OPEC’s cut in production has undermined US-led attempts to cap the export price of Russian oil. Geopolitical analyst Mohammed Alhamed, president of the Saudi Elite group and economist, and Professor Mark Frost said the US should back off and let market forces rule.
OPEC’s latest crude oil production cut will stabilize the world market while foiling US-led attempts to impose “price cap” sanctions on Russian exports.
OPEC+, which includes the organization’s 13 member states plus 11 others, including Russia, announced a 1.66 million barrel-per-day cut in production on Monday, sending the price of crude soaring on international markets.
Russia’s deputy prime minister said Moscow may also extend its 500,000 barrel-per-day production cut until the end of this year.
The US, UK, European Union, and Japan agreed earlier this year on a $60-per-barrel price limit on Russian crude, with a $100 cap on refined gasoline and diesel and $45 on household fuel oil as part of sanctions over Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow warned that those measures would have negative consequences.
Mohammed Alhamed told Sputnik that while the US had called the production cut “ill-advised,” OPEC+ had been “instrumental in bringing stability and transparency to the oil market, which has benefited the world economy while many American banks are facing bankruptcy.”
He said threats by US congressmen and women to ban weapons sales to Saudi Arabia over the previous oil production cut were “likely seen as a stupid idea” which would “reflect negatively on US interests in the Middle East.”
“A strained relationship with the US could have negative repercussions on both countries” the analyst said, cautioning Washington not to interfere in OPEC+, which “operates independently and has the right to make decisions that benefit its members.”
The US, still a major oil producer itself, should “focus on addressing its own oil and climate change agenda before criticizing other countries,” Alhamed said.
“Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ have made significant efforts to bring stability to the oil market and should be commended for their efforts.”
Professor Mark Frost told Sputnik that the production cut was a “signal” to the US that “you’re taking us for granted.”
He noted that in “any cartel, there’s a strong incentive to cheat” — and that the rising price of oil would allow European countries to pay prices above the Western-imposed cap on seaborne crude shipments from Russia.
“I think somebody got on the phone and said, ‘hey, Biden, we’re going to buy some oil. And if you don’t like it, that’s tough,’” Frost said.
“You can’t have volatile inflation forever. Markets start to shut down. People start to lose faith,” he added. “People start to become risk averse, and at the extreme, the risk is we become Japan in the nineties, where it requires negative interest rates to get people to borrow any money.”
Frost pointed to fast-food chain McDonald’s announcement of mass lay-offs, saying: “That’s a leading indicator because whether people like it or not, capitalism is trickle-down economics.”
The academic said that the rampant inflation caused by sanctions on Russia — one of the world’s biggest food as well as energy producers — combined with the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates in “quantitative tightening” in response means “we’re going to see at least two million people directly starve to death.”
“A lot of people don’t realize a lot of the world doesn’t do that well,” Frost stressed. “And relatively small increases in crucial things like rice, cooking oil and things like that causes people to starve to death.”
April 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Middle East, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United States |
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Door cam footage of Natalya Vovk, Ukrainian national suspected of killing Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
The main suspect in the murder of prominent Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, Darya Trepova, has confessed to investigators details of her involvement in the incident, according to the news outlet Fontanka.
Tatarsky was killed in an explosion on Sunday at a cafe in St. Petersburg, after Trepova handed him a gift, a statuette, that contained an improvised explosive device (IED). The bombing, which also wounded 40 people, has been classified as a terrorist attack.
According to Fontanka, Trepova claims that it all started when she made friends with a certain activist online and was offered to move to Kiev to take up an editorial position at an unnamed media channel. Before she could be hired, however, she was told that she had to undergo an internship to “prove that she knows how to deal with Russian propaganda.”
Her first task was to go to the Listva bookstore in St. Petersburg and strike up a friendship with Tatarsky, who was holding an event there. Afterwards, she was reportedly told via Telegram that she had to travel to Moscow. There, a taxi driver, who was likely unaware of what he was doing, gave Trepova a package that contained a golden figurine.
Upon receiving the package, Trepova was instructed to go back to St. Petersburg to meet with Tatarsky at the Street Bar 1 café, where he was holding another event for his followers. She was allegedly told to give the figurine to Tatarsky as a gift, and “come up with something about the heroes of the Wagner PMC,” according to Fontanka.
“Then, we will act,” Trepova was reportedly told by her handlers, who said they had booked her a flight to Uzbekistan, where she would be transported to Kiev. Trepova reported her every move to her contact, sending messages such as “I’m arriving at the cafe,” “I’m about to present the figurine to Tatarsky,” and “I’ve handed it over.”
Trepova reportedly insists that she did not know the figurine contained a bomb and has repeatedly claimed that she was set up. Fontanka says her arguments seem plausible since she did not leave the building after handing over the statuette, and did not hesitate to sit next to it when Tatarsky invited her to join him on stage not long before it detonated.
Fontanka reports that explosives experts are now examining the blast site to confirm that the bomb was activated via SIM card, which would have made it possible to detonate it from anywhere in the world.
April 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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Russian war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a blast at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Kiev continues to threaten Russian journalists with reprisals while international organizations turn a blind eye to the situation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated just hours after war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion in St. Petersburg.
Zakharova stressed that Russian journalists are being intimidated by Kiev and its Western sponsors, “literally marked with special labels” on US social media platforms, and subjected to a witch hunt in Western media.
According to the diplomat, the fact that relevant international organizations ignore this can easily be interpreted as tacit approval if not complicity.
The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that Western countries have not investigated any case of violent death of a Russian journalist that was “assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’.”
“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist, assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’ has been investigated, or even treated with elementary human sympathy by Western countries, international organizations or foreign professional communities.”
“Up until recently, the West fought extremism and terrorism, marched as a united front in Paris in defense of journalists against whom terrorist attacks were committed. Today, the lack of reaction in the White House, Downing Street, the Elysee Palace, etc., given their alleged concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of journalism, speaks volumes. The reaction in Kiev is striking, where recipients of Western grants demonstrate undisguised delight over what happened,” Zakharova said.
The spokeswoman added that it is thanks to the Russian war correspondents that the world sees the truth and learns information about what is happening in Ukraine.
“The professional activities of Vladlen Tatarsky, his service to the Fatherland caused hatred with the Kiev regime. He was dangerous for them, but courageously went all the way, fulfilling his duty,” the diplomat added, expressing condolences to Tatarsky’s family.
The 40-year-old Donetsk-born blogger, journalist and war correspondent, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, April 2. The Russian Investigative Committee has launched an investigation into the explosion to establish the circumstances of the blast. Twenty-five people were injured in the explosion. Authorities are yet to determine as to who was behind the blast.
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | European Union, Russia, United States |
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An explosion that rocked the ‘Street Bar’ café in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday has claimed at least one life and left 19 people injured, authorities have reported.
Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin), a military correspondent and blogger, was killed in the incident, according to emergency services.
Tatarsky joined the Donbass militias back in 2014 in the wake of the Maidan coup in Kiev. He has since become known in Russia as a blogger and a correspondent reporting on the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Tatarsky has also authored several books.
According to Readovka news outlet, the man was hosting a live event for supporters of his work when an explosion ripped through the building, blowing the café’s glass front into the street.
Emergency services have reported that an improvised explosive device was detonated near the stage in the cafe.
The incident is reminiscent of another attack on a Russian journalist. In August 2022, Darya Dugina was assassinated in a car blast. She was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who Western media have described as an ideologue of Russian nationalism. According to some reports, he might have been the real target of the attack. The Russian security services later claimed that Ukrainian agents were behind it.
April 2, 2023
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Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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In this Grayzone exclusive, reporter Jeremy Loffredo visits the Donbas Express, a musical instruction camp for youth from the war torn regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and reveals the reality of a program described by State Department-funded researchers who inspired the ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin as a “re-education” camp.
Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 02.04.2023
There’s radio silence from legacy media as a new exposé completely undermines “the allegation by the ICC… that Russia is running a network of camps that are holding children as hostages and committing a war crime by illegally deporting Ukrainian children.”
A stunning new report has debunked the narrative that camps in Russia for children from the Donbass constitute ‘crimes against humanity,’ completely undermining the allegations that serve as the basis for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladmir Putin.
In late March, the Prosecutor General for the ICC claimed that President Putin had personally committed a “war crime,” citing what it insisted was the “unlawful deportation” and “unlawful transfer” of children from the regions of the Donbass that the Kiev regime claims as its own.
The ICC prosecutor “appeared to have based his arrest warrant on research produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL),” a State Department-funded entity whose executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, recently claimed on CNN that “thousands of children are in a hostage situation,” per The Grayzone, an independent American investigative outlet.
State Department spokesman Ned Price seized on that report, which his employer funded, to condemn what he called “Russia’s system of forced relocation, re-education and adoption of Ukraine’s children,” an allegation which was later echoed by the ICC.
But “according to the Yale Lab,” Grayzone journalist Jeremy Loffredo explained in a new video report, the outrageous allegations of war crimes on the part of the Russian President were based on simple Google searches, involved “zero interviews with actual victims… [and] the researchers didn’t even attempt to see any of the camps in person.”
Now the Grayzone has unveiled never-before-seen footage, captured by Jeremy Loffredo in Russia last year, showing the alleged “re-education” camps – and they’re nothing like what the State Department claims.
Although the Yale researchers and the International Criminal Court “are probably under the impression that no Western journalist has been to these so-called ‘re-education camps,’” Loffredo explains in a new video report, “that assumption would be wrong.” Indeed, the journalist says, “I visited one of these camps four months ago – unaware that it would be so important to future war propaganda.”
Rather than a re-education camp, Loffredo explains with his co-author, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, he found “a hotel full of happy campers receiving free classical music lessons in their native Russian language from first-class instructors.”
Loffredo interviewed one of the camp’s instructors, violin teacher Peter Lundstrom, who said that many of the 80 children from the Donetsk and Lugansk region who came to the music camp had first-hand experience with the war that’s been raging in the backyard for over nine years: “Some of them lost their relatives and friends,” he notes. “In the conflict zone, they cannot continue their professional music studies.”
In a subsequent interview with the Grayzone, HRL’s executive director admitted the camps were actually less Third Reich and more “teddy bear.” In other words, the lead author of the report used to justify an ICC arrest warrant for the Russian president seemed to acknowledge that the kids aren’t being stolen, but are merely being given respite from the trauma of life in a conflict zone.
Detailing his findings in comments given to Sputnik News, Blumenthal says their report “completely demolishes the entire case” against the Russian President and “exposes it as a public relations stunt that is driven by a hyper-politicized [ICC] prosecutor captured by the US and a State Department-funded report.”
Between Loffredo’s trip to one of the camps in question, the original text of the report at the center of the allegations, and the Grayzone’s interview with the director of the group which authored it, Blumenthal says the “three layers of journalistic inquiry” totally debunk “the allegation by the ICC… that Russia is running a network of camps that are holding children as hostages and committing a war crime by illegally deporting Ukrainian children.”
But despite the groundbreaking nature of their findings, Blumenthal says not a single mainstream media has reached out to him in the 24 hours since publishing the report: “Western media is doing all it can to ignore this devastating debunking of the Yale HRL report that inspired the ICC arrest warrant,” he noted.
But this shouldn’t as a surprise, the award-winning journalist says, because mainstreams outlets are seeking to “prevent the populations of countries whose governments are sponsoring this proxy war from learning the truth – which is that this is a politicized warrant driven by a bogus investigation that relied on no field research, whose own report debunks itself.”
Ironically, concludes Blumenthal, it’s clear the ICC warrant and the US government-sponsored report it’s based on were both “designed to obstruct diplomacy with the Russian government in order to prolong the war, and therefore to increase the level of human rights abuses that have been taking place.”
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Russia, United States |
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The historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.
The pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.
Maybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.
This week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.
In ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
But the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.
Depleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.
The United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.
The Americans and British have never been held to account for their war crimes. That impunity partly explains their arrogance in regard to pumping weapons into Ukraine against Russia and in particular the latest iteration of radioactive uranium shells.
For the British regime to claim that DU weapons are “normal” munitions and acceptable to deploy potentially for hitting Russian territory is a demonstration of its depraved deception and utter lawlessness. It also shows that London and its NATO partners are willing to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine against Russia by breaching a dangerous threshold regarding nuclear weapons.
Under Russia’s defense doctrine, it may use nuclear weapons if its national security is threatened by either nuclear forces or conventional forces. The U.S.-led NATO alliance is pushing the envelope in a way that is seemingly incorrigible, or tantamount to psychopathic behavior.
Perversely, this abysmal situation is distorted as somehow Russia taking a provocative step in placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
What Moscow is demonstrating is that the Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over. Moscow offered a diplomatic channel to create a security treaty in Europe, but that was haughtily dismissed by the arrogant imperialist powers. The result was the military-technical measures that Russia undertook with its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Arguably, Russia could take additional reciprocal measures that go further. The involvement of NATO members in massively arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime should, it could be contended, be met with military defensive action to destroy supply chains entering Ukraine.
This is the perspective for a proper understanding of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is not Russia upping the ante to jeopardize security and peace. It is NATO powers that are erasing the boundaries in a way that they are accustomed to doing for several decades.
Let’s recall that it is the United States that has rescinded several arms-control treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Open Skies treaty, and it is Washington that has chronically undermined the last-existing one, the New START governing strategic weapons.
There is also the existing anomaly of the United States storing nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members. They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. These countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so arguably the basing of nuclear weapons in these states is a gross violation of the NPT, which is what the West is accusing Russia of in regard to Belarus.
Last year, too, Poland offered to house American nuclear weapons on its soil. That offer was not taken up but is presumably still on the table. Why is there not an outcry over that egregious destabilizing of arms control?
As usual there is a surfeit of Western double-think to go along with rank hypocrisy. The illogical mentality is a product of arrogance and hubris.
Furthermore, two NATO members Britain and France have their own national nuclear arsenals supposedly separate from Washington’s command. These two powers are actively hostile toward Russia through their arming of the Kiev regime.
Additionally, all 30 members of the NATO alliance are committed to assisting the United States in deploying nuclear forces with their conventional militaries under the alliance’s provision called Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (SNOWCAT).
In sum, clearly, the issue of arms control and security is badly out of balance, but it is the conduct of the United States and its NATO partners that has led to the imbalance. The arrogant presumption of impunity held by Washington and London in particular is a destabilizing factor that creates double standards that are completely unacceptable in a world supposedly under the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter.
The conflict in Ukraine can be solved if Western powers were to abide by international law and halt the weaponizing of the Kiev regime. Going forward, Ukraine must be a neutral state and NATO must halt its aggressive expansion. A serious policy of nuclear arms control must involve the withdrawal of such weapons from European NATO member states and the inclusion of British and French arsenals as part of a wider detente framework. Note, however, that the conditionalities for peace are in large part an onus on Washington and its Western allies to do the right and reasonable things. The disturbing question is though, can Washington and its imperialist lackeys be reasonable?
Until enlightened conduct prevails, Russia is quite correct to be intolerant of any double standards that the Americans, British and their NATO minions presume. Every aggressive move must be boldly and smartly reciprocated. Without that countervailing action, there is impunity, which is even more dangerous.
Holding Western powers to account is a powerful weapon of attrition because it exposes their corruption and fraud, their duplicity, and their fatal arrogance. Increasingly, the Western public is seeing the endemic bankruptcy of their supposed rulers.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Belgium, Germany, Italy, NATO, Netherlands, Russia, United States |
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Russia will continue to inform the US about its ballistic missile launches despite Moscow suspending its participation in the New START treaty, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has stated.
Russia placed its participation in the New START treaty – the last remaining nuclear accord with Washington – on hold in February.
Explaining the move, President Vladimir Putin said that the 2010 deal had been signed under different circumstances, when Russia and the US did not perceive each other as adversaries. The West had also denied Russian requests to inspect nuclear facilities even though this was allowed for under the treaty, Putin claimed.
Speaking about data sharing between Moscow and Washington on Thursday, Ryabkov stated that “all types of information exchanges, as well as other elements of verification activities in accordance with the New START, have been suspended.”
However, he noted the announcement by Moscow that it will “adhere to the basic quantitative restrictions established in the New START treaty, and will continue to implement the 1988 agreement on the exchange of notifications on missile launches.” Russia will do so “out of good will,” Ryabkov added.
The New START treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by Russia and the US to 1,550. It also confines the two nations to 800 deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers and nuclear-capable heavy bombers, as well as to 700 ICBMs, SLBMs and strategic bombers equipped to carry nuclear armaments.
Ryabkov said that Russia had informed the US of its decision to suspend participation in the New START treaty in both verbal and written form, but that Moscow had not received any such notification from Washington.
This means that the US violated its commitments under the New START treaty when it refused to provide Moscow with a biannual report on nuclear stockpiles earlier this week, Ryabkov argued.
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday that Washington was ready to continue exchanging information with Moscow in line with the New START treaty, but only on a reciprocal basis. “Since they [Russia] have refused to be in compliance… we have decided to likewise not share that data,” Kirby said.
March 31, 2023
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Militarism | New START Treaty, Russia, United States |
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MOSCOW – Russia will consider so-called NATO peacekeepers as legitimate targets if they get deployed in Ukraine on the front line, Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
“They will be a legitimate target for our armed forces if they are placed on the front line without the consent of Russia with weapons in their hands and directly threaten us,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.
According to the official, the West’s real goal is to establish a ceasefire on the front line that is favorable to them.
“It is clear that the so-called NATO peacekeepers are simply going to enter the conflict on the side of our enemies [Ukraine] … Unleash that very third world war, which they so fear when they talk,” Medvedev said.
Earlier in March, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated that the European Union is one step away from discussing sending military of some peacekeeping type in Ukraine.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia |
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MOSCOW – Russia is calling for an independent investigation into the last year events in the city of Bucha, near Kiev, and calls on the United Nations to publish a list of the victims, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
“We are saying it once again. In order to find out the truth, it is necessary to carry out a fair, impartial, independent investigation, which should be focused on giving answers to four questions: identification of bodies, time and cause of death, signs of possible transportation of the bodies,” Zakharova said during her press conference.
Russia has requested the full list of Bucha’s residents, who died at the time of the events, from the UN, but the organization has not provided such a list yet, Zakharova added.
The UN referred to the lists of victims available on the Internet and in social media, but Moscow would like to deal with official information, the official said, adding that the events in Bucha were a provocation aimed at scuttling the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, as well as imposing new anti-Russia sanctions.
In April, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that no residents of Bucha suffered from any violent actions while the city was under Russian control.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Ukraine, United Nations |
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The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is furious after Russia arrested a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) employee on charges of espionage earlier this week. According to the FSB, that individual “acted in the interests of the US government” while trying to obtain classified information. The Yekaterinburg lawmaker with whom he was meeting confirmed that the so-called “journalist” wanted to learn about very specific details pertaining to Russia’s military-industrial complex in his region.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman wrote on Telegram that “Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the status of a ‘foreign correspondent’, a journalist visa, and accreditation have been used by foreign nationals in our country to cover up activities that are not journalism.” Around the same time, the Kremlin spokesman confirmed that the arrested individual was indeed “caught red-handed” while meeting with the earlier mentioned local lawmaker when the FSB swooped in to stop him.
Keeping in mind what that Yekaterinburg official told TASS in the hyperlinked news item shared in the last sentence of the first paragraph, there’s no doubt that Russia had every right to arrest that WSJ employee for espionage. After all, if a Russian, Chinese, or Iranian citizen in the US on a journalist visa met with a local lawmaker to inquire about “whether the enterprises change their profile, how many shifts there are, and if they are appropriately staffed”, then they’d surely have been arrested as well.
There’s a very clear line between journalism and espionage. The first can only delve into very sensitive national security matters if a citizen from that same country is investigating particular leads, but even then, it might still be illegal depending on whatever regulations that particular country might have in place. As for the second, this always concerns sensitive information of serious interest for a foreign power such as specific details of its military-industrial complex, especially if a foreigner is seeking them.
That being the case, the WSJ employee indisputably crossed the very clear line between journalism and espionage by asking detailed questions of a local official in a foreign country about their military-industrial complex. He’d either done this before with someone else and thus got on the FSB’s radar or his outreach to that Yekaterinburg lawmaker indicated that he was illegally seeking certain information. Nothing else explains how he was able to be caught in the act red-handed like what happened.
In the first scenario, the FSB could have been aware of his meeting with that local official and coordinated with the latter to eavesdrop on the conversation in preparation of arresting that WSJ employee if he broke the law during their meeting. As for the second, that local official would have informed the FSB on his own for patriotic reasons and then offered to cooperate with them to help catch that individual in the act after they realized he planned to behave as a spy in their meeting.
Quite clearly, security officials in any country have the right to arrest foreigners like that WSJ employee who try to obtain specific information about ultra-sensitive national security issues from a local official, let alone during an ongoing conflict and not to mention while being a citizen of an unfriendly country. Russia’s arrest of that individual wasn’t so-called “political repression” like the MSM is dishonestly spinning it as, but the flexing of its sovereign rights in accordance with international law to defend itself.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Russia, United States |
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The Bank of Russia had been preparing for an escalation of Western sanctions since 2014 and was beefing up additional funds as a hedge against future restrictions on its foreign exchange reserves, the regulator revealed on Wednesday.
Amid “increasing geopolitical risks” the central bank ramped up investments in assets “that cannot be blocked by unfriendly nations” and transferred part of its reserves to gold, Chinese yuan and foreign currency in cash, the regulator announced in its annual report.
The central bank managed to stash billions of imported dollars “in volumes limited by logistics capabilities,” the report said without specifying the amount of accumulated funds. Alternative reserves in dollars and gold bars have been stockpiled in the vaults of the Bank of Russia.
“This safety cushion was created in the form of alternative reserves – less liquid and convenient in everyday life, but more reliable in the face of a tough geopolitical scenario,” the regulator explained.
It was impossible to abandon reserves in dollars and euros, as these currencies were used for settlements in international trade as well as in the domestic financial sector, the central bank added.
“Therefore the structure of foreign exchange reserves needed to take into account the needs of citizens and businesses,” the regulator concluded.
The central bank could have “unloaded” part of this money to banks during the first wave of Western sanctions to stabilize Russia’s banking system and offset the withdrawal of dollars and euros by “panicking depositors,” the chief analyst from Ingosstrakh-Investment, Viktor Tunyov, believes.
According to some estimates, last year almost $20 billion was withdrawn by depositors from the country’s second largest bank, VTB, alone.
In 2022, Russia was hit by sweeping Western economic sanctions, which included measures to cut the Russian central bank off from the international financial system, while around $300 billion of the bank’s foreign reserves were frozen. Moscow has criticized the seizure of its assets, saying it constitutes theft.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Russia, United States |
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China is ready to strengthen cooperation with the Russian military in order to jointly uphold international justice, peace and security, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei stated on Thursday.
The announcement comes after a summit between President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow earlier this month. The two leaders reaffirmed the principles of partnership between their nations, and agreed to improve bilateral relations and military coordination.
According to Tan, China is “willing to work together with the Russian military to fully implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.” That includes further strengthening strategic communication and coordination, he added.
The diplomat stated that the two nations plan to regularly organize joint maritime and air patrols, as well as holding training exercises and strengthening various other areas of cooperation. According to Tan, the aim is to “deepen military mutual trust” with Russia to help ensure international justice and make new contributions to international and regional security. This would “serve the building of a community with a shared future for mankind,” he asserted.
Tan noted the increasingly strong relations between Moscow and Beijing, but insisted that they do not amount to a Cold War-style military-political alliance. According to the spokesman, the ties “transcend this model of state relations” and have a nature of “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries.”
The US, meanwhile, has called the growing ties between Russia and China “very troubling.” Officials have also described China as a “challenge,” with the Pentagon requesting a 2024 defense budget of up to $842 billion.
During his press conference, Tan argued that is China a “builder of world peace” and “contributor to global development.” In contrast, he claimed that the US uses its mammoth defense budget – which is the highest in the world – to “wage wars and create turmoil everywhere,” thus making it “the biggest threat to world peace, security and stability.”
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism | China, Russia, United States |
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Aletho News 