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Over 60 Russians ‘Held Hostage’ in US, Arrested on False Charges, Deputy Foreign Minister Says

Samizdat – 20.12.2022

MOSCOW – The United States is practically holding over 60 Russians hostage by arresting people on false charges and sentencing them to dozens of years in prison, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told Sputnik on Tuesday.

“The US authorities have been literally hunting Russians across the globe especially in countries that have bilateral treaties on extradition with the US, seeking the arrest of our citizens on false charges… The overall number of Russian citizens basically held hostage exceeds 60,” the deputy minister said.

Vershinin said that US courts sentence Russians to dozens of years in prison, with the tendency becoming even stronger under the current US administration amid rising political tensions between the two countries.

The senior Russian diplomat also urged Russian people to weigh up the risks they could face when traveling to unfriendly countries if there is even the “slightest suspicion” that they could be of specific interest to US secret services and law enforcement as Russians are presumed guilty in this country.

Russia’s foreign ministry, embassy in Washington, general consulates in New York and Houston will continue to provide all possible help to Russians who are in trouble and seek their return home, Vershinin added, noting that Moscow would decisively respond to all hostile actions by the US authorities.

December 20, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Released files reveal how FBI grilled Twitter

RT | December 19, 2022

Twitter’s former safety chief has said he was baffled when the FBI grilled the company over assessed foreign influence threats on the platform, the latest trove of documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi and Twitter owner Elon Musk shows.

According to excerpts from internal communications that were published on Sunday, FBI agent Elvis Chan told Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, in July 2020 to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force, adding that the intelligence community sought “clarifications” from the company.

The FBI then sent a list of detailed questions, asking Twitter to explain why, during an earlier briefing for US security and intelligence agencies, “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.” At the end of their letter, the FBI attached references to several news articles about Russian and Chinese “propaganda” campaigns on social media.

Roth shared the questionnaire with other Twitter executives, saying that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau,” according to screenshots published by Taibbi.

The former safety head added that he felt “not particularly comfortable” with the FBI demanding written answers on the matter. According to the released files, Roth wrote that the premise of the questions “seems flawed,” arguing that the intelligence community had “fundamentally misunderstood” Twitter’s position on disinformation.

“We’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter,” Roth wrote, suggesting he contact Chan over the phone as soon as possible.

The exchange took place when US officials, think tanks and media outlets were warning about alleged foreign meddling in the ongoing US presidential election campaign and disinformation related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Musk, who finalized his acquisition of Twitter in October, promised more transparency at the company, and fired some of its top executives.

The files previously released by Taibbi with Musk’s blessing revealed how Twitter staffers struggled to rationalize the permanent ban of former US President Donald Trump, and the blocking of a story about the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.

December 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Soaring energy prices cost EU $1 trillion – Bloomberg

RT | December 18, 2022

EU member states have spent roughly a trillion dollars (€940 billion) in the face of the bloc’s worst energy crisis in decades, Bloomberg is reporting on Sunday, citing calculations based on market data.

Soaring energy prices have sent its economies plunging into recession as most member states opted to stop importing gas from Russia, facing the necessity to turn to more expensive supplies.

The agency highlighted that the total estimated losses marks just the beginning of a full-scale crisis, as a period of high prices for energy could last years, while aid is already becoming unaffordable.

The security of energy supply is expected to remain an issue beyond next winter after the filled gas storage facilities across the region are emptied. The nations of the EU will have to refill their gas reserves for the next cold season with no deliveries from Russia, which also heats up competition for tankers.

Even with more import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) coming online, the crisis will reportedly loosen its grip only in 2026, when additional production capacity from the US or Qatar becomes available. At the same time, prices should remain high to attract LNG away from other buyers from energy-hungry Asian buyers.

A state of emergency could linger for years, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, as quoted by Bloomberg.

“Once you add everything up –bailouts, subsidies– it is a ridiculously large amount of money,” Martin Devenish, a director at consultancy S-RM, told the agency. “It’s going to be a lot harder for governments to manage this crisis next year.”

A rush to fill storage during summer, despite all-time high prices, has softened the supply squeeze so far. However, freezing weather is expected to give the region’s energy system the real test this winter.

Last month, Germany’s energy regulator, the Federal Network Agency, warned that German households and small businesses have failed their first gas-saving tests. The regulator noted that a reduction in consumption of at least 20% was required to avoid a gas shortage in the coming months.

December 18, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Oil Exports From Key Russian Port Cut In Half As Price Cap Kicks In

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 17, 2022

The market may have been too quick to dismiss the impact of European oil price cap on Russian oil.

Assuming that the latest G-7 attempt to limit Russian oil revenues were one big nothingburger – after all, the US itself admitted that the goal of the price cap was not so much to cripple Putin’s Treasury as to maintain a more stable flow of oil – the market quickly ignored the potential of lower Russian output as it continued to sell oil into year end amid fears there won’t be enough demand to offset stable supply.

But in yet another case of poetic justice-cum-Murphy’s law, Europe’s exercise in virtue signalling optics is about to backfire and achieve precisely what it was meant to achieve, if only for virtuous public consumption.

According to Bloomberg, there are signs that oil tanker companies are avoiding sending their ships to collect crude from a key Russian port in Asia following the G-7 sanctions targeting Moscow’s petroleum revenues. As has been duly documented here previously, since Dec. 5, buyers of Russian oil have only been allowed to access industry standard insurance and an array of trade-critical services if they pay $60 a barrel or less. But shipments of the key ESPO grade from the Asian port of Kozmino are about $10 above that, meaning they need to make alternative arrangements.

Since the cap began, ESPO (which stands for Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean, the initials of a pipeline that takes the oil from east Siberia to the Pacific) has seen loadings cut in half from a month earlier, tanker tracking compiled by Bloomberg show. By contrast Urals, a much larger grade exported from western Russia, is flowing freely to customers in Asia — aided by the fact it fell far below the $60 threshold a few weeks before it was introduced.

However, amid the latest sanctions which set the $60 price cutoff, tankers are shying away from the Asian grade, and in the 10 days since the measures began, 4.4 million barrels have been loaded onto tankers at Kozmino, Bloomberg calculates. In the same period a month earlier, there were 8.8 million barrels loaded.

While it is too soon to say if the observed drop in ESPO flows reflects something structural, weather conditions haven’t been particularly bad and there doesn’t appear to be many candidate ships in place to collect cargoes in the coming few weeks. That said, tanker tracking data is always volatile, depending on the timings of loadings, and the comings and goings of individual tankers.

Shipbrokers and traders contacted by Bloomberg also said that said there are signs that ESPO sellers are struggling to secure tankers for cargoes purchased at more than $60 a barrel. At least two large and well-known shipowners, China Cosco Shipping Corp. and Greece-based Avin International Ltd. have stepped back from moving ESPO crude since Dec. 5, according to shipbrokers. Emails sent to both companies weren’t answered.

Their absence has taken at least five tankers out of the regular pool of ships that move the grade, they said. That leaves charterers to work with smaller independent owners who’re still willing to handle the trade. If charterers continue to face headwinds with the booking of tankers, flows could be impeded, they said. ESPO and Sokol, another grade that’s exported from eastern Russia, currently trade above the $60 a barrel threshold that gives access to insurance and G-7 services.

With Urals grade Russian oil trading well below the price cap, and last fetching about $45/bbl, shipbrokers said tanker bookings for Russia’s flagship crude from western ports are proceeding more normally. Tanker tracking also suggests no obvious disruption to flows of the grade.

Of course, all of this is just a snapshot in time: once oil prices spike, as they will after the year-end selling is over, it is virtually assured that all Russian oil grades will be priced above $60, even with the deep discount to spot. At that point, traders will be watching closely to see if Russian crude exports can be maintained and how Moscow will respond if supplies do get disrupted.

As noted previously, the irony behind all this is that the stability of Russian exports is crucial as the US and rest of G-7 work on ensuring security of global oil supplies ahead of the Northern hemisphere winter while simultaneously attempting to deprive the Kremlin of funding for its war in Ukraine. A sharp loss of output could backfire on the west if it boosts wider oil prices and reignites inflation. And while the price cap wasn’t really supposed to be a price cap, it just may end up being one with Russian oil exports suddenly cut off, sending all “non-Russian” oil prices explosively higher, and sparking a new energy crisis some time in early 2023.

As for Russian product just sitting there, about half the ESPO cargoes scheduled for loading in the rest of this month have yet to secure tankers, according to shipbrokers. That is slower than usual, and they attributing it to the smaller pool of willing tankers operated by a smaller number of owners. It’s possible that tankers which previously handled oil from sanctioned regimes such as Iran and Venezuela – the so-called dark fleet – would be booked, shipbrokers said.

December 17, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Germany’s Gas Reserves “Emptying At Record Speed” As Country Struggles To Keep Warm, Lights On

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | December 16, 2022

Germany’s gas reserves are emptying at record speed: 1% per day as the current wind/solar energy lull means more gas gets burned for electricity, heating.

Pleiteticker.de reports how Germany’s natural gas reserves “are emptying at record speed” because wind and solar power have been on the scarce side over the past few weeks. This means gas turbines have had to jump in to pick up the slack in electricity production – not one the German government had hoped as it wrestles with the heightening energy crisis.

“Germany is converting gas into electricity in record quantities,” pleiteticker.de reports. “Thanks to high pressure system ‘Erika’, the current December is colder than it has been for years. […] In recent days, gas storage facilities have therefore been emptying much faster than before. From December 12 onwards, more than one percent was withdrawn from gas storage facilities in Germany every day.”

“Last week, almost one third of all electricity was generated from natural gas. These are record figures,” writes pleiteticker.de.

If the cold persists through the winter, gas reserves threaten to become extremely tight before spring arrives.

But instead of blaming the energy woes on failed government policies, federal network agency head Klaus Müller criticizes the situation on the consumers, and worries “the gas storage may not last the whole winter.”

“A national gas shortage in winter can be avoided if, firstly, the savings target of at least 20 percent continues to be achieved,” the Federal Network Agency says. Here the government’s solution clearly is that citizens should accept freezing even more when it’s bitterly cold out.

Over 800 million euros paid for unproduced energy in 2021

The problem with wind power is that either too much or too little is produced, due to the weather. As mentioned above. the past weeks have seen little wind power being produced, and so gas turbines had to be fired up to keep the grid supplied.

But when it’s too windy, something needs to be done to keep the grid from being overloaded: wind turbines have to be shut down. That’s costing Germans 807 million euros this year because the excess electricity that could have been fed into the grid by the wind parks legally has to be compensated.

Pleiteticker here writes: “For the amount of electricity that the operators could have fed into the grid, they still receive compensation from the grid operators according to the statutory tariffs. And this sum is higher than ever this year: 807 million euros. Record value. For electricity that never existed.”

And the problem is getting bigger, according to the Federal Ministry of Economics.

“At the time of the worst energy crisis Germany has seen in a long time, when companies and consumers are hammered by energy prices like rarely before, Germany is paying money for energy that also doesn’t get produced,” comments pleiteticker.de.

So far Germany’s response to the energy crisis is plans to build many more turbines, with talks of even tripling its current installed  capacity, which of course would only triple  grid volatility, thus making it far more unstable than it already is and so create an even much bigger mess.

December 16, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Committee of German Parliament Approves $10Bln Purchase of F-35 Jets From US

Samizdat – 14.12.2022

The Budget Committee of the German parliament approved the contract with the United States on the purchase of F-35 fighter jets worth 10 billion euros ($10.6 billion), a British news agency reported on Wednesday, citing sources in the committee.

According to the news agency, the committee green-lighted the purchase using money from a 100 billion euro ($106 billion) special defense fund established by the German government shorty after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February.

First eight fighter jets are expected to be delivered by the US to Germany in 2026, the report said, adding that the new planes could replace old Tornado jets.

In July, Washington also approved a possible $8.4 billion sale of 35 F-35 jets to Germany including missiles and equipment.

December 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

French energy major makes costly exit from Russia

RT | December 10, 2022

French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies has announced on Friday it is giving up its stake in Russian gas producer Novatek and withdrawing its two representatives from the company’s board.

The exit will result in a “record” impairment of about $3.7 billion in the fourth quarter as Total will “no longer equity account for its 19.4% stake in Novatek.”

The French company said in a statement that the two directors have had to abstain from voting in Novatek board meetings, “in particular on financial matters,” due to Western sanctions imposed on Russia.

Unlike BP and Shell, which left Russia shortly after the conflict in Ukraine began in late February, TotalEnergies had held on to its projects in the country and faced international sanctions.

“Under these circumstances, the Board of Directors of TotalEnergies has decided to withdraw the representatives of the Company from the board of PAO Novatek with immediate effect,” the company announced.

The French energy major also said it cannot sell its stake in the Russian firm as “it is forbidden for TotalEnergies to sell any asset to one of Novatek’s main shareholders who is under sanctions.”

Apart from the stake in Novatek, the French company has minority holdings in Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG. According to Reuters estimates, exiting Russian projects will bring total impairments of TotalEnergies this year to $14.4 billion.

In addition, Total will no longer book reserves for its interest in Novatek, with an impact on the company’s reported proved reserves at the end of 2021 of 1.7 billion barrels of oil.

December 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

How the ‘Twitter Files’ have exposed a senior FBI official’s role in manipulating the outcome of the 2020 US election

By Felix Livshitz | RT | December 9, 2022

Internal Twitter documents and communications published by the journalist Matt Taibbi have provided devastating detail on a sweeping censorship operation conducted by the social network. They expose the central role played by a senior FBI agent in potentially influencing the outcome of the 2020 US election.

Immediate reaction to the Twitter Files was mixed, but overwhelmingly the mainstream American media has rushed to pour cold water on Taibbi’s bombshell disclosures, with, for example, The Washington Post branding them a “dud” and CNN claiming they “largely corroborated what was already known.”

Such responses are quite extraordinary given that the Twitter Files offers incontrovertible evidence of one of the largest, most influential global social networks taking extraordinary measures – usually reserved to prevent the dissemination of child pornography – to block information on its platform.

In particular, Twitter banned, both publicly and privately, the sharing of a New York Post article, based on the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, pointing to possible corruption on the part of his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. The report reinforced existing concerns about Hunter’s role with Burisma, for which he received up to $50,000 per month from the Ukrainian energy giant over a five-year period for attending a handful of corporate events.

The material exposed by Taibbi shows that a decision was made by individuals at the highest levels of Twitter – with direct connections to Biden’s Presidential campaign – due to apparent fears the laptop contents had been hacked and/or had been released as part of a Russian information operation. This was despite there being zero evidence or even a vague suggestion that either was the case, and significant internal concerns.

The Twitter Files show how, among the top brass involved in the suppression of this hugely significant story was the social network’s legal vice president Jim Baker, a former FBI general counsel. He was coincidentally also fundamental to the Bureau’s multiple attempts to fraudulently concoct a link between Trump’s campaign and Russia, one way or another.

It’s clear that many staffers didn’t believe there were grounds to ban the New York Post story on the basis of Twitter’s policies on sharing hacked materials. One communications department official wrote that they were “struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” while their superior fretted, “can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”

However, their legitimate worries were overruled. Twitter later reversed this ban but by that point the false specter of Russian meddling had been so successfully cemented – including via a joint letter signed by over 50 senior US spies – that the story was largely discredited in the eyes of many Americans and, thus, ignored. It is only now, with Biden safely in the White House, that other outlets have begun to verify the laptop’s contents as not only real, but damaging.

Baker was central to overruling subordinates about the basis for banning the story. In an email published by Taibbi, he announced it was “reasonable for us to assume that they may have been” hacked.

It is not explained why it was “reasonable” to make this assumption, especially as Baker himself acknowledged there were instead indications that “the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes.” Which is, of course, a total contradiction in terms. So the ban went ahead, despite internal concern about the decision.

“Hacking was the excuse but, within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold,” an anonymous Twitter source told Taibbi. “But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

One of the reasons Baker’s intervention may have cut through initial misgivings, and no staffers then had the “guts to reverse it,” could’ve been his status as resident Russian “disinformation” expert at Twitter. He left the FBI in June 2018 on undisclosed grounds, although it was later confirmed he was the subject of a criminal Justice Department investigation due to alleged leaking to the media of scurrilous innuendo about Trump’s non-existent relationship with the Kremlin at the time.

Questions were also asked about whether, as General Counsel, Baker played any role in greenlighting or overseeing various failed FBI counterintelligence investigations into Trump’s election team. Known as Crossfire Hurricane, these related probes were built on extremely shaky foundations, and led to no evidence supporting suspicions of Trump-Russia ties being unearthed, but still remained open under internal pressure, in contravention of established investigative protocols.

A subsequent internal review found 17 separate “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s court submissions for warrants that it applied for to spy on campaign staffer Carter Page.

More recently, Baker testified at the trial of Michael Sussmann, a well-connected Washington DC lawyer tied to the Democratic party. He was charged by Attorney General John Durham with lying to the FBI when he presented to the Bureau falsified evidence of contact between Trump Tower and Moscow via Russia’s Alfa Bank, in the summer of 2016.

Sussmann claimed he was not representing a client in doing so, when in reality he was acting on behalf of the Democrats, and billed them for the service. Baker would’ve known anyway that this cover story was a lie, as he and Sussmann were longtime friends, but he recorded the delivery as the uninterested, selfless act of a concerned citizen. Quite why he wasn’t charged for procedural misconduct is not known.

It’s also not known why such dealings didn’t torpedo his professional credibility upon leaving the Bureau. Departing an organization like the FBI under such a dark cloud would normally mean the end of someone’s career. Instead, Baker was snapped up by Twitter to be the right hand man of Vijaya Gadde, the company’s head of legal.

Throughout her time at the social network, she was derided as its censor-in-chief, and leaked documents reveal she regularly consulted with the Department of Homeland Security on how best to restrict inconvenient facts online. It’s understandable why Baker would be such an attractive hire for Gadde.

He was by that point clearly an expert in perpetuating false claims of “disinformation” and “Russian meddling” for political purposes, to tremendous effect. The Russiagate hoax almost took down President Trump, and meant his term in office was spent ramping up tensions with Moscow rather than improving relations as he’d repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.

It could have been calculated within Twitter HQ that Baker would be willing to play a similarly destructive role the next time round, and prevent Trump from getting re-elected in the first place. Helping suppress the damaging material facts contained in the New York Post may have done just that.

December 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Can Germany’s plan for confrontation with Russia work?

By Drago Bosnic | December 8, 2022

On November 14, Der Spiegel published a report according to which leaked documents of the German Ministry of Defense indicate that the Bundeswehr is preparing for a war with Russia. The secret draft titled “Operational guidelines for the Armed Forces” was authored by the German Chief of Defense Staff, General Eberhard Zorn. It was written in late September and according to General Zorn, “an attack on Germany can potentially happen without warning and can cause serious damage, even existential. Therefore, the defense capabilities of the Bundeswehr are essential for the survival of the country.” The German Chief of Defense Staff stressed the need for a “mega-reform” of the Bundeswehr, adding that “for approximately 30 years, the focus placed on missions abroad no longer does justice to the current situation, with possible consequences that endanger the system.”

Instead, General Zorn thinks it’s crucial for Germany to focus on “the Atlantic defense of the Alliance,” with the “capacity to provide visible and credible deterrence, to dominate Germany’s military action plan.” In this regard, specifically, “the Bundeswehr must arm itself for a forced war, since a potential confrontation on NATO’s eastern flank has once again become more probable.”

The draft clearly identified Russia as the “immediate threat”. However, the designation makes little sense, as Russia is now over 1,500 km away from Germany, with Belarus, Poland and Ukraine standing between the two countries. While it made some sense for Germany to maintain a large, highly trained military force with constant combat readiness during the (First) Cold War, as the USSR had approximately half a million soldiers in East Germany at the time (in addition to other Warsaw Pact member states), the situation is effectively reversed nowadays.

It’s precisely NATO that’s encroaching on Russia’s western borders, with the crawling expansion including coups and other interventions in various Eastern European and post-Soviet states. This aggression by the political West forced Moscow’s hand, culminating with the February 24 counteroffensive. However, the German plan has already been set in motion and no matter how ill-conceived it is, an analysis of how it could play out is in order. The plan certainly isn’t new, as it has been in the works for well over half a year. Back in early March, the German government announced it would allocate approximately €100 billion to upgrade the Bundeswehr, which has become a mere shadow of what it was during the heydays of the (First) Cold War.

The 2021 budget for Bundeswehr was approximately €50 billion. If Berlin was to increase that by close to 100%, it would put extreme pressure on the struggling German economy. Such a massive upsurge in military spending wouldn’t only take away from other branches of the government, but it would also come at a time when the sanctions boomerang from the failed economic siege of Russia is ravaging all of the European Union. The bloc hasn’t even begun recovery from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s already facing severe economic contraction resulting from anti-Russian sanctions and policies. Much of Germany’s prosperity was based on access to cheap Russian energy, which is now a thing of the past thanks to Berlin’s suicidal subservience to “Euro-Atlantic values”.

In essence, this means that Germany is doomed to massively increase military spending while having significantly fewer resources at its disposal to do so. This doesn’t even factor in how the German people would react to such a momentous foreign (and, to a large extent, domestic) policy shift. As the EU’s largest and most important economy, Germany would also cause shockwaves throughout the bloc if it were to go ahead with such a plan. With Russian energy supplies either gone or effectively unaffordable, any government in power in Berlin would have virtually the entire German private sector against it, with the notable exception of the arms industry, which would be the only one not contracting thanks to increased orders for the Bundeswehr.

On the other hand, even this plan is bound to hit several major snags before it’s even put in motion. The US Military Industrial Complex dominates in NATO, making it the primary beneficiary of German (re)militarization. Domestic weapons production has atrophied significantly in the last 30 years, while the globalization of the world economy led to the rest of it being outsourced to other countries, both in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.

New reports indicate that Berlin’s decision to supply weapons and munitions to the Kiev regime is severely depleting German stockpiles, a problem further exacerbated by the significant slowdown of component imports from China. This is also the result of the German government’s self-destructive push for an economic decoupling of the EU and the Asian giant. Beijing has been extremely patient with the bloc’s subservience to Washington DC, but it seems this patience has now run out.

Another major issue will be the reaction of other EU members. With the notable exception of the clinically Russophobic Baltic states and Poland, the rest of the bloc is extremely concerned with the economic fallout of the failed sanctions war on Russia. As the German economy contracts, the rest of the EU will almost certainly follow suit, causing massive political instability.

At least half a dozen European governments have already fallen, while the neoliberal elites in Brussels are now forced to contend with new anti-liberal political parties in power in several EU member states. This is bound to cause further rifts within the bloc. It will be followed by the general militarization of the EU, which will further erode the already falling living standards and cause more political instability. This will turn Europe into an economically devastated bulwark that serves no other purpose except to contain Russia while the US shifts focus to the Asia-Pacific region.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 8, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

YouTube censors RT Balkans

RT | December 6, 2022

YouTube, the Google-owned video platform has blocked the channel of Belgrade-based RT Balkans. No explanation was given for Monday’s move, which came about three weeks after the launch of the Serbian-language outlet in a region saturated by Western media coverage.

RT Balkans reported the ban on Monday evening, pointing out that the most recent video posted on the channel was their interview with the Russian ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko.

“Why are owners of the Western media space so afraid of RT’s Serbian-language reporting?” the outlet asked. “Their move mainly speaks about the lack of media freedom in the West, especially since the posts on your YouTube channel in no way violated the company’s rules of conduct.”

The Serbian-language news site was launched on November 15, with plans to begin TV broadcasts by 2024. It was able to open a YouTube account and post content even though the Google-owned platform had previously banned all “Russian” media.

Enacted in March, the ban followed demands by the EU to block RT and Sputnik channels in the bloc’s territory. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki explained the platform had created a new policy regarding “verified violent events,” which puts “denial or trivialization” of the conflict in Ukraine in the same category as denying the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, YouTube continued to operate in Russia so that its citizens could have access to “independent news,” she said, adding that one of the lessons of the conflict in Ukraine is that “information can be weaponized.”

RT sued YouTube in May. In October, an arbitration court in Moscow ruled that video platform must unblock RT’s accounts or face a daily fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,694), doubling every week. The same court had frozen Google’s assets in Russia, valued at 500 million rubles ($8.4 million), to ensure the verdict could be enforced.

December 7, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Western price cap on Russian oil likely to be another spectacular failure

By Ahmed Adel | December 6, 2022

The price cap imposed by the West on oil from Russia will actually have negative consequences in the long term as it once again reaffirmed to the international community that Western-centric banking and shipping insurance schemes cannot be trusted as reliable partners.

Western oil sanctions went into effect on December 5, with the European Union stopping all shipments of Russian oil arriving by sea. In addition, the EU, as well as G7 countries and Australia, imposed a limit on the price of oil transported by sea at $60/barrel. The West expects that this will cripple the Russian economy and force Moscow to end its special military operation in Ukraine.

However, this will spectacularly fail.

Sanctions have not instigated an end to the military operation, and in fact they have forced financial mechanisms independent of western institutions to be established. Although the world economic system was already slowly heading towards de-Dollarisation, the anti-Russia sanctions have only sped up the process as important economic players like China, India and Egypt have found methods to bypass western sanctions.

It is recalled that Russia had previously introduced the Mir card system as an alternative to Western financial systems, despite there being a lot of scepticism about it. Now, Mir is being adopted all over the world, and the same can certainly be done in the shipping and shipping insurance industry.

The imposition of an oil price cap has made non-Western countries think about how to break free from Western payment systems and shipping channels. Many countries are already pre-emptively establishing these mechanisms to avoid the same teething problems that Russia has experienced since February 2022.

Washington warned the EU on December 1 that the $52 cited recently for Urals crude oil may not reflect the overall level at which Russian oil has been trading. An unnamed US official has said that Urals has been trading at a $17-$23 discount to crude, which would make it higher than the $52 cited by some media. It is for this reason that the EU set the oil price cap $8 above that cited figure.

For their part, Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania have all voiced their opinion that the price cap on Russian crude oil insured and shipped by Western companies should be set at Russia’s production cost – $20-$30 per barrel. Those levels were dismissed as having very little chance of being supported by other EU members.

The introduction of a price cap on Russian seaborne oil at $60 per barrel is already a risky strategy to begin with and has uncertain results. Therefore, the Polish-Baltic proposal was never going to be approved. Oil market participants were already fearing a $60 cap to begin with, forcing Biden administration officials trying to reassure that the newly agreed cap will not lead to supply disruptions and volatility in the price after it went into effect.

None-the-less, experts fear that “over-compliance” on the restrictions could affect pricing.

“One of the big potential issues is going to be over-compliance, intermediaries deciding that the risk is too great and not engaging,” said Adam M. Smith, a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher and a former adviser at Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees sanctions. “Banks have historically been very risk-averse — as they should be — in the sanctions space and I think over-compliance in that context can be expected.”

Due to the price cap, many countries may stop any action for a while so that they can analyse all the risks, including decisions which could lead to sanctions from Western countries.

“That’s a real risk,” said Hunter Kornfeind, an oil market analyst at Rapidan Energy Group. “There could be a multi-week lull when some buyers are reluctant to move barrels as they wait and see. It’s not going to be like the whole trade shuts down, but there could be some who take a step back.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak pointed out that Russia will not export oil to countries that set price caps. According to him, such restrictions mean that by interfering with the market, Moscow will only interact with buyers willing to work under normal market conditions.

For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Moscow will not deliver anything abroad if it is against its interests. He warned that the introduction of oil price caps could have “grave consequences for global energy markets.”

Although the full impact of what the price cap is not yet known, the attempts to further financially and economically isolate Russia are likely to be another spectacular failure.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

December 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US, EU Reportedly Lose Track of $200 Billion in ‘Frozen’ Russian Funds

Samizdat – 06.12.2022

Western countries froze a huge chunk of the Russian Central Bank’s emergency reserve cushion in February in a bid to punish Moscow for its military operation in Ukraine. Officials in Washington and Brussels have since vacillated as to whether these funds can be seized outright and given to Kiev as “reparations.”

The United States and its European allies are having trouble actually locating two thirds or more of the Russian assets they froze earlier this year “because they do not know where exactly they are,” Charles Lichfield, a senior finance expert at the Atlantic Council, has indicated.

Speaking to Estonian media, Lichfield, the deputy director of the Washington-based think tank’s GeoEconomics Center, and expert on Russia’s central banking system, said Western countries actually seized closer to $80-$100 billion, not $300 billion, as has been widely reported.

Lichfield explained that the “freeze” on Russian assets obligated foreign banks not to allow for their transfer back to Russia, on penalty of losing their ability to transact in dollars and euros. However, some Asian and African banks may not have felt the need to respond to requests for information from Western authorities regarding transactions involving Russia, he said.

The US Treasury triumphantly announced in June that Washington and its allies had blocked or frozen some $300 billion in Russian state assets, plus $30 billion worth of assets of sanctioned individuals, including Russian tycoons.

Last week, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen proposed creating a special structure to manage the assets and “invest them.”

However, EU officials specified to media that Brussels couldn’t simply seize the Russian assets to use them in Ukraine because the bloc adheres to the principle of state immunity.

In the US, officials have expressed similar hesitation. Last month, lawmakers proposed a provision in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act bill to allow for the transfer Russian assets to Ukraine, but the idea was met with opposition amid fears that the idea had not been “fully litigated.”

Russian officials have slammed the asset freeze as a form of “theft.”

The West’s actions have also prompted Chinese regulators and banks to brainstorm ways to keep their own assets stashed abroad safe if the US and its allies move against them in the way they have against Russia.

Russia’s frozen assets were previously estimated to constitute close to half of the country’s $640 billion reserve cushion. According to the Central Bank’s year-end report for 2021, the largest portion of its foreign currency and gold was stored in China (16.8 percent), followed by France (9.9 percent), Japan (9.3 percent), the United States (6.4 percent) Britain (5.1 percent), Canada (2.7 percent) and Australia (2.5 percent), with more than 51 percent thus located in states which have slapped sanctions on Moscow.

December 6, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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