come from Russia, down from 35% before the Feb. 24 invasion.

Among the winners: BP PLC, which posted $6.2 billion in underlying profits for the first quarter Tuesday after stripping out a $25.5 billion charge from its decision to exit Russia.

Chief Executive Bernard Looney said BP had sent 55 cargoes of LNG into Europe over the past five months, a frenzy of activity for the firm’s gas traders. The company’s four European refineries, meanwhile, are minting money as the price of fuel they sell outstrips the cost of crude they buy.

“Industry margins have increased sharply since the invasion,” Chief Financial Officer Murray Auchincloss said of refining.

The scramble in Europe is driving up prices for consumers in the U.S. Natural-gas futures have more than doubled this year and diesel futures have rocketed 80%, adding to inflationary pressures that the Federal Reserve is trying to quash with higher interest rates.

Companies and governments are seeking to lock in supplies in the long run. NextDecade Corp. this week said it had signed a 15-year deal to supply LNG from its Brownsville, Tx.-based LNG export project to Engie SA starting in 2026.

The deal marks a U-turn for the French power company, which halted negotiations on a multi-billion contract to buy NextDecade’s gas in late 2020 over concerns about the environmental effects of fracking.

Europe’s decoupling from Russian energy accelerated in recent weeks. The European Union is finalizing a deal to end purchases of Russian oil, possibly by the end of the year. Shipments are already on track to drop when sanctions on state producers Rosneft Oil Co. and Gazprom Neft kick in mid-May.

The gas market is a bigger worry. Officials and analysts say Gazprom might cut supplies elsewhere in Europe after turning off the taps to Poland and Bulgaria last week. The giant producer said it had not received payment in rubles as required by a Kremlin decree.

To prepare for a future without Russian gas, Europe is importing more from afar.  Suppliers in North America and Africa have stepped in, shipping 81% and 25% more LNG to Europe than a year before, respectively, said David Wech, Vortexa’s chief economist. The surge has helped lift shares of LNG exporters, such as Cheniere Energy Inc. , up 38% this year, and Tellurian Inc. , which has climbed 68%.

French imports of LNG hit a record high of 2.4 million metric tons in April, said Laura Page, senior analyst at ship-tracking firm Kpler. Dutch and Belgian imports rose to all-time highs, too, while U.K. imports hit their second-highest level on record.

There are limits to how much LNG Europe can suck in, with tankers fully booked and import terminals at capacity. A sign of the bottleneck: The price of gas in northwest Europe has risen to a huge premium over the price of imported LNG, according to Spark Commodities.

Utilities and traders in control of slots at import terminals are able to cash in on the difference by buying LNG at relatively low prices and selling at a higher price, analysts and shipbrokers say.

In oil markets, European imports of crude from Africa have risen by half a million barrels a day since the month through Jan. 16, according to Vortexa, while imports from North America and the Middle East have climbed by 300,000 barrels a day apiece.

Diesel, meanwhile, is incoming from refiners in India and the Middle East. The conflict has worsened a monthslong shortage of the fuel because Europe came to depend on Russian refiners when it pushed for drivers to adopt diesel cars in the 2000s.

A challenge in luring diesel imports from distant markets is that spot prices have risen well above prices for delivery several months down the line. Cargoes therefore lose value while they are en route, said Eugene Lindell, an analyst at FGE, an energy consulting firm.

“What is happening now in terms of diesel shortage in Europe is going to be a challenging task for the global refining system,” Josu Jon Imaz, chief executive of Spanish oil company Repsol, told analysts in late April.

fikret selimbašić wrote:

Iz ruskog ministarstva vanjskih poslova jutros su ustvrdili da se izraelski plaćenici bore uz krajnje desničarsku pukovniju Azov u Ukrajini.
'Izraelski plaćenici su praktički rame uz rame s militantima Azova u Ukrajini', rekla je Marija Zaharova za radio Sputnjik.

https://www.ft.com/content/4f277a24-d681-421a-9c94-29d6fd448b20

China’s independent refiners start buying Russian oil at steep discounts
Purchases come as Chinese state-owned commodity traders shy away to avoid sanctions

Harry Dempsey in London and Sun Yu in Beijing YESTERDAY


China’s independent refiners have been discreetly buying Russian oil at steep discounts as western countries suspend their own purchases and explore potential embargoes because of the war in Ukraine.

An official at a Shandong-based independent refinery said it had not publicly reported deals with Russian oil suppliers since the Ukraine war started in order to avoid attracting scrutiny and being hit by US sanctions.

The official added that the refinery had taken over some of the purchase quota for Russian crude from state-owned commodity trading firms, which are seen to represent Beijing and have mostly declined to sign new supply contracts.

Many western companies are self-sanctioning or struggling to secure the insurance, shipping or financing needed to buy Russia’s commodity exports, raising expectations that energy-hungry China will step in and buy the unsold barrels.

The purchases from China’s independent refineries reveal how some importers are bypassing traditional routes to access cheap Russian oil, helping Beijing maintain a low profile as the west barrages Moscow with sanctions.

The US and UK have banned Russian oil, and the EU is in discussions on an embargo and introducing restrictions. From May 15, commodity traders based in the EU and Switzerland will not be able to sell Rosneft barrels anywhere else in the world.

Lockdowns in China, logistical and financial challenges caused by sanctions on Russia and the risk of provoking the US into introducing secondary sanctions have damped appetite from state-owned Chinese refineries for any substantial increase in purchases of Russian crude.

But shipping activity pointed to a modest uptick in Chinese buying. Shipbrokers and operators said that at least six supertankers — each capable of carrying up to 2mn barrels of crude — have struck deals to consolidate cargoes of Russian Urals crude in Europe to ship to Asia, mostly to China but also to India. Some of the Urals barrels may be of Kazakh origin.

Greek-owned Nissos Rhenia and Julius Caesar, Vitol-managed Searacer, Elandra Denali and Elandra Everest, Trafigura-chartered Baltic Sunrise and Indonesia’s Pertamina Prime are among those to have loaded with Russian crude through ship-to-ship transfers in Europe. Shipbrokers said other deals might have been arranged privately.

Brian Gallagher, head of investor relations at Belgian tanker group Euronav, said the consolidation of Russia oil on to larger ships for transport to Asia was “unusual”. But with Urals discounted $35 per barrel against Brent crude, he added that Chinese refineries were motivated to buy.

Referring to a lockdown-induced slump in oil demand, Gallagher said that “they don’t need it now but they can store it, and shipping provides a mechanism that is flexible”.

The primary location in Europe to transfer Russian oil from medium-sized Suezmax or Aframax vessels to very large crude carriers (VLCCs), tankers so large they cannot load in the Baltic Sea, is near the Skaw peninsula in northern Denmark. Ships have also been transferring oil cargoes in Rotterdam and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Without a doubt we are seeing a big jump in the volume of Urals crude moving east on VLCCs since the invasion,” said Henry Curra, global head of research at Braemar Shipping Services, a London-listed shipbroker.

Chinese refineries prefer Russia’s ESPO grade of crude produced in eastern Siberia that enters via pipeline and ships that load at Kozmino near Vladivostok. The number of Aframax medium-sized vessels expected to load oil from Kozmino has edged up from an average of six per week last year to seven since the outbreak of war, according to Gibsons, another shipbroker.

China’s purchases of Russian crude and petroleum products are about 86,000 barrels a day higher this month than they were on average last year according to Kpler, a commodity data analytics firm.

Analysts said this marginal increase in Chinese buying could suggest that finding alternative buyers for Russian crude and petroleum products could prove harder than Moscow anticipated.

“It’s a natural assumption to think China would buy more Russian crude but China is coming under far more scrutiny than India,” said Jane Xie, senior oil analyst at Kpler.

The official at the Shandong refinery said it was treading carefully when buying Russian supplies because the potential introduction of US secondary sanctions on third-country entities doing business with Russia could lead to the closure of its Singaporean trading arm.

HUNGARY PROPOSED EU BAN ON RUSSIAN OIL IMPORTS WOULD DESTROY HUNGARY'S ENERGY SECURITY -FOREIGN MINISTER

HUNGARY CANNOT SUPPORT EU BAN ON RUSSIAN OIL IMPORTS -FOREIGN MINISTER

The West’s Economic War Against Russia Is Imperiling the World
The economic war is most unlikely to affect the outcome of the Ukraine War, but it does seem likely to produce outcomes that will prejudice energy security and the climate agenda, while falling hardest on the world’s poor.

by David C. Hendrickson

An extraordinary feature of the Ukraine crisis is the way it has imperiled three other “global goods”: efforts to address climate change, energy security, and poverty. Under the impetus of the total economic and financial war against Russia, as the French foreign minister described it, the West is now committing to a set of measures that threaten these other objectives, making them secondary or tertiary before the all-commanding need to do harm to the Russian economy. The global food crisis was precipitated by Russia’s war against Ukraine, as it has disrupted food and fertilizer shipments from the Black Sea, but the total economic war against Russia (TEWAR) looks set to deepen these multiple crises, converting temporary disruptions into near-permanent handicaps.

Energy security and climate change pose a set of quandaries that are very different from traditional geopolitics, and yet for which traditional geopolitics have been of vital importance. Vast interdependencies populate the subject. Energy production is thirsty, often intensely reliant on scarce freshwater. Climate change will make some areas far more susceptible to drought or harsh storms, imperiling food supplies. Then, too, the price of oil and natural gas is closely linked with food prices. Historically, crisis in the one domain has meant crisis in the other.

There has been no political consensus in the United States on how to approach this daunting array of problems. The Right became more and more convinced that climate science was a hoax. The Left, by contrast, concluded that oil companies were evil. Let us begin by casting a plague on both their houses and stipulating the following: the danger of climate change is real and needs zealous attention, but attempts to decarbonize the economy also need to focus closely on energy security, which is important for both national security and the well-being of the world’s billions. A sensible policy must address both; the TEWAR threatens to derail both.

Embargoing Oil

The grave potential of the TEWAR to imperil both energy security and the climate change agenda has as its centerpiece today the ongoing standoff over imports of Russian gas and oil in Europe. Hawkish voices in Europe and America, such as the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions at Stanford University, want to enact “a complete ban and embargo of Russian crude oil, oil products, gas, and coal, banning both import and export flows to and from the democratic world, while minimizing the leakage through secondary sanctions.” Germany is now committed to supporting an embargo on Russian oil imports if the EU members agree; its new energy report says that “the end of dependence on Russian crude oil imports by late summer is realistic.” German chancellor Olaf Scholz has been far more guarded in his willingness to move at forced march speed to reduce Russian imports but appears to be on board with the general objective.

How far the West will proceed with its announced plans remains in question. While the United States appeared fully supportive of harsh measures in the beginning stages of the embargo, Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen noted on April 21 that “we need to be careful when we think about a complete European ban on, say, oil imports." Such a ban would raise global oil prices "and, counterintuitively, it could actually have very little negative impact on Russia, because although Russia might export less, its price it gets for its exports would go up."

Yellen’s remarks nicely encapsulate what has become the fundamental purpose of Western policy, which is to find a way of reducing Russia’s revenues “without harming the entire globe through higher energy prices.” That ideal, however, is very unlikely to be accomplished. Just about every initiative on which the administration embarked in its oil diplomacy has met with failure. Russian production, to be sure, is estimated to have fallen from 11.1 million barrels a day in February to 9.76 mbd in April. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that it will fall by a quarter. The sought-for increases in global supply, however, have not been forthcoming. The U.S. approach to Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Iran has varied according to circumstance, but the outcome has been pretty much the same: frustration. No deal with Venezuela, which specializes in Subprime Carbon Assets, has yet been achieved. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman won’t take a phone call from President Joe Biden and prefers to coordinate OPEC+ policy with Russia. Qatar reminded bright-eyed U.S. negotiators, eager to send LNG to Europe, that it had LNG contracts with Asia that are long-term and inviolable. The hoped-for revival of the nuclear deal with Iran, which would bring an extra 1 to 1.5 mbd on the global market, appears caught in the crossfire between what is necessary to close with the Iranians and what can pass muster at home.

In the days after the Russian invasion, the oil price exploded by 35 percent, but on April 29 was only 14 percent above the level reached on February 23, the day before the war. Two factors—the virus-induced sudden lockdown of 400 million people in China and the promised release of a million barrels a day from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)—have quelled the beast thus far, but the danger remains. The prospect of an oil shock clearly rises the more the United States and the West are successful in their primary aim of reducing Russian revenues. In effect, the left hand is trying to offset what the right hand has done and is doing. In this contest, the right hand appears to be winning.

The short-term fix of releasing 180 million barrels of oil from the SPR will definitely help out in 2022. What about 2023, when the SPR is depleted by half? It was the danger of disruptions in the Persian Gulf that provoked the creation of the SPR in the first place. With the prospects for reviving the Iran nuclear deal dimming quickly, that danger has increased, not diminished. A failure to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action inevitably puts force back in play for the United States, a collateral effect of which is a heightened threat of tit-for-tat retaliations in the oil sector. This year’s release of oil increases energy security in the short run but decreases energy security once the SPR is depleted.

The oil price resulting from a shutdown of Russian energy exports, such as has been called for by the Stanford experts, has been variously estimated by observers. One philanthropist, the head of the largest U.S. shale oil company, told the Financial Times shortly after the outbreak of war that oil would be $200 a barrel if Russian exports were cut off. He was all for it, out of moral principle. In the stipulated circumstance, of course, his company’s stock price would fly like a Tesla on a SpaceX rocket. Others have pegged the likely oil price, in the event Russia were put out of the oil market, at more like $300 a barrel. No one can say for sure what gyrations would follow, but commodity markets are capable of spectacular moonshots if faced with a 5 percent reduction in supplies. When Arab states reduced oil exports by 5 percent in 1973 and 1974, the result was a nearly four-fold increase in prices.

Do the interests of the Global South figure in the moral accounting of the advocates for harsh sanctions? It would not seem so. Consider, for example, the position of India. The United States scowled when India did a rubles to rupees settlement for Russian oil at a 20 percent discount to world prices, but thus far Indian imports of Russian energy only constitute 1 to 2 percent of its total. The price of oil is a big deal to India. As Mihir Sharma noted in India’s Business Standard, “If oil remains above $70 a barrel for months, the rupee will collapse, the government will run out of spending money, inflation will skyrocket and the country will have to start worrying about a balance of payments crisis.” By seeking to drive Russian exports from the markets, U.S. policy strongly encourages oil shortages and price hikes; in a nation of 1.4 billion people, that might prove a more pressing concern than getting on “the right side of history,” as India’s leaders were urged to do by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki.

The United States has leverage with India and might bend Delhi to its will in certain respects, but it’s easy to understand the resentment simmering beneath the surface. Under almost any circumstances in the next several years, Europe will import far more energy from Russia than India; why then should India live under the threat of U.S. sanctions? For decades, the United States has pressured India from developing close economic ties with Iran, the cheapest source of natural gas for its growing consumption. As Sharma points out, “The U.S. spent most of the last decade trying to convince India not to buy Iranian oil, only to try to get Iranian shipments back on the market as soon as the focus shifted to Russia.” In the game of pipeline geopolitics over the last thirty years, the key U.S. objective has been to thwart, first, anything that would benefit Iran, and second, anything that would benefit Russia. The only constant in U.S. policy is that India’s energy interests have been sacrificed for America’s geopolitical objectives, though Russia has now surprisingly outrun Iran as the nation to be most sanctioned.

On any accounting, one point seems clear: the more Western policy approaches the cutoff of Russian oil exports pushed by the hawks, the more perilous the outcome for most developing countries.

Gas Pains

The way that geopolitics trumps both energy security and the climate agenda is especially on display in the controversy over German imports of natural gas from Russia. Germany faces a choice between a brutal blow to its basic industries and the subsidy of the Russian war machine, estimated at approximately a billion euros per day. The drama of whether Europe will comply with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s terms, requiring payment in rubles, has been brought to a new stage by Russia’s decision on April 27 to stop gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria. The game of chicken is likely to go on. Even if a temporary resolution is reached, a collision disastrous to both Russia and EU will remain a standing possibility. Seldom noted in the discussion is that Russian gas obviously makes the most sense for Europe from the standpoint of both the climate agenda and energy security. All the alternatives are far more costly and, if reductions in consumption are implemented suddenly, pose a mortal threat to German industry.

Russia shut down gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria because both countries did not comply with the payment terms that Putin set down earlier in April. The technical details are complicated, but the basic issue is simple. Does Europe intend to pay for the gas it receives from Russia in a way that actually puts the proceeds into Russian hands? Once the West froze Russia’s central bank assets—which represented, in effect, the money that had been paid to Russia for energy exports in the past decade—there was and remains no prospect that Russia would accept an escrow-like arrangement, as that would subject present and future payments to seizure. While some companies have opened the requisite accounts, the European Commission (EC) announced on April 28 that “complying with [Putin’s] decree is a breach of sanctions.”

The European Union is not taking these steps for the purpose of ensuring energy security. It is sacrificing energy security for the purpose of inflicting harm on the Russian economy and war machine. This is a case not of the producer refusing to sell, but of the consumer unwilling to pay—a strange inversion of the ways in which Germany and Europe’s dependency on Russian gas were previously considered. In the past, the fear was always that the exporter would cut off exports, not that the importer would cut off imports. It strains belief that Germany would actually go forward on a path that would “massively damage” its domestic industry and have grievous effects on the rest of the world (what replaces the fertilizer made from natural gas by German firms?), but the German government faces a lot of pressure to do just that.

There are larger implications brewing for both the climate agenda and U.S. energy security. Russia in the recent past exported 155 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year of gas to the EU, with Germany by far the largest customer. The United States has promised to add 15 bcm this year, but the source of the gas and what counts as a benchmark are unclear. Analysts at Goldman Sachs warn that there’s little ability to increase U.S. LNG exports between now and 2025. Longer term, the EC promised to ensure, “until at least 2030, demand for approximately 50 bcm/year of additional U.S. LNG.” Such a commitment would require massive investments in new LNG facilities, floating and fixed, and would tie America’s domestic gas market to Europe, at the expense of U.S. consumers. That could be a very big deal—a hidden cost totally obscured in the sanctions debate—as Europe’s natural gas prices today (at $30 per mcf, or 1,000 cubic feet) are four times higher than average U.S. prices (at $7.50 mcf). However, the European promise to ensure demand of 50 bcm/year only until 2030 calls into question the economic rationality of such huge investments, which require long-term contracts of at least twenty years to be viable.

Germany’s stark dependency on Russian gas, at 55 percent of gas imports in 2021, is partly owing to the premature closure of its nuclear plants—also an unwise decision from a climate perspective—but mostly to geographical propinquity and the need for base power. Natural gas works better than coal or nuclear power to solve the intermittency problem posed by wind and solar, but the less gas there is, the more coal will be burned, especially if the energy transition is forced by supply shocks of the sort now impending. Because Russia’s gas infrastructure is leaky, substituting LNG from the United States may be a wash from an emissions standpoint, but addressing the former problem while diminishing dependency on Russia over time would be far less expensive and more climate-friendly than building a new LNG infrastructure in Europe. That’s what EU leaders thought back in 2018 when the Trump administration hounded them to buy more U.S. gas; apparently, they’re now all-in.

From a planetary perspective, the idea that fog-ridden Germany should cover itself with solar panels, and that equatorial regions should burn coal, does not compute, but the effect of the U.S-EC plan would be to encourage precisely that outcome. If Europe enters the LNG market in a big way, it would price developing countries out of that market; their logical alternative is to burn more coal in the long run, as Europe is doing in the short run. Notice, too, that in order to build solar at anything other than ruinous prices, Germany would have to rely on suppliers from China, which makes more than 60 percent of the world’s solar panels.

In the real world, neither energy security nor climate goals can be achieved unless regimes that are considered despotic or odious in certain respects are part of the solution. That is an unwelcome reality, but it is the reality. For the last decade, the main focus of the U.S. national security state has been Iran, Russia, and China; each, as it were, successively became for a time the biggest threat or was subject to the largest moral panic. For Iran, it was the threat its putative nuclear weapons program posed to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States; for China, because of slave-labor camps in Xinjiang; for Russia, because of its aggression against Ukraine. Along the way was the moral revulsion felt toward Saudi Arabia after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (its activities in Yemen generally arousing far less attention). Each of these episodes produced a demand for outcasting, a form of geopolitical shunning via sanctions. But it turns out that outcasting everybody is impracticable because it leads to self-harm, so the moral indignation that was on the front burner in years past has to be placed on the backburner now. In effect, the new hard-line against enemy number one means in practice a soft line toward enemies two, three, and four. What tangled webs we weave in seeking to reorder the world economy via comprehensive economic sanctions.

Dead Ends

The TEWAR looks toward a large-scale reorientation of the global trade in energy in order to punish Russia. It appears increasingly evident that it holds peril to a range of other global goods. The economic war is most unlikely to affect the outcome of the Ukraine War, but it does seem likely to produce outcomes that will prejudice energy security and the climate agenda, while falling hardest on the world’s poor. In pursuit of weakening the Russian economy, it in effect imposes a stagflationary tax on the entire world. Unlike normal taxes, the West doesn’t collect any cash from its suborned subjects, but, unlike taxes in the West, these are regressive, not progressive. The more successful Western policy is in restricting Russian supply, the more the tax will mount.

Advocates of harsh sanctions against Russia model their proposals on the U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran. But those sanctions played out in the 2010s against the backdrop of prolonged weakness in oil markets, a situation that produced the sharp cutbacks in investment that have contributed to today’s shortages. To apply the same methods against one of the top three oil producers in the world, when energy markets overall are extremely tight, is a dangerous gambit. What worked in the bust is unlikely to work in the boom.

Much of the disruption in food supplies is directly attributable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, responsibility for which falls on Putin. But the blockade imposed by the West in response promises to aggravate these effects, increasing the dangers posed by badly elevated and unaffordable prices for food and energy, with potential for serious unemployment arising from the further disruption of supply chains. The longer the standoff runs, the larger these consequences will be, yet the prospect of a peace settlement in Ukraine that leads to the lifting of the sanctions appears utterly remote at this time. The Biden administration dislikes these consequences and wants to steer away from them, but it can only do so by reconsidering its total economic war against Russia. And there is little sign that it is willing to do so.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/west%E2%80%99s-economic-war-against-russia-imperiling-world-202185

Del Cap wrote:Dobar Mišra

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/indian-author-pankaj-mishra-on-the-war-in-ukraine-have-you-really-thought-this-through-a-83885b19-1fb0-43ae-a0f8-f60f4b61577e

Bugari će tražiti izuzeće iz embarga; Slovaci – tri godine; i Češka se pridružila


Bugarska će tražiti izuzeće ukoliko se Evropska unija dogovori o izuzimanju nekih zemalja članica od bilo kakvog embarga na rusku naftu.

"Bugarska, tehnološki, može bez ruske nafte, ali to bi znatno povećalo cene goriva. Dakle, ako Evropska komisija razmatra izuzeća, mi bismo želeli da iskoristimo takvu mogućnost", rekao je Vasilev u intervjuu za jedan finansijski list, javlja Rojters.

Sijarto: Mađarska ne može da podrži predloženi embargo EU

"Mađarska ne može da podži predloženi embargo Evropske unije na uvoz sirove nafte iz Rusije jer bi to razorilo njenu energetsku bezbednost", poručio je danas ministar spoljnih poslova te zemlje Peter Sijarto.

"Briselski paket sankcija predviđa zabranu isporuka nafte iz Rusije u Evropu u prilično kratkom roku, u slučaju Mađarske do kraja sledeće godine", rekao je Sijarto u video-poruci objavljenoj na Fejsbuku, prenosi Rojters.

On je naglasio da Budimpešta ne može da podrži predložene mere EU u sadašnjem obliku.

"Mađarska bi na ove mere mogla da pristane samo ukoliko bi uvoz sirove nafte iz Rusije preko naftovoda bio izuzet iz sankcija", rekao je Sijarto.

Slovačka traži trogodišnji tranzicioni period

Slovačka želi trogodišnji prelazni period kako bi postepeno sprovela predloženi naftni embargo Evropske unije na kupovinu ruske nafte, izjavio je danas ministar ekonomije Ričard Sulik.

Slovačka, koja se u velikoj meri oslanja na ruske isporuke sirove nafte, podržava sankcije EU, rekao je Sulik, ali i dalje traži izuzeće koje bi joj dalo vremena da obezbedi snabdevanje naftom od alternativnih dobavljača, prenosi Rojters.

Predloženi embargo Evropske komisije uključuje postepeno okončanje snabdevanja ruskom sirovom naftom u roku od šest meseci i naftnim derivatima do kraja 2022.

I Češka traži izuzeće: "Pokušavamo da dobijemo odlaganje za dve, tri godine"

I Češka će privremeno tražiti izuzeće od evropskog embarga na uvoz ruske nafte kako bi dobila na vremenu za povećanje kapaciteta naftovoda, izjavio je u sredu premijer Petr Fiala. "Spremni smo da podržimo ovu odluku (o sankcijama u vezi sa naftom), ali da Češka dobije odlaganje potrebno da poveća kapacitet kojim nafta može da se isporučuje Češkoj", rekao je Fiala.

"Pokušavamo da dobijemo odlaganje za dve, tri godine", dodao je on.

Češka pokušava da poveća kapacitet naftovoda TAL, koji ide od Italije preko Austrije do Nemačke i čeka dozvolu bavarskih vlasti.

rumbeando wrote:AP na osnovu izjava 23 svedoka napravio rekonstrukciju​​​​​​​ kojom procenjuje da je u ruskom napadu na pozorište u Mariupolju poginulo oko 600 osoba.

https://apnews.com/article/Russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1

Satellite photos show possible mass graves near Mariupol

By ADAM SCHRECK
April 22, 2022



KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Satellite images released Thursday showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city.

The images emerged hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the battle for the Mariupol, despite the presence of an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters who were still holed up at a giant steel mill. Putin ordered his troops not to storm the stronghold but to seal it off “so that not even a fly comes through.”

Satellite image provider Maxar Technologies released the photos, which it said showed more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian officials say the Russians have been burying Mariupol residents killed in the fighting. The imagery showed long rows of graves stretching away from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “hiding their military crimes” by taking the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them in Manhush.

The graves could hold as many as 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said Thursday in a post on the Telegram messaging app.