West totally wrong about Ukraine – Orban
RT | February 4, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has expressed hope that the newly-approved €50 billion ($54 billion) package of aid will be used to support civilians by preventing the collapse of the bankrupt Ukrainian state, rather than to fund more weapons and bloodshed.
Orban has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, arguing that Ukraine cannot possibly hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield. This position, as well as Budapest’s opposition to sanctions on Russia and blocking of EU military aid to Ukraine, has seen Hungary vilified in Kiev and threatened with sanctions by its EU allies.
“The West still thinks that time is on our side. Yet, I think the opposite is true. I think that time is on the side of the Russians, and the longer the war goes on, the more people will die, and the balance of power will not change in Ukraine’s favor,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday.
According to Russia’s estimates, Kiev has lost more than 400,000 service members killed, wounded, and missing since the conflict began in February 2022. Ukraine’s top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, has repeatedly insisted in recent weeks that the armed forces are critically understaffed, and even President Vladimir Zelensky admitted on Sunday that combat operations on the ground have reached a “stalemate.”
The Hungarian leader went on to insist that “peace will come when there is change in Brussels,” and that after almost two years of failed hopes to defeat Russia militarily “everything in Brussels should revolve around achieving a ceasefire as soon as possible.”
The EU approved the new aid package on Thursday, having pressured Orban into lifting his veto. The Hungarian painted the decision as a victory for Budapest, claiming that otherwise Brussels “would have taken away the funds earmarked for Hungary and sent that to Ukraine as well.”
“We are not sending weapons, we get our money from Brussels, and we will contribute to the civil financing of Ukraine,” Orban said on Friday, reiterating his firm position that the only way to end the Ukrainian crisis was through negotiations.
EU Leaders Squander Another €50 Billion on Propping up Kiev Regime… and Self-Destruction
Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2024
Finally, the European Union’s threats, blackmail, and arm-twisting have paid off to push through a giant €50 billion aid package to the hopelessly corrupt Kiev regime. This is while European farmers revolt against the EU leadership over higher energy costs and cheap imports from Ukraine that are putting them out of business and wiping out their livelihoods.
The EU leaders are committing the entire bloc of 500 million people to political suicide. The reckless cavalier attitude is something to behold. Bring on the pitchforks, Merci!
The 27 leaders of the European Union met in an emergency summit this week not to deal with the bloc’s mounting internal political, economic, and social problems but rather to lavish mountains of more aid on non-member Ukraine.
When the leaders held their last summit in December, it was a spectacle of back-biting and sordid wrangling. At that gathering, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed the allocation of more funds to the Ukrainian regime amid bitter recrimination and bickering. This time around, however, Hungary caved in to the intense pressure to agree on the package.
Days before the summit in Brussels this week, it was reported by the Financial Times that the European Council had drawn up plans to sabotage the Hungarian economy if Budapest persisted in not signing up for the massive aid plan. That speaks volumes about the perverse mindset at the apex of the EU bureaucracy. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the bloc despite pretentious claims to the contrary.
Brussels had already frozen up to €10 billion in central funding for Hungary and there were reported threats to remove Budapest’s voting rights in the bloc’s decision-making which would have been a blatant violation of the EU’s declared principle of unanimity.
The allocation of €50 billion to a non-member state is astounding. Even more bewildering is that the latest largesse is only a fraction of the total aid that the EU leadership has pumped into Ukraine since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. Over the past two years, the European Union has given the Kiev regime an estimated €100 billion.
The United States and other Western allies have also plied Ukraine with another €100 billion. About half of this goes on weapons, while the other half pays for state financing.
As we have noted here previously, the cumulative funding by the West to Ukraine has far exceeded the historic Marshall Fund that the U.S. allocated to all of Europe for reconstruction following World War Two (about €170 billion in today’s money).
There is simply no precedent or justifiable rationale for this mobilization of financial support for Ukraine. This has all been done as a fait accompli by an elite class with no democratic mandate. No referenda have been conducted to consult the public about the inordinate expenditure. Indeed, polls indicate that the European public – like the American public – is opposed to their governments supporting Ukraine.
The Biden administration is vying with growing resistance in Congress to send Ukraine an additional $60 billion.
To boot, the Kiev regime under the puppet president Vladimir Zelensky is a byword for rampant corruption and repression. It is admitted by Pentagon sources that something like $400 million of military spending has been siphoned off by the Kiev junta. The real figure is plausibly even greater.
The grotesque allocation of financial resources to Ukraine has nothing to do with supporting democracy or defending the country from alleged Russian aggression.
EU leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen keep repeating a mantra about defending Ukraine because, they say, if it is defeated then all of Europe is in danger of Russian invasion. This is the most preposterous scaremongering by politicians who are ideologically blinded by Russophobia and slaves to propagating Western hegemony.
The latest €50 billion injection to a war-addicted Ukrainian regime is openly said to be for sustaining its government and paying for salaries and services. In other words, Ukraine is a failed state, and yet European citizens, workers, and farmers – who themselves are subsisting in hard economic times – are expected to bankroll a corrupt cabal.
Furthermore, the hardship that tens of millions of European citizens are enduring is a direct result of their political leaders and the Brussels bureaucratic elite pandering to the United States’ agenda of hostility towards Russia.
That U.S.-led aggression, which can be traced back to the CIA-instigated coup in Kiev in 2014 to bring a NeoNazi regime to power, has sabotaged Europe’s economy. European leaders have treasonously served Washington’s geopolitical interests and not those of ordinary Europeans. The insane imposition of sanctions on Russia has led to huge hikes in energy prices which has decimated European businesses and the living standards of consumers, workers, and farmers.
The higher costs of production are a major factor in the surging protests across Europe by farmers. Another factor is the EU’s undemocratic import of cheaper agricultural produce from Ukraine as a sop to the Kiev regime. Those imports have undermined farmers all across Europe, in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic countries.
The scandalous abuse of European funds to prop up a corrupt fascist regime that violently suppresses political opponents, media, and the Orthodox Church, and glorifies Nazi collaborators, has one fundamental purpose – to prolong a proxy war against Russia. That war’s objective is for eventual strategic subjugation.
The Western regimes are so bankrupt and impotent in the face of their broken capitalist economies that they are seeking to exploit Russia’s vast natural wealth. This is the continuation of the Lebensraum policy of Nazi Germany by Western imperialists.
Ukraine has lost the proxy war against Russia. It is a shameful, criminal debacle. Up to 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the past two years by superior Russian forces. The vile Kiev regime, of course, wants to keep the war racket going for its insatiable grifting. Washington and its European vassals in high office want to keep the war going out of elitist imperial ambition, an ambition that is ultimately futile in the new emerging multipolar global order.
While European leaders were ensconced in the European Council in Brussels, the parliament was blockaded by angry farmers from all over Europe. Protesters were calling out politicians by name. The contempt is palpable. Paris and other capitals across Europe are being besieged by motorway chokepoints. National economies are on the brink as a result.
One might even perceive that European farmers in France, Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere, are implementing tactics similar to the Yemenis in the Red Sea. Squeeze the chokepoints and watch the empire writhe.
You couldn’t make this farce up. European elitist regimes are waging war in Europe against nuclear-powered Russia by wasting the public’s money to lavish a Neo-Nazi mafia in Kiev and by doing so making the lives of European citizens even harder. The upshot is political and economic suicide for the European Union.
The EU is holding parliamentary elections in June amid the dramatic rise of anti-EU or Eurosceptic parties. Two years of senseless war in Ukraine is fomenting popular disgust with the elite class. The anger out there may not even be contained by voting in elections. The fury seems to be beyond making little Xs in a box. A collapse is coming and heads are going to roll.
Good Money After Bad: Where Will EU Funds for Ukraine Come From?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.02.2024
European Union (EU) member states have agreed on a €50 billion ($54 billion) support package for Ukraine over four years, overcoming Hungary’s resistance. But where will the EU get that money?
The EU could commandeer interest paid on frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine during its war with Moscow.
Europe’s economy is facing stagnation, with zero economic growth for October-to-December period reported by EU statistics agency Eurostat.
The Eurozone inflation rate has yet to fall below the target two percent threshold, with consumer prices still remaining high.
Against that backdrop EU member states are cutting subsidies, reducing energy consumption and diminishing industrial production. Protests by farmers have rocked the continent since early January.
Nonetheless, Brussels has found €50 billion ($54 billion) to support the embattled Kiev regime for four more years. But where will this money come from?
According to the European Council, the bloc has set up the so-called Ukraine Facility for the period 2024-2027 to “contribute to the recovery, reconstruction and modernization of the country, foster social cohesion and progressive integration into the Union, with a view to possible future Union membership.”
To that end the EC has allocated €50 billion, of which:
€33 billion ($35.9 billion) comes “in the form of loans guaranteed by extending until 2027 the existing EU budget guarantee, over and above the ceilings, for financial assistance to Ukraine available until the end of 2027,” the document sets out.
€17 billion ($18.5 billion) comes “in the form of non-repayable support, under a new thematic instrument the Ukraine Reserve, set up over and above the ceilings of the MFF 2021-27.” The EC document specifies that revenues “could be generated under the relevant Union legal acts, concerning the use of extraordinary revenues held by private entities stemming directly from the immobilized Central Bank of Russia assets.”
On February 1, CNN claimed that the EU had taken a step towards seizing billions of dollars in interest payments generated by Russian assets frozen in European accounts. Media reported that roughly €200 billion ($218 billion) remain in the EU, mainly in Euroclear, a Belgium-based financial services company.
The media outlet highlighted that the EU approved the €50 billion Ukraine package as it “came closer to finalizing a plan” of using the profits from the Russian Central Bank’s sequestred assets — indicating that it has yet to gain access to the funds. Euroclear revealed on Thursday that the frozen Russian assets had yielded €5.2 billion ($5.6 billion) in interest on income assets since 2022.
On Monday, EU member states “agreed in principle” that profits from the Russian assets will be set aside and not be paid out as dividends to shareholders until the bloc’s members decide to set up a “financial contribution to the [EU] budget that shall be raised on these net profits to support Ukraine”, according to a draft document quoted by Euroactive.
The document claimed that the levy will be “consistent with applicable contractual obligations, and in accordance with [EU] and international law.” After that the EC would transfer the money to the EU’s accounts and then to Ukraine, the media noted, specifying that the proposal targets future profits and would not be applied retrospectively. It is believed that Russia’s frozen assets in the EU could generate an estimated €15-17 billion over four years, which would be transferred to Ukraine, according to the press.
Speaking to Sputnik last October, Jacques Sapir, director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, argued that any attempt by the EU to grab Russia’s frozen assets or revenues from them could turn into a legal nightmare for the EU leadership and particular member states where the money is being stored.
“As a matter of fact, if assets belong to the Russian state legally, you will have to prove that this state is a ‘failing state,’ something impossible,” Sapir told Sputnik on October 29, 2023. “If assets belong to private persons, you need a legal conviction against these persons. If you can’t do both and that you take away revenues to divert them to a third party (Ukraine) this is no less than a theft. Then you will be liable to legal action. But, what is even more important, you will probably discourage all foreign investors from investing in the EU.”
Brussels Wants European Farmers to Tighten Belts
While allocating tens of billions of euros for Ukraine, Brussels has yet to solve its farming crisis caused by inflation, a spike in production costs, economic slowdown, politically-motivated decoupling from Russia’s energy market, an influx of cheap agricultural goods from Ukraine and the bloc’s aggressive climate policies.
Farmers’ protests have been gaining pace since early January, engulfing France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.
Commenting on the provision of €50 billion to Kiev, French member of the European Parliament Thierry Mariani warned that the package could cost France at least €8 billion ($8.7 billion) in taxpayers’ money since Paris contributes 16 percent of the EU budget.
“Another €50 billion for Ukraine (17 in donations plus 33 in loans… which will never be repaid). Do the French realize that they will have to pay €8 billion since we contribute 16 percent of the EU spending? Eight billion that our farmers would dream of,” Mariani posted on X on Thursday.
By January 31, the number of farmers protesting across France against the Macron government’s agricultural policies had reached 10,000, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin admitted. French farmers are protesting against unfair competition from cheaper imports, draconian environmental rules and the government’s push to bring down food inflation by artificially suppressing prices.
In a bid to calm the protests, the French government has proposed €150 million in tax and social support — small change compared to the multi-billion aid for Ukraine paid for by Paris.
Will EU Money be Spent Appropriately or Wasted in Ukraine?
Aid to Ukraine would be provided under certain conditions, the European Council said.
“A precondition for the support for Ukraine under the Facility shall be that Ukraine continues to uphold and respect effective democratic mechanisms, including a multi-party parliamentary system, and the rule of law, and to guarantee respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. In implementing the Facility, the Commission and Ukraine shall take all the appropriate measures to protect the financial interests of the Union, in particular regarding the prevention, detection and correction of fraud, corruption, conflicts of interests and irregularities,” the document read.
Those rules have already been broken by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has refused to hold general elections this year under the pretext of the ongoing conflict, despite top US and EU officials repeatedly urging Kiev to go ahead with the vote.
Washington and its European allies have grown concerned by Ukraine’s endemic corruption, as Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh remarked in his latest op-ed on Substack. Washington and Western Europe want Zelensky to carry out financial reforms.
“According to the knowledgeable American official, the first step of the new concept is a long-standing issue: financial reform,” Hersh wrote. “Zelensky must be told: ‘You’ve got to get rid of corruption before we do anything more.’ The second step is something that does not exist today in Ukraine: a serious audit of all government funding. The official said Zelensky should consider the billions he needs ‘as our money, as an investment with all of the rules’ for its disbursement ‘to be laid out and followed’.”
The investigative journalist recalled that last year CIA Director William Burns secretly travelled to Kiev to warn the Ukrainian president that Washington was aware of his and his entourage’s corruption. Hersh noted that Burns reportedly also told Joe Biden that Zelensky’s subordinates were outraged by their leader personally taking too large a cut of the US aid.
In order to get Ukraine’s spending under control, “the Council will play a key role in the governance of the Ukraine Facility,” according to the EC press release.
“In this sense, a Council Implementing Decision shall be adopted by a qualified majority for the adoption and amendments of the Ukraine Plan and for the approval and the suspension of payments based on the relevant assessments and proposals by the Commission. On the basis of the Commission annual report on the implementation of the Ukraine Facility, the European Council will hold a debate each year on the implementation of the Facility with a view to providing guidance. If needed, in two years the European Council will invite the Commission to make a proposal for review in the context of the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).”
Time will tell whether the EU’s funds allocated for Ukraine at a time of economic stagnation and looming crisis would be used by the Kiev regime properly — or whether it will result in yet another economic and military failure.
Von der Leyen celebrates ‘a great day for Europe’ as farmers trash Brussels
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 2, 2024
“Agreement! The European Council delivered on our priorities. Supporting Ukraine…. A good day for Europe,” tweeted unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, as EU farmers “high-fived” her by throwing eggs, lighting fires and dumping manure in Brussels, where a reported 1,300 tractors gathered in protest.
Surely it must have been in anticipation of this “great day for Europe” that Brussels rolled out the barbed wire to keep the bloc’s own struggling farmers at bay while its leaders cut yet another check for Ukraine — after threatening the one anticipated holdout with national economic “blackmail,” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban qualified it. It’s hard to believe that this meeting actually took place in Brussels. These officials are so disconnected from reality that it may as well have been held on a whole other planet.
Unlike the Ukrainian products making their way onto Western European dinner plates to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin (because turtlenecks and short, cold showers apparently failed to do the job), this crisis is certifiably EU-made. No one knows this better than the farmers, who also realize that it makes more sense to blockade the streets of Brussels than the national highways of their home countries, which they’ve been doing with overwhelming public support – from nine out of every ten citizens in the case of France, according to a recent Odoxa poll.
It was the EU with its climate change obsession that imposed a Common Agricultural Policy on farmers across the entire bloc, managed by bureaucrats divorced from the reality on the ground. Pencil pushers use EU Copernicus satellite images to spy and crack down on farmers whose paperwork doesn’t match – even if any discrepancies can be chalked up to uncontrollable but temporary conditions like the weather.
It was also the EU that piled on regulations under the pretext of ensuring the quality of farm products, while at the same time flooding the bloc with grain, poultry, and other imports from Ukraine. Does “Chernobyl chicken” mass-produced by workers who are paid a pittance represent a threat to the physical health of citizens and economic health of farmers? If not, then why can’t Brussels take its jackboot off the necks of its own farmers so they can compete on a level playing field? The EU has also suddenly decided to ease up on some pesticide bans, angering greens. Paris is promoting the idea that ideologically-driven bans need to end, which seems like a tacit admission of their uselessness. So what should we be more worried about now – ideologically-driven authoritarianism under the guise of health consciousness, or an actual health threat?
And what about that Ukrainian grain that EU officials demanded Russia unblock to feed the poor in developing countries? It turns out that Turkey and Russia were right when they raised the alarm about it just being dumped right next door in Europe, and it sounds like Russian President Vladimir Putin was effectively a bigger defender of EU farmers’ interests than Brussels was. But who’s even surprised anymore by Brussels’ misplaced priorities, given the image that has now emerged of another €50 billion ($54 billion) going out the door to Kiev, in support of a country that’s undercutting the EU’s own farmers without even being in the EU itself?
It was also the EU that screwed itself, its entire population, industry, and farmers out of cheap Russian energy, driving inflation that caused consumers to turn to cheaper food products and, in turn, driving industrial distributors to buy more cheaply, favoring Ukrainian imports. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he’d now be merciless with those industrials, as he limbers up to toss them under the tractors instead of taking responsibility for his own inaction or blaming Brussels for a top-down anti-Russia policy that’s doing far more harm than good.
The farmers’ problems are existential. And while some French farming union chiefs have called for the suspension of blockades in light of the most recent series of promised reforms announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, it’s not clear whether the rank and file will actually listen in the long term. These are people who don’t talk much, but when they do, they’re direct and concrete. As one farmer told me, “Our feet may be in the dirt, but the dirt is clean” – in contrast to some politicians who have different narratives depending on their audience. Even with the suspension of the blockades on Friday, union reps admit that if government action and implementation doesn’t follow shortly, then the blowback from the same farmers risks being “catastrophic.”
For many farmers I’ve spoken with, it’s far too little, and way too late. The average French farmer’s income, estimated by government statistics back in 2021 at around €17,700 a year (for people who regularly work 70 hours a week), has since been subjected to even more blows. Yet governments have insisted on milking this particular cow until there’s nothing left. How else to explain the careless decision to raise taxes on farm fuel by 3 cents a liter, every year, and the insistence on maintaining such a policy at a time when the price of energy had skyrocketed as a result of knee-jerk anti-Russian ideological choices imposed by the EU? Until the tractors spilled onto the highways in France, Paris showed no interest in reversing this tax policy, which was implemented to drive the “green transition” away from conventional energy, and against all pragmatic reality. Clearly French officials knew of its devastating impact, as it was one of the very first concessions that Attal tried tossing like a speed bump in front of the advancing tractors on January 26 – and which the farmers rolled right over, demanding more.
Then there’s Queen Ursula briefly breaking from her fawning over the EU farmers’ current nemesis, Ukraine, to propose easing their “administrative burden.” Too bad she didn’t do that before letting Ukraine into the market in the first place. Guess she could always just blame Putin for making her do it. The bureaucracy is so overwhelming at this point that her proposal to the farmers is like offering to save people drowning in the ocean by tossing them a bucket. She could have stopped the paperwork pile-on at any time, but didn’t.
And how exactly could she know this demagoguery was killing European farming? You’d think that the first clue would have been the fact that EU policies ended up strong-arming Dutch farmers to sell their land to the government because their cattle’s nitrogen emissions exceeded climate policy limits.
Macron has now started to lobby the EU to restrict Ukrainian imports. Wow. You’d think these tractors were Decepticon Transformers about to rise up and kick their behinds, the way that all these EU leaders are suddenly springing into action. But the fact that an elected president even has to go cap in hand to plead with unelected Brussels bureaucrats, rather than make sovereign decisions in the best interests of his own country, is pathetic. Like, what if they say no? Then what? Does Macron think that he’s going to single-handedly and permanently derail the new Mercosur free trade deal, ready for signature, and set to flood the EU with even more farm products from Brazil and the rest of South America?
If Macron, or any other EU leader had any courage, they would have vetoed the €50 billion for Ukraine and demanded that it be used in consultation with EU farmers to ease their burden and “unscrew” the bloc. That’s a lot of bought time for the EU to figure out how to deconstruct the mess that it has made of its own house through corruption and special interests – all in hope that one day, people doing honest work can also make a commensurately decent living.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
EU approves €50 billion in Ukraine aid
RT | February 1, 2024
EU leaders have signed off on a €50 billion ($54 billion) package of economic aid to Ukraine, overcoming resistance from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The Hungarian leader accused Brussels of “blackmailing” him into accepting the deal.
European Council President Charles Michel announced the news on Thursday morning, minutes after the bloc’s leaders sat down for talks in Brussels.
“All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget,” Michel wrote on X. “This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine.”
The sum will be drawn from the EU’s collective budget and doled out over four years to Kiev, where it will be used to pay public sector salaries, keep government departments open, and prop up the beleaguered welfare system. The EU already agreed on a budget three years ago, which will have to be modified to include the mammoth aid package.
Any such budget modifications require the unanimous approval of all 27 member states. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned for months that he would veto the proposal, arguing that the EU has no idea how the money will be spent and no idea what will happen in Ukraine in the coming months. Orban has also argued that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that Western leaders should be pushing Kiev toward a ceasefire and peace talks.
Orban has described Ukraine as “one of the most corrupt countries in the world.” Transparency International ranks Ukraine 104th out of 180 in its Corruption Perceptions Index report, and over the weekend, the country’s Security Service (SBU) announced that it had uncovered a major scheme by high-ranking defense officials to embezzle money intended to purchase ammunition.
Earlier this week, the Financial Times revealed that the European Council had drawn up a plan to cut funding to Budapest and tank the Hungarian economy if Orban maintained his veto. Orban accused the “imperialist” EU of trying to “blackmail” him, and said that he proposed a “compromise deal” whereby Ukraine would receive a smaller transfer of aid every year, which any member state could veto.
Brussels rejected Orban’s proposal, he told France’s Le Point news magazine on Monday. “They say that if we behave like a sovereign country, Hungary will immediately face a vast financial blockade,” he said. “Knowing Brussels, they are capable of it.”
Under the terms of the deal agreed on Thursday, EU leaders will debate the implementation of the package annually, while the budget will be reviewed in two years. Speaking anonymously, multiple European diplomats told Politico that these measures were included to placate the Hungarian PM.
However, other anonymous officials said that Orban was given no concessions, and was pressured to accept that “there was no alternative than giving in on the money to Ukraine.”
EU to seize profits from Russian assets – council presidency
RT | January 30, 2024
EU member states have reached an agreement that is expected to allow Brussels to transfer the income generated by Russia’s frozen central bank reserves to Kiev, according to the Belgian presidency of the EU Council.
“EU Ambassadors just agreed in principle on a proposal on the use of windfall profits related to immobilised assets to support Ukraine’s reconstruction,” the country’s representatives announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
The Financial Times, meanwhile, has reported that EU envoys had approved a plan aiming to set aside the billions of euros in profits generated by the frozen assets of Russia’s central bank. Some €191 billion ($206 billion) out of €260 billion ($291 billion) of Russia’s immobilized reserves are currently held by Belgium’s Euroclear, a central security depository, generating billions as securities reach maturity and are reinvested.
According to the draft seen by the FT, profits generated by Euroclear will be booked separately with no dividends to be paid to shareholders until members of the bloc unanimously opt to set up a “financial contribution to the [EU] budget that shall be raised on these net profits to support Ukraine.”
The proposed measures are expected to only target future profits and won’t apply retroactively.
Last week, sources close to the discussions told Bloomberg that EU foreign ministers had backed applying a windfall tax on Russia’s frozen assets. At the same time, Reuters reported that the EU was unlikely to confiscate the funds despite G7 plans to discuss the legality of doing so at a meeting in February.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that any actions related to its assets by the US and its allies would amount to “theft,” stressing that seizure of the funds or any similar move would violate international law and undermine reserve currencies, the global financial system, and the world economy.
In April, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing a mechanism to temporarily take over foreign assets in Russia in the event that other countries seize Russian private or government property in their jurisdictions, or threaten the national, energy, or economic security of the country.
West Starts to Understand That Ukraine Project ‘Failing’ – Russian Foreign Minister
Sputnik – 30.01.2024
MOSCOW – The West is beginning to understand that the “Ukraine project” is failing but can not stop assisting Kiev because of its economic benefit and fear of losing “prestige,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“The figures that are hidden in Ukraine, they speak a lot about how important it is for the West to prevent the ‘failure’ of their ‘Ukraine project’. Moreover, they already understand that the failure has already begun. But nevertheless they cannot stop. And not only for reasons of prestige … And also from the point of view of economic benefits,” Lavrov said during a meeting with foreign diplomats in Moscow.
Addressing the UN Security Council meeting on January 22, 2023, Lavrov emphasized that there are no interests – and there never were – in the conflict with Russia in favor of the Ukrainian people. There are only “the interests of the Anglo-Saxons, their henchmen and the criminal, rotten Kiev elite, which is tied to the West by mutual responsibility and which is afraid of being swept away the day after the end of the war.”
The Russian top diplomat pointed out that Moscow has never given up on a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict.
“We never gave up on the peaceful resolution, we are always ready to negotiate — negotiate not about how to keep the leadership of the Kiev regime in place but about overcoming the inheritance of a decade-long destructive looting of the country and violence against the people, removing the reasons for the tragic Ukrainian situation,” Lavrov said. However, the key factor hindering a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine is the continued support of the West, he added.
EU pledges to spend billions on trade route bypassing Russia
RT | January 30, 2024
The EU plans to raise up to €10 billion ($10.8 billion) in investment to create a transport corridor to Central Asia through the South Caucasus and Türkiye that bypasses Russia, the European Commission announced on Monday at a forum devoted to developing the route.
According a statement released by the European Commission, Brussels is currently ready to allocate €2.97 billion for the purpose.
For additional funding, the European Investment Bank has reportedly signed memorandums of understanding totaling €1.47 billion with the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as the Development Bank of Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan regarding an investment pipeline worth €1.5 billion for projects already being prepared to develop transport connectivity in Central Asia.
The two-day Investors Forum for EU-Central Asia Transport Connectivity, which began in Brussels on Monday, is expected to address the investment that will be necessary to transform the Trans-Caspian transport corridor into “a cutting-edge, multimodal, and efficient route, connecting Europe and Central Asia.”
According to the statement, the bloc is urgently trying to find alternative trade routes between Europe and Asia that could bypass Russia.
Hungary responds to reported EU threat to destroy its economy
RT | January 29, 2024
Hungary’s minister for European affairs, Janos Boka, has said that Budapest will not give in to “blackmail” by Brussels, following a report that claimed the EU would seek to sabotage the country’s economy if it does not unblock an aid package for Ukraine.
Ahead of a summit of EU leaders on Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pledged to oppose the use of the bloc’s collective budget to funnel €50 billion ($54 billion) in aid to Ukraine.
Should Orban not lift the veto, Brussels could seek to sabotage Hungary’s economy by pulling funding to the EU member state, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing confidential plans drawn up by European leaders seen by the newspaper.
The strategy, the FT noted, could impact Hungary’s currency and incite a downturn in investment, which would affect “jobs and growth.” Boka has insisted however that Hungary will not be dictated to by European bureaucrats.
“Hungary does not allow blackmail,” he wrote on social media late on Sunday. “The agreement confirms what the Hungarian government has been saying for a long time: Brussels is using access to EU resources as a means of political pressure.”
He added: “Hungary makes no link between supporting Ukraine and access to EU resources and refuses to let others do so. Hungary so far will continue to participate constructively in the negotiations, but it does not allow blackmail.”
The document, which the FT said was produced by an official in the Council of the EU, highlights what it says are Hungary’s economic vulnerabilities. These include “very high public deficit,” “very high inflation,” a weak currency, and problems with debt repayment.
It added that Hungarian economic growth heavily depends on overseas investment, which, in turn, is driven by “high levels of EU funding.” A spokesperson for the Council of the EU told the FT that it has a policy of not commenting on leaks.
Orban insisted last month that the EU must meet certain conditions before Budapest would lift its veto, including making the package modest in size and scheduling it over one year rather than the proposed four. Hungary must also be exempted from any new joint EU borrowing over the matter, the PM added.
Another tactic reportedly being considered within the EU bloc is to invoke Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union, which would allow Brussels to strip Budapest of its voting rights. However, this would require unanimity among the other 26 member states – a step many European countries appear unwilling to take.
EU Uses Lure of Infrastructure Investments to Entice Central Asian States to Turn on Russia
Sputnik – 29.01.2024
The European Union’s offer to help improve infrastructure in Central Asia ultimately serves a “political purpose,” EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has admitted that the EU efforts to invest in the transport infrastructure of the Central Asian states are aimed at enforcing anti-Russian sanctions.
In his speech at the Investors Forum for EU-Central Asia Transport Connectivity, Borrell noted that the European Union needs “full cooperation” from its partners in order for the sanctions imposed on Russia to be effective.
“We are following closely the trade between us, between Central Asia countries, with them and Russia. We try to analyze which are the mechanisms that make sanctions being circumvented. We have to increase our cooperation on that,” he stated.
“Yes, we have to build infrastructures. Yes, we have to increase the connectivity of our space,” he added. “But all that is at the service of a political purpose, which is [to] increase our partnership and to share a better future by increasing economic ties and also defending the same values.”
Meanwhile, the European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis has announced the intent of European and international institutions who attended the forum to commit some €10 billion “in support and investments towards sustainable transport connectivity in Central Asia,” according to a statement shared via the EC website.
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Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
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