Frankfurt, Paris (14/4 – 40)

Relations between Russia and NATO have reached boiling point due the recent event: the claim that Serbia and Russia want to refight Kosovo; the closure of the border by Finland; and the statement by the President of France, Emanuel Macron, on March, 14. 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, in a series of posts on social media, claimed that NATO, the EU, and the US government were targeting Kosovo and Serbia and destroying the relationship. Never mind a coalition with Italy and Russia, this is just another pipedream of Radio Moscow.

In recent days, rumours of an impending Balkan war have become more widespread, but experienced Balkan parties are calling for a cool head to prevail. Radio Moscow plays up the usual rubbish of war drums. “People forget that this alliance does not like to use force, but…,” a NATO Air Command spokesman warned.

According to Lavrov, the Kosovo police have long discredited themselves through systematic punitive measures against the Serb community. “They have tried to push the Serbs out of Kosovo through the deployment of heavily armed special forces in non-Albanian areas. There is an immediate threat of a return to the ethnic cleansing carried out by Kosovo Albanian extremists.”

Meanwhile, President Macron said that Europe must be ready for war if it wants peace. He called President Putin would not stop at Ukraine if he succeeded in defeating Kyiv forces in the conflict that has been going on for two years.

President Macron sparked controversy last month after saying he could not link the possibility of ground troops to Ukraine in the future. Many state leaders avoided this, while several other leaders, especially in the Eastern European region, supported the statement. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility will be destroyed,” Macron said in a television interview.

However, President Putin stated that anything is possible in the modern world. “I have said and it is clear to everyone that this (possible direct conflict with NATO) would be one more step towards a full-scale third world war. I think almost no one is interested in this increasing chaos.” 

He added that French troops would perform secondary functions, training military personnel in Ukraine, explaining how to use heavy equipment, and performing several other similar functions. “Today, it is not much different from what was done by the mercenaries and later armed military personnel of the NATO countries present there,” President Putin said in speech after winning the election. 

Meanwhile, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia’s relations with NATO had reached the level of direct confrontation. “The relationship has now descended to the level of direct confrontation. NATO not only continues to escalate but is also directly involved in the conflict around Ukraine. NATO continues its advance towards our borders,” he said.

Even so, President Putin is open to dialogue with NATO. According to Peskov, President Putin often holds international dialogue with countries that show interest in developing relations with Russia, “President Putin is open to dialogue to solve complex global and regional problems.”

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Sri Lanka has told hundreds of thousands of Russians and some Ukrainians staying in the country to escape the war that they must leave in the next two weeks, immigration officers said.

The immigration controller issued a notice to the tourism ministry asking Russian and Ukrainian people staying on extended tourist visas to leave Sri Lanka within two weeks from 23 February.

Just over 288,000 Russians and nearly 20,000 Ukrainians have traveled to Sri Lanka in the last two years since the war began, according to official data.

Commissioner-General of Immigration said the “government is not granting further visa extensions” as the “flight situation has now normalised”.

However, the office of president Ranil Wickremesinghe ordered an investigation of the notice to the tourism ministry in an apparent bid to prevent diplomatic tensions.

The president’s office said that the notice had been issued without prior cabinet approval and the government had not officially decided to revoke the visa extensions, reported the Sri Lankan newspaper Daily Mirror.

The exact number of visitors who extended their stay beyond the typical 30-day tourist visa duration remains unclear.

However, concerns have been raised over thousands of Russians and a smaller number of Ukrainians staying in the country for an extended period of time and even setting up their own restaurants and nightclubs.

Tourism minister Harin Fernando told Daily Mirror that the ministry has been receiving complaints of some Russian tourists running unregistered and illegal businesses in the southern part of the country.

Raids were conducted by the authorities following discussions with the Immigration Department, he said.

It comes amid a furious social media backlash over Russian-run businesses with a “whites only” policy that strictly bars locals. These businesses include bars, restaurants, water sports and vehicle hiring services.

In a bid to boost tourism and recover from its worst economic crisis since 2022, Sri Lanka began granting 30-days visas on arrival and extensions for up to six months.

In April 2022, the nation defaulted on its $46bn (£36 bn) foreign debt. The economic crisis triggered violent street protests for several months and ultimately culminated in the resignation of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa three months later.

Source: Independent

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All men in Russia are required to do a year-long military service, or equivalent training during higher education, from the age of 18.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting out the routine spring conscription campaign, calling up 150,000 citizens for statutory military service, a document posted on the Kremlin’s website showed on Sunday (31 March).

All men in Russia are required to do a year-long military service, or equivalent training during higher education, from the age of 18.

In July Russia’s lower house of parliament voted to raise the maximum age at which men can be conscripted to 30 from 27. The new legislation came into effect on 1 January 2024.

Compulsory military service has long been a sensitive issue in Russia, where many men go to great lengths to avoid being handed conscription papers during the twice-yearly call-up periods.

Conscripts cannot legally be deployed to fight outside Russia and were exempted from a limited mobilisation in 2022 that gathered at least 300,000 men with previous military training to fight in Ukraine – although some conscripts were sent to the front in error.

In September Putin signed an order calling up 130,000 people for the autumn campaign and last spring Russia planned to conscript 147,000.

Russian attacks

Russian shelling killed at least three people in different regions of eastern Ukraine on the front of the more than two-year-old war against Russia, local officials said, and two more in Lviv region, far from the front lines.

In the centre of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, a frequent target of Russia’s intensifying assaults on energy and other infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said a strike targeted civilian infrastructure in the evening.

Regional news outlets said aerial bombs had been dropped on different areas of the region. No injuries were reported.

Earlier on Sunday, heavy shelling killed a man in the town of Borova, southeast of Kharkiv, local prosecutors said.

Police in Donetsk region, in Ukraine’s southeast, said Russian shelling hit 14 towns and villages, with two dead reported in Krasnohorivka, west of the Russian-held regional centre of Donetsk.

Russian forces captured the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk region last month and have since made small gains, but the situation along the 1,000-km front has changed little for months.

Attacks on infrastructure have extended well beyond the front line and Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozitskyi said two bodies were pulled from rubble after on such strike by cruise missiles. Rescue work continued through the day at the site.

Over the border in Russia’s Belgorod Region, a frequent target of Ukrainian shelling, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a woman was killed when a border village came umder attack.

Reuters could not independently confirm accounts of military action from either side.

Source

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Kiev is being bombed by the Russians, but despite the dangers the indiscriminate bombing brings, Ukrainians have their humor, and a bit of the “so what” attitude. 

Let’s call her Maria, because we don’t know her correct name and we don’t want to endanger the young coffee aficionado to targeted Russian attacks targeting the Ukrainian spirit of everything can be fixed with a good cup of coffee. 

The young Ukrainian barista keeps working despite today’s Russian missile strike destroying large parts of her cafe. “They won’t be able to break us,” Maria tells the reporter with a smile pouring the coffee in the morning. 

The front window was broken by the blast and the shop a bit in a mess, but Maria worked cheerfully away. 

Putin’s terror campaign against the civilian population becomes more and more like Hitler’s war machine. And if the Russians must waste a million-dollar missile for taking out a window of a coffee shop they become more desperate. 

Maria serves the cup of black gold with a smile. She goes about the business of geopolitics just with no worries. They can’t break us is their way of living. Slava Ukrainia. 

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If European countries don’t see defeat coming, we can’t turn the wheel to avoid it

I left my meeting with a senior French officer feeling that the west is so weak it scarcely exists any more. “The West”, a longtime object of obsession for anti-westerners from Egypt’s President Nasser to Vladimir Putin, has shrivelled to a small rump of countries squabbling with each other. At times they seem willing to let Ukraine lose its war.  

 I share the emotional impulse to keep intoning that Ukraine will win. But Panglossian war propaganda is becoming counterproductive. We need to see a possible defeat coming so that we can turn the wheel and avoid it. We can if we want to. 

I met the officer days after Emmanuel Macron suggested that Nato troops could be sent to Ukraine. As usual with France’s attempts to lead, most of its so-called allies responded by saying, in essence: “Shut up, France.” 

The officer thought Macron had spoken in desperation, compelled by French pessimism about Ukraine. Westerners have grown used to the war as a background rumble that never seems to change. One day, this could stop being true. Russian troops have a firepower advantage of perhaps five-to-one over Ukrainians.

Western countries are weak firstly because they lack allies. Non-aligned states in Asia, Africa and the Gulf never cared much about Ukraine’s struggle. They have been further alienated by western double standards over Israel’s killing of 30,000 Palestinians.

If western countries support human rights in Ukraine but not in Palestine, then they don’t support human rights.  Meanwhile, the US seems to be abandoning “The West” like a sinking ship leaving the rats. This goes beyond Donald Trump’s plan, as relayed by his chum Viktor Orbán, to “not give a single penny” to Ukraine if he becomes president again. Even if Trump loses and Republicans win just one chamber of Congress, they can keep blocking aid to Ukraine.  

The French long dreamt of Europe running its own military affairs without the US butting in. Now the dream is coming true, and it’s terrifying. Europeans cannot even agree whether this is an existential war for them (as eastern Europeans believe), a war of choice (as western countries seem to think) or a war to ignore (Olaf Scholz of Germany’s view). 

Western powers have often labelled wars existential — in Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — only to abandon them after realising they were, in fact, wars of choice. European pacifists hope Ukraine’s war will remain similarly self-contained. Perhaps Putin might stop once he’s swallowed the country. After all, western domino theories proved wrong about Vietnam, too.

So uncommitted are western states to arming Ukraine that they are treating it as a public-spending programme of choice, one you can ditch when money gets tight, like the UK’s HS2 train line. It’s not merely that our countries are disunited. France itself — the one western military with much fighting experience this past decade, albeit in the Sahel — is disunited.

A contingent of Putinist French officers still admires Russia and would rather fight what it considers the “Islamic peril” inside France. And in 2027, Putin’s longtime admirer Marine Le Pen could become French president. Putin has another military advantage over us: his willingness to sacrifice his people. Russia might have suffered more casualties taking the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka than all western European deaths in combat put together in the past 50 years.

The French officer told me apologetically: “We’re an old continent, no longer used to making war.”  This is a backhanded tribute to the success of European societies. Much though western Europeans like to whine, their region may be the safest and most liveable in history. It’s the apotheosis of the humanistic project. But Putin suspects we treasure life too much to defend it.  

If he wins, that wouldn’t mean a new Iron Curtain descending across Europe. It would be more like a portable cotton curtain, blown around by Russia’s will. “The West” could shrink to a thin line stretching from Britain to (if we’re lucky) Poland. 

Happily, we can change course. Russia has a poorly trained army and a Canada-sized economy. “This should be feasible, easily,” says Steven Everts of the EU Institute for Security Studies. Victory would require western countries to send non-combat troops such as de-miners, trainers and vehicle engineers. Countries would need to follow Denmark in giving every shell in their cupboards to Ukraine.

Germany would have to send Taurus missiles. Replacing American support for Ukraine would cost the other Nato states about €65 per citizen per year. We could choose to let Ukraine win.

Source: Financial Times

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In the Pacific port of Vladivostok, some 3,000 people were left in the bitter cold after an above-ground heating pipeline ruptured, spewing similar volumes of steaming water.

And nine hours to the west, in a string of Moscow suburbs, more than 150,000 people shivered — and complained vociferously — when another municipal heating pipe broke down, with engineers rushing to dig up the frozen ground.

Since January 1, amid a two-week period spanning various holidays, a growing number of towns and cities have reported major problems with heat and hot water.

Russia’s winters are cold. This is not news. Russia’s municipal infrastructure, much of which is Soviet-era and sporadically maintained, is aging. This is not news.

What is news this winter is that it is a presidential election season, in which the incumbent Vladimir Putin is less worried about winning than he is about getting a credible mandate from a Russian populace already anxious about the Ukraine invasion, which will be more than 2 years old at the time of the election.

Anything less than a 75 percent victory in the March vote, with 70 percent of the voting population participating, will be seen as problematic by Kremlin officials, according to multiple press reports.

Voters annoyed by the soaring price of eggs and bananas are likely to be unenthused. A population freezing due to decrepit housing stock and poorly managed municipal infrastructure even less so.

“Unfortunately, the collapse (of municipal services) that occurs in Russia every winter is not news,” Fyodor Krasheninnikov, a journalist and a political analyst, told RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “The only news is that the deterioration in the quality of infrastructure is only accumulating.”

“In a sense, every nation has the government it deserves,” Vladimir Pastukhov, a former Russian lawyer and political scientist, said in a January 10 podcast.

“So generally speaking, I don’t expect that we’ll have any sort of communal riot,” he said, referring to the communal services — heating, trash collection, electricity supply — provided by local governments.

‘A Rather Dilapidated State’

Central to Putin’s intention to seek a sixth term as president in the March election — with the possibility of staying in power until 2034 — is his command of the Ukraine war, which hits its second anniversary on February 24. Public-opinion polling shows Russians continue to support Putin, but there are signs of slipping enthusiasm for, and growing impatience with, the war.

With Russia’s economy shifting focus toward producing more guns and less butter, there’s also growing alarm over domestic pocketbook issues.

Prior to Putin’s nationally televised question-and-answer session in December, skyrocketing egg prices were stoking worries; in some Russian regions, particularly in poorer, far-flung locations, egg prices jumped by more than 40 percent. Putin himself touched on the issue briefly, suggesting poultry farmers were manipulating supplies to net higher profits.

To what degree the Kremlin is worried about exploding hot-water pipes is unclear.

Tatyana Stanovaya, a veteran Russian political observer, said officials in the powerful presidential administration — which oversees much of domestic policy — are paying close attention.

“Any elections (including those awaiting us in March) highlight shifts in relations between government and society,” she wrote in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And now, in wartime, the stakes are so high that the Kremlin has to scrupulously take into account any manifestation of mass discontent. If it, of course, corresponds to the authorities’ ideas about legitimacy.”

A much-reviled legacy of Soviet central planning, heating and hot water are provided to the vast majority of Russian residences around the nation from municipal heating plants through a network of pipes that frequently rupture and need constant repair.

On January 9, after days of mounting complaints in the Moscow region district of Podolsk and videos of ice-encrusted radiators and gas cooking stoves turned on full blast circulating on social media, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke out, blaming “anomalous” cold for the exploding pipes, but also pointed to the aging infrastructure.

“Of course, despite titanic efforts to update all housing and communal-services systems, some of them remain in a rather dilapidated state,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “These programs will continue. But it is impossible to update all pipes and all housing and communal services systems in 10 or 15 years.”

On January 10, Putin, who last year pledged billions of dollars of investments in municipal services, traveled to Chukotka, the remote northeastern Pacific region that is nine time zones east of Moscow.

The region was coping with minus 30 degree Celsius temperatures when Putin visited, touring local tomato-growing greenhouses and meeting with officials and veterans of the Ukraine war. But he made no public comments about the snowballing heating problems.

A day before leaving, however, Putin spoke with the Moscow regional governor, who had declared a state of emergency after being harangued by angry residents of Podolsk, according to a Kremlin release.

“In reality, I believe the authorities don’t have a big problem here yet; if we are talking about a political problem, and not about the problem of specific individuals, or about a media problem,” Pastukhov said in the podcast, hosted by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a strident Kremlin critic and exiled oil tycoon who was jailed for nearly a decade under Putin.

“The government is reacting completely normally so far,” Pastukhov added. “That is, at first it simply ignored this topic, not allowing it to break into the national information agenda and spoil people’s holiday mood.”

While social issues such as inflation, pension reforms, and military mobilization are keenly felt by the Russian public, the Kremlin normally deals with them by casting blame on lower-level officials and portraying Putin as the solution to the problem — the latest iteration of an age-old Russian political myth of the good tsar and the bad noblemen.

Putin has also called for the nationalization of a Podolsk factory, the Klimovsky Specialized Cartridge Plant, whose boiler plant provided heat to local apartments, hospitals, and other buildings. which is a common arrangement for large industrial facilities around Russia. Law enforcement officials on January 9 detained two top executives at the factory.

The names of the factory executives who were detained were not released. But the investigative website Agentsvo reported the plant had been headed by a former Putin bodyguard named Igor Rudyka, along with Igor Kushnikov, a former top officer in the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who has been accused of involvement in a Moscow organized crime group in the 1990s.

Putin himself was a longtime FSB officer and headed the agency in the 1990s before becoming president.

The plant’s owners, meanwhile, include a Russian-Mexican crime boss as well as the state industrial conglomerate Rostec, according to Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit. Rostec’s chief executive officer is Sergei Chemezov, who served with Putin when the two were KGB agents stationed in East Germany.

For many Russians, the revelations about the facility’s ownership structure, and the failure of its heating plant, was a reminder of how opaque and insider business deals frequently leads to crumbling public infrastructure.

‘We Aren’t Living; We’re Just Surviving’

The flooding in Novosibirsk, a major Siberian city located 3,100 kilometers east of Moscow, was just one of the more dramatic example of major infrastructure collapse. The flood swamped cars and apartment building entrances, with steam drifting over frozen streets and parking lots.

Closer to the capital, a group of older Russians in the Moscow region town of Voskresensk took to the social media platform VK on January 8 to make a desperate appeal to Putin.

“We aren’t living; we’re only surviving! We’re freezing!” the group complained. “It feels like they want to wipe our Voskresensk from the face of the Earth.”

Farther away from Moscow, where governors, mayors, and administrative heads are more sensitive to local discontents, several officials rushed to respond, some pledging criminal investigation into the pipeline ruptures. In Petrozavodsk, a northern city not far from the border with Finland, the chairman of the city’s Housing and Communal Services Committee and several other high-ranking members resigned a day after burst pipes left the City Hall freezing.

In the town of Elektrostal, about 60 kilometers east of Moscow, residents kindled a fire in a city park and complained on video of the lack of heat and hot water.

“It’s impossible to stay in our houses,” the women chanted. “We’re freezing!”

In the Tver region, about 170 kilometers northwest of Moscow, residents of the village of Novozavidovsky also published a desperate video.

“We’re dying from the cold,” one woman said. Another woman, complaining about the cold, noted that her husband was serving in the military, fighting in Ukraine “defending our country.”

In the Pacific port of Nakhodka, just northeast of Vladivostok, more than 6,000 people have suffered from plummeting indoor temperatures — on top of recurring problems, locals said.

“Do you think this just happened today? We’ve been complaining about interruptions since December!” one Nakhodka resident, who gave his name only as Sergei, told RFE/RL’s Siberia Realities.

“Everywhere there are constant outages or insufficient heat supplies,” he said. “The prosecutor’s office has already opened 10 investigations against the provider, but so what?”

Source: Radio Libery

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The main focus of the new round of measures, proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday (15 November), is to further crackdown on the Kremlin’s ability to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions and feed its war machine, as well as curb Russia’s ability to finance its invasion of Ukraine.

EU officials have been evasive about the reasons for the delay of the EU’s latest sanctions package against Russia, despite the public announcement of European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv two weeks ago.

Diamonds may be forever, but not when it comes to imports from Russia, which is the biggest producer of rough diamonds cut from hundreds of mines beneath the Siberian permafrost.

While the option to include them has been discussed by EU member states for months, mostly with the opposition of Belgium over protecting its diamond capital Antwerp, now the EU’s executive proposed to ban imports of Russian non-industrial natural and synthetic diamonds and diamond jewellery from the start of 2024.

The proposal calls for an import, purchase and transfer ban on diamonds transiting Russia and Russian diamonds cut and polished in third countries, such as India. Add to that a progressive phase-in – from 1 March to 1 September next year – of an import ban of Russian diamonds when processed in third countries.

“This phasing-in of indirect import bans takes into consideration the need to deploy an appropriate traceability mechanism that enables effective enforcement measures and minimises disruptions for market players,” the proposal text, seen by Euractiv, stated.

The new package includes measures to better enforce the EU’s leaky price cap on Russian oil as well as targeting the export of machine tools and machinery parts that Moscow uses to produce weapons used in Ukraine.

Moscow has been importing some machinery from Europe to be used to make ammunition. With the upcoming winter, and likely more fierce trench warfare ahead, the ammunition battle might prove decisive for the outcome of the war.

Russia has been able to sustain its own production of ammunition and at the same time acquire large stocks from third countries like North Korea, while Ukraine’s Western allies risk falling short of commitments to provide Kyiv with enough artillery shells.

Meanwhile, the bloc is also drawing up plans to hit third countries with economic penalties if they fail to comply with Western sanctions or can’t explain a sudden rise in trade in banned goods.

If approved, the proposals would also target 120 individuals and entities, including more than 30 companies added to a list of entities with which trade is restricted, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Singapore and several Russian machine-building companies.

But with the new package on the way, many ask: What is left?

The laborious journey of the current proposal, which was discussed by EU ambassadors on Friday (17 November), shows that sanctions work in Brussels is slowing down.

Despite continued pressure by the bloc’s Eastern European sanctions hawks, Lithuania and Poland, it is increasingly unlikely other member states would sign up to their maximalist proposals, which include Russia’s nuclear sector, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and steel. There is also a whole list of components made in the EU that can be used in Russian military hardware.

EU officials and diplomats are also increasingly questioning whether labelling future measures as ‘packages’ makes sense in the long-term and contemplate a transition towards a ‘more flowing’ sanctions regime.

And there is growing frustration over the circumvention of Western sanctions against Russia by unscrupulous states and businesses.

The EU’s special envoy David O’Sullivan has been appointed to make sure European sanctions are implemented, but despite jetting around third countries he lacks leverage to convince them to align with the bloc’s policies.

EU sanctions experts increasingly point towards the need to move from implementation to enforcement of sanctions.

Source: Euractiv

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Governments may be doing great while the people suffer. Bombing of the Nordstream 2 pipeline, carrying cheap Russian natural gas to industry and consumers in Europe, is exerting a cascading effect on companies and employment, eventually to be reflected in rising places and sharpening inflation. 

Russia is steadily experiencing price increases for a variety of goods and services, Russian media report. Is there obviously not a link to the sanctions placed on Russia and the seizure of Russian funds and savings abroad? Punishment for Russia’s “Special Military Operation” to purportedly protect Russian-speaking citizens in eastern Ukraine from state terrorism and neo-Nazis – and the firm conviction that the attempt by NATO to continue its “containment” and “encirclement” of Russia has become an existential matter: President Putin has vowed that Ukraine, traditionally neutral, will never be allowed to join NATO. 

Those with a historical bent might smile, seeing this as an echo of the rise to power of Fidel Castro, his embrace of communism, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly started World War III. Nuclear weapons are being waved in warning once again, as they were 60 years ago. “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

Now the average Russian, far from the battlefield, is beginning to feel the effects of the pressure being brought by western countries on their lives. Russian media report that producers of street fast food warn of a possible increase in the average price of shawarma up to 300 rubles ($2.36) and a 10-15% rise in the price of pizza and burgers, the result of an increase in selling prices of products such as meat, vegetables, fruit and eggs.

Well, considering how Russia imported $169 million worth of fertilizers, mainly from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Spain, Belgium, and Lithuania In 2021, this is no surprise. With the probable exception of the first two of those countries, exports of fertilizer have been halted. 

As the Russian government has introduced policies to increase the availability and use of pesticides in crop production, including increased imports, that will also drive prices upward; according to a report by Deutsche Welt, Russia has been increasing its domestic food production in recent years, with the aim of becoming self-sufficient, with new construction of manufacturing plants, and subsidies to farms for purchasing pesticides.

Gadgets are also up: iPhone prices rose an average of 32% in the first half of the year, and another 20% increase is expected by the end of the year. Prices of Samsung, Xiaomi and Readme products are also rising significantly. 

Tourism has become pricier: tour operators warn of a possible 10-30% price increase for winter vacations to popular destinations such as Egypt, UAE, Thailand, Maldives and Cuba. The cost of tours in Russia may also increase by 15% or more. Is this simply price-gouging, using the sanctions as an excuse, or are there other factors driving up prices?

That air travel has become more expensive is not surprising: Russian airlines prefer European or American jetliners, for obvious reasons, and now they find to their chagrin that they cannot buy spare parts for these maintenance-intensive airplanes directly, instead having to import on the sly through dummy companies, with a roundabout route through the Middle East or the PRC – which would naturally add on to already high prices.

Gas, automobiles and real estate has also been reported to have soared in price, bearing in mind that Russians are historically accustomed to shortages and long lineups for consumer goods.

2022 saw “Black Friday” – style fistfights and struggles for – get ready for it – SUGAR! Yep, the infamous “sugar wars” followed a shortage of sugar in Russia. That may well have been succeeded in turn by a miraculous recovery of citizens’ health – Russians historically being an unhealthy sort of folk, just like their enemies the Americans – since sugar can wreak damage on the body. Not just on teeth either: cancer tumors are said to love the taste of sugar, and feed on it merrily.

The above report should by the way be considered judiciously, as it came from one “Anton Gerashchenko” who describes himself as a “Ukrainian patriot. Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Founder of the Institute of the Future. Official enemy of Russian propaganda”. Not the most objective sort of fellow, one would imagine.

OLD SOVIET JOKE ALERT!

(This is apropos to the subject at hand.)

The august Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was scheduled for a “photo-op” visit to a Moscow kindergarten.

Chairman Brezhnev, smiling broadly, greeted the sea of children’s faces and intoned “So very happy to see so many of you wonderful children.

“We are happy because in Russia the children wear beautiful clothes, have fine, delicious food to eat and lots of exciting toys to play with –”

His talk was cut short as a little girl in the front row suddenly started wailing, burst into tears and stomped her little feet.

Brezhnev looked shocked and the teachers, flustered, gathered around and shouted “Natasha! Natasha! What is the matter with you?”

Natasha, bawling: “I want to go to Russia!”

The post The Price of War? appeared first on The Victoria Post.

“Wagner, at the direction of the Russian government, was preparing to provide an air defense capability to either Hezbollah or Iran,” White House’s National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a webinar.

He said the US would closely monitor any transfer of military equipment and pledged that Washington would respond with sanctions.

“We’re certainly prepared to use our counterterrorism sanctions authorities against Russian individuals or entities that might make these destabilizing transfers,” he said.

Kirby also said Iran will face expanded sanctions for its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We’re going to continue to use these and other tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt Russians and Iranians expanding military partnership alongside our allies and partners,” he said.

He warned that “this burgeoning defense relationship” between Iran and Russia is not good for citizens in Ukraine and not good for the Middle East region.

“So again, we’re gonna monitor this closely and we’ll keep taking appropriate actions as required,” he added.

At the beginning of the news conference, he said the US has been seeing increasing military cooperation between Russia and Iran, noting Iranian transfers of aerial bombs and artillery ammunition to Russia for use in Ukraine.

“Iran may be preparing to go a step further in its support for Russia,” said Kirby, adding that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine.

“In return for that support, Russia has been offering Tehran unprecedented defense cooperation including on missiles electronics, and air defense,” he added.

Source: AA

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Potatoes are a serious matter.

The lowly potato does in fact have a lengthy and exotic history, being grown as a food crop, or domesticated, around the border of Peru and Bolivia over 7000 years ago. Maybe you just purchased some of those 7500-year-old taters and wondered why they taste funny.

The potato was brought to Europe in the 16^th Century, following other such appealing imports as bananas, cacao, tomatoes, maize, corn and squash. Ask an average European and he or she would likely claim these as native to their country.

A wholesome tuber rich in vitamins, minerals and fiber, the “spud” became immensely popular throughout Europe as a monoculture crop, in the 19^th Century – until the scourge of a potato blight led to over two million deaths from starvation in the 1850s, mainly in Ireland but also across the Continent.

The Russians have always enjoyed potatoes; while they are forced to put up with one of the most inhospitable climates in the world, they find potatoes a most amenable staple. They became widely grown in Russia by 1800, mostly in garden plots – then the tragic grain harvest failure in 1838–39 forced both peasants and landlords in central and northern Russia to turn their attention to raising potatoes, to survive. Potatoes have long played a crucial role in Russian cuisine and culture, as a versatile and affordable vegetable; they thus became a “lifeline” for many Russians when times were tough.

Potatoes have also been the subject of uprisings. In the late 19th century, a rebellion by Russian peasants angered about the high taxes imposed on potatoes led to the so-called “Potato Uprising”.

Also, “Potato riots” were a movement against serfdom organized by imperial peasants in 1834, and of state peasants in 1840–44, in the Russian Empire. The peasants did not appreciate being forced to grow potatoes.

Unfortunately, over the past decade or so, the vast Russian potato harvest has encountered hard times, recording a decline of some 30% since the 24m metric ton harvest of 2018, down to around 17m tons in 2023. Considering how food self-sufficiency has been highlighted as an urgent priority in Russia (along with many other countries around the globe), this is troubling.

Thus the recent attempt to secure a sizable supply of potatoes from the People’s Republic of China, which has in fact enjoyed bounteous harvests in 2023. Russia’s annual import of potatoes and potato products stands at some US$200-400 m, depending on the season, including sourcing from Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and others. If they attempt to “punish” Russia for its Special Military Operation in Ukraine (also a big potato producer, although with little surplus left over for export) then it makes more sense to turn to China, which is already cooperating with Russia in numerous fields of business and military hardware.

The PRC already exports a sizable volume of potatoes to Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, the Russian Federation, Brunei and Timor-Leste, rising year by year to a 2022 figure of over 220,000 tons. This includes refrigerated as well as fresh potatoes.

Contrast this to the Mao era, when the citizenry were starving to death on account of Chairman Mao’s insane communal policies. During the so-called “Great Leap Forward”, some 40 million peasants starved to death. You will not find any mention of this catastrophe in contemporary textbooks in China, by the way, while the smiling piggy-face of the murderous Great Helmsman still beams out over Tienanmen Square.

Some leap!

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