Daily Archives: March 27, 2022

At the bustling tea stands and roadside eateries of Delhi, European politics is not a regular topic of conversation. But with wall-to-wall coverage of the war in Ukraine on television and in the newspapers, petrol prices rising and pressure growing on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to denounce Russia, Indians are starting to grapple with the consequences of the conflict 2,800 miles away.

Ram Agarwal, a shopkeeper, does not condone the loss of civilian life but nor can he bring himself to criticise Russia. He grew up in the 1950s and 60s when India and the Soviet Union were such close allies that Nikita Khrushchev coined the slogan Hindi Rusi bhai bhai (Indians and Russians are brothers).

I am 74 and my generation grew up with Hindi Rusi bhai bhai. Its like attacking a dear old friend, he said.

Arvind Maurya, an electrician, also expressed the even-handedness that has marked much of the public response. I hear that Ukraine used to be a part of Russia, but instead of respecting that, Nato is pulling Ukraine into its own orbit. But war is never good for anyone and the Russian bombing of civilians is not the way to solve these differences. They must sit down and talk, he said.

But away from the street, feelings are stronger. Indians from the right and left have converged on the war, the former because of their antipathy towards western culture and the latter because of their anti-Americanism, particularly in relation to foreign policy.

For these two groups, the war has exposed what they see as the wests double standards and hypocrisy. Its interventions in other countries and campaigns of regime change are acceptable, but not Russias.

In a column, Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, contrasted western support for sanctions against Iraq before 2003, which he said had killed hundreds of thousands of children, with the indignation over Ukraine.

Compare the outrage over bombs falling on Ukraine, which have resulted in around 200 civilian deaths (as of February 22) not even a fraction of the deaths caused by the US invasions, occupations and attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, he wrote.

There is considerable support for the claim that Ukraine and Nato provoked Russia to the point where it had no choice but to invade. These views, expressed by analysts, politicians and retired military officers, have featured prominently in television debates.

Vinod Bhatia, a former air marshal, said Nato had promised Soviet leaders and later Putin that it would not keep expanding eastwards, but had reneged on its promise, a claim that has been pushed by the Kremlin. Nato denies it ever made such an agreement.

The west is equally responsible, with Putin, for this totally avoidable and unnecessary war, Bhatia said.

The claims of hypocrisy also extend to how European countries continue to buy Russian oil and gas while expecting India to impose sanctions on Russia. Why should India pay for US folly in drawing Ukraine into Nato? US sanctions are hurting us and we should support them? the former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal asked in the Times of India.

Given the mood, Modi is under little public pressure at home to get off the fence, though some editorials have called Indias position tragic and untenable. India has abstained from condemning Russia at the UN while trying to keep the west happy with talk of peace. It is a balancing act with which Joe Biden may be losing patience. Last week, Biden described Indias stance as shaky.

American prodding of India to toe the western line and denounce Russia can evoke an irascible response. Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst, asked why India should line up with the west when no one, least of all America, speaks up for India over Chinese aggression on the border with India, where a standoff has lasted almost two years.

At a time when India confronts Chinas border aggression, including its threat of a full-scale war, Biden wont open his mouth on that but he calls Indias response shaky to a distant war he helped to provoke, Chellaney tweeted.

The war rhetoric has alarmed some commentators who have flinched at the portrayal of Putin and Russia as evil. For one, the epithet does not resonate among Indians, where China that is seen as the biggest threat.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr, a columnist, has been dismayed at how the United States is turning Putin into a Saddam Hussein and how, when Biden calls Putin a war criminal, it leaves no space for negotiation. It is deeply alarming, the American rhetoric, because unlike Saddam, who had no weapons of mass destruction, Putin does. The whole pitch borders on hysterical.

Up to a point, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of Indias foremost commentators, agrees with these criticisms. Europe, he says, is caught between its desire to send a strong message to Russia and sanctimonious moralising. Its credibility is impugned because it is simply not willing to pay even the minimal economic price for a strong stand.

Yet for Indians to expose western hypocrisy is not enough for Mehta because it fails to answer the wider question of what kind of world order Indians want to build.

Writing in the Indian Express, he said: An America losing capital outside the west because of its hypocrisy, a Europe still speaking in forked tongues, a Russia that would rather see the world and its own citizens suffer, and India and China using western hypocrisy as a cover for displaying an outright cynicism, is not a good portent for a world order.

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Indians reluctant to denounce Russian brothers over Ukraine - The Guardian

The Kremlin again raised the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine as Russian forces struggled to hold a key city in the south of the country.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the countrys security council, said Moscow could strike against an enemy that only used conventional weapons while Vladimir Putins defence minister claimed nuclear readiness was a priority.

The comments on Saturday prompted Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an appearance by video link at Qatars Doha Forum to warn that Moscow was a direct threat to the world.

Russia is deliberating bragging they can destroy with nuclear weapons, not only a certain country but the entire planet, Zelenskiy said.

Putin established the nuclear threat at the start of the war, warning that western intervention would reap consequences you have never seen.

Western officials have said the threats may be simply an attempt to divert attention from the failure of Putins forces to secure a swift occupation of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and to make advances in other key areas of the country.

An adviser to Ukraines defence ministry, Markian Lubkivskyi, claimed on Saturday that Russia would soon lose control of the southern city of Kherson, the first major centre to fall to the Kremlin since the war began on 24 February.

He said: I believe that today the city will be fully under the control of Ukrainian armed forces. We have finished in the last two days the operation in the Kyiv region so other armed forces are now focused on the southern part trying to get free Kherson and some other Ukrainian cities.

Russia has approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In an interview on Saturday, Medvedev said Russias nuclear doctrine did not require an enemy state to use such weapons first.

He said: We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you: number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies.

The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralysed our nuclear deterrent forces. And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardised the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.

Medvedev added that there was a determination to defend the independence, sovereignty of our country, not to give anyone a reason to doubt even the slightest that we are ready to give a worthy response to any infringement on our country, on its independence.

Russias defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, who had not been seen for 12 days before a brief appearance on Friday and an address to his generals on Saturday, also spoke about the nuclear threat contained within Russias arsenal.

In a video, uploaded on social media by the Russian defence ministry, Shoigu said he had discussed issues related to the military budget and defence orders with the finance ministry.

He said: We continue ahead-of-schedule delivery of weaponry and equipment by means of credits. The priorities are long-range, high-precision weapons, aircraft equipment and maintenance of engagement readiness of strategic nuclear forces.

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Russia reasserts right to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine - The Guardian

WARSAW The symbolism was striking. On March 12, two weeks into Russias brutal bombardment of Ukraine, the leaders of France and Germany held a joint call with President Vladimir Putin. Just days later, three prime ministers from post-Communist Europe Polish, Czech and Slovenian traveled to Kyiv by train, despite the danger.

This divergence exposed a sharp divide in how Eastern and Western NATO member states view the war in Ukraine. For Western countries, not least the United States, the conflict is a disaster for the people of Ukraine but one whose biggest danger is that it might spill over the Ukrainian border, setting off a global conflict.

For Central and Eastern European countries, its rather different. These neighbors of Russia tend to see the war not as a singular event but as a process. To these post-Soviet states, the invasion of Ukraine appears as a next step in a whole series of Russias nightmarish assaults on other countries, dating back to the ruthless attacks on Chechnya and the war with Georgia. To them, it seems foolhardy to assume Mr. Putin will stop at Ukraine. The danger is pressing and immediate.

While the West believes it must prevent World War III, the East thinks that, whatever the name given to the conflict, the war against liberal democratic values, institutions and lifestyles has already started. Both positions have merit. But Mr. Bidens visit to Poland on Friday, a day after an emergency NATO summit, is a vital opportunity to forge a common understanding. Both sides, West and East, must present a united front against Russian aggression. The alternative is disarray and destruction.

At the root of the divide is history. Across centuries, Central and Eastern Europe have experienced the chilling effects of Russian imperialism. From czarist Russia to the Soviet Union, many countries through the region had their independence stamped out, their societies oppressed and their cultures marginalized. The trauma caused by the cyclical loss of territory and statehood is one of the most important elements of collective identity across the region.

Many Central and Eastern Europeans share an anxious sense of themselves, a nervous sovereignty. Their independence, restored with such great effort after 1989, could easily be lost again, as the 20th century proved all too painfully. In the tragic fate of Ukraine, and earlier of Chechnya and Georgia, they see not only their own traumatic past but also their possible future. We will be next is the phrase on many lips.

In this febrile atmosphere, NATOs cautious steps look to many Central and Eastern Europeans like an echo of the phony war of 1939, when France and Britain undertook only limited military actions and did not save their eastern ally, Poland. At that time, too, horrible stories from bombed Warsaw and other cities filled the media. Yet the allies were determined not to be drawn in too deeply. Their military inaction temporarily delayed the spread of the war across the globe, but did not stop it.

Whether the analogy is apt matters less than the fact that it expresses a deeply felt intuition about what might come next. Thats been visible in the way East and West have approached the war. Throughout, those geographically closer to Russia have urged a tough response. Now that Russias full brutality has been revealed, Western countries are weighing whether to impose more sanctions on Russia, send more weapons to Ukraine and intensify diplomatic efforts to end the war.

But Eastern countries would prefer to go further still. Suggested measures in the region include imposing a no-fly zone as President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly urged or sending NATO troops across the Ukrainian border, even if only as a peace mission. The Polish government recently offered its MIG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, something Western allies considered a move too far.

Yet Central and Eastern Europeans are convinced that they are right and have the moral high ground. They believe that they were correct all along with their warnings about the Nord Stream pipelines and Russias other geostrategic designs on Ukraine and former Soviet states. For a long time, such opinions were dismissed as Russophobic, irrelevant in comparison with the fruits of economic cooperation with Russia. Today these warnings seem horribly prescient.

That doesnt mean the regions leaders ought to lapse into self-congratulation or even damn the stupidity of the West as Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish migr writer, called it for its failures of foresight. The aim instead should be to communicate better with Western partners, something Mr. Zelensky, in his addresses across the world, has shown how to do.

This is of utmost importance. One thing Mr. Putin wants is for NATO partners to be divided and at cross purposes, as the alliance was in its response to the Kremlins aggressive military actions in 2008 and 2014. Those acts returned partitions to the region, along with pro-Moscow puppet leaders, political kidnapping and forged elections. The invasion of Ukraine, as Eastern countries see it, is just the next attempt by Russia to upend the geopolitical order through territorial acquisition.

Leaders in the region are in a unique position to spell out the stakes of Mr. Putins aggression and so help the West to better understand the level of risk. Yet the fact remains that Central and Eastern European countries would like to involve NATO in the conflict on a broader scale, while the West continues to prioritize global peace.

It is a tragic dilemma. And far from approaching resolution, it seems to be just beginning.

Karolina Wigura (@KarolinaWigura) is a board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Jaroslaw Kuisz is the editor in chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a policy fellow at the University of Cambridge. They are both assistant professors at the University of Warsaw.

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Opinion | Russias Neighbors Are Worried That, After Ukraine, Theyll Be Next - The New York Times

WASHINGTON Russian mercenaries with combat experience in Syria and Libya are gearing up to assume an increasingly active role in a phase of the war in Ukraine that Moscow now says is its top priority: fighting in the countrys east.

The number of mercenaries deployed to Ukraine from the Wagner Group, a private military force with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is expected to more than triple to at least 1,000 fighters from about 300 a month ago, just before the invasion, a United States official said on Friday. The official added that the mercenaries would focus on defeating Ukrainian forces in the countrys Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting a war since 2014, and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine.

Dispatching trusted Russian mercenaries to help with a pivotal part of the Russian invasion underscores the Kremlins efforts to regroup and refocus its flagging, monthlong military campaign that so far has failed to achieve Mr. Putins initial goals, U.S. and other Western officials said.

The Russian military signaled on Friday that it might be lowering its war ambitions and focusing on the eastern Donbas region, though military analysts said it remained to be seen whether the move constituted a meaningful shift or was a maneuver to distract attention ahead of another offensive.

Wagner is the best-known of an array of Russian mercenary groups, which over the years have become more formalized, acting more like Western military contractors.

The Wagner Group is a private military contractor for Russia, John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said this week. We know that they have interest in increasing their footprint in Ukraine.

Wagners fighters have garnered military experience in Middle East conflicts and serve as security advisers to various governments, including in the Central African Republic, Sudan and, most recently, Mali. Though they are loosely linked to the Russian military, they operate at a distance, which has allowed the Kremlin to try to deflect responsibility whenever the fighters behavior comes under scrutiny.

Underscoring how seriously Wagner considers its role in the conflict in Ukraine, senior Wagner leaders themselves are expected to deploy to the separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk to coordinate efforts on behalf of Russia, the U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential operational assessments.

Wagner is relocating not only some of its mercenaries in Libya and Syria to Ukraine, but also artillery, air defenses and radar that the group was using in Libya, the official said. The Russian military is supporting these transfers by providing military cargo aircraft to relocate personnel and equipment.

While Wagners numbers are tiny compared with the more than 150,000 troops that Mr. Putin amassed on Ukraines borders and eventually sent into the country, their presence is an indication that Mr. Putin is taking a page from his playbook in 2014, when the Kremlin deployed Russian mercenaries, mostly veterans of the Russian military, to augment the forces of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.

March 27, 2022, 9:51 p.m. ET

Earlier this year, Western intelligence services detected the first small groups of Wagner mercenaries leaving Libya and Syria and arriving in Russian-controlled Crimea. From there, they filtered into the rebel territories.

But their initial performance on the battlefield was decidedly inauspicious, as they faced stiffer-than-expected resistance from Ukrainian soldiers. As many as 200 Russian mercenaries have been killed as of late February, the U.S. official said.

The initial purpose of the deployment of the mercenaries was the subject of debate. Some European and American officials said the mercenaries were positioned in the rebel territories to engage in sabotage and stage false flag operations intended to make it seem as if Ukrainian forces were attacking civilian targets.

But a Ukrainian military official said just before the invasion began that the mercenaries were primarily brought in to fill out the ranks of the separatist forces, to make it seem like local fighters were leading the charge.

Now the mercenaries are taking on a more direct combat and leadership role in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. official said.

In 2017, the Trump administration placed sanctions on Dmitri Utkin, the founder of the Wagner Group, for his role in recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. In 2021, a United Nations report found that mercenaries from Wagner based in the Central African Republic had killed civilians, looted homes and fatally shot worshipers at a mosque.

Several years earlier, Wagner fighters in Syria worked with pro-government Syrian forces to launch a major artillery barrage against U.S. commandos at a desert redoubt, apparently in an attempt to seize oil and gas fields the Americans were protecting. In response, the Americans called in airstrikes that resulted in 200 to 300 deaths.

In both cases, the Russian government denied involvement.

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More Russian Mercenaries Deploying to Ukraine to Take On Greater Role in War - The New York Times

President Vladimir Putins bloody assault on Ukraine, nearly a month in, still seems inexplicable. Rockets raining down on apartment buildings and fleeing families are now Russias face to the world. What could induce Russia to take such a fateful step, effectively electing to become a pariah state?

Efforts to understand the invasion tend to fall into two broad schools of thought. The first focuses on Mr. Putin himself his state of mind, his understanding of history or his K.G.B. past. The second invokes developments external to Russia, chiefly NATOs eastward expansion after the Soviet Unions collapse in 1991, as the underlying source of the conflict.

But to understand the war in Ukraine, we must go beyond the political projects of Western leaders and Mr. Putins psyche. The ardor and content of Mr. Putins declarations are not new or unique to him. Since the 1990s, plans to reunite Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a transcontinental superpower have been brewing in Russia. A revitalized theory of Eurasian empire informs Mr. Putins every move.

The end of the Soviet Union disoriented Russias elites, stripping away their special status in a huge Communist empire. What was to be done? For some, the answer was just to make money, the capitalist way. In the wild years after 1991, many were able to amass enormous fortunes in cahoots with an indulgent regime. But for others who had set their goals in Soviet conditions, wealth and a vibrant consumer economy were not enough. Post-imperial egos felt the loss of Russias status and significance keenly.

As Communism lost its lan, intellectuals searched for a different principle on which the Russian state could be organized. Their explorations took shape briefly in the formation of political parties, including rabidly nationalist, antisemitic movements, and with more lasting effect in the revival of religion as a foundation for collective life. But as the state ran roughshod over democratic politics in the 1990s, new interpretations of Russias essence took hold, offering solace and hope to people who strived to recover their countrys prestige in the world.

One of the most alluring concepts was Eurasianism. Emerging from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, this idea posited Russia as a Eurasian polity formed by a deep history of cultural exchanges among people of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol and other Asian origins. In 1920, the linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy one of several Russian migr intellectuals who developed the concept published Europe and Humanity, a trenchant critique of Western colonialism and Eurocentrism. He called on Russian intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe and to build on the legacy of Chinggis Khan to create a great continent-spanning Russian-Eurasian state.

Trubetzkoys Eurasianism was a recipe for imperial recovery, without Communism a harmful Western import, in his view. Instead, Trubetzkoy emphasized the ability of a reinvigorated Russian Orthodoxy to provide cohesion across Eurasia, with solicitous care for believers in the many other faiths practiced in this enormous region.

Suppressed for decades in the Soviet Union, Eurasianism survived in the underground and burst into public awareness during the perestroika period of the late 1980s. Lev Gumilyov, an eccentric geographer who had spent 13 years in Soviet prisons and forced-labor camps, emerged as an acclaimed guru of the Eurasian revival in the 1980s. Mr. Gumilyov emphasized ethnic diversity as a driver of global history. According to his concept of ethnogenesis, an ethnic group could, under the influence of a charismatic leader, develop into a super-ethnos a power spread over a huge geographical area that would clash with other expanding ethnic units.

Mr. Gumilyovs theories appealed to many people making their way through the chaotic 1990s. But Eurasianism was injected directly into the bloodstream of Russian power in a variant developed by the self-styled philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. After unsuccessful interventions in post-Soviet party politics, Mr. Dugin focused on developing his influence where it counted with the military and policymakers. With the publication in 1997 of his 600-page textbook, loftily titled The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, Eurasianism moved to the center of strategists political imagination.

In Mr. Dugins adjustment of Eurasianism to present conditions, Russia had a new opponent no longer just Europe, but the whole of the Atlantic world led by the United States. And his Eurasianism was not anti-imperial but the opposite: Russia had always been an empire, Russian people were imperial people, and after the crippling 1990s sellout to the eternal enemy, Russia could revive in the next phase of global combat and become a world empire. On the civilizational front, Mr. Dugin highlighted the long-term connection between Eastern Orthodoxy and Russian empire. Orthodoxys combat against Western Christianity and Western decadence could be harnessed to the geopolitical war to come.

Eurasian geopolitics, Russian Orthodoxy and traditional values these goals shaped Russias self-image under Mr. Putins leadership. The themes of imperial glory and Western victimization were propagated across the country; in 2017, they were drummed home in the monumental exhibition Russia, My History. The expos flashy displays featured Mr. Gumilyovs Eurasian philosophy, the sacrificial martyrdom of the Romanov family and the evils the West had inflicted on Russia.

Where did Ukraine figure in this imperial revival? As an obstacle, from the very beginning. Trubetzkoy argued in his 1927 article On the Ukrainian Problem that Ukrainian culture was an individualization of all-Russian culture and that Ukrainians and Belarusians should bond with Russians around the organizing principle of their shared Orthodox faith. Mr. Dugin made things more direct in his 1997 text: Ukrainian sovereignty presented a huge danger to all of Eurasia. Total military and political control of the whole north coast of the Black Sea was an absolute imperative of Russian geopolitics. Ukraine had to become a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralized state.

Mr. Putin has taken that message to heart. In 2013, he declared that Eurasia was a major geopolitical zone where Russias genetic code and its many peoples would be defended against extreme Western-style liberalism. In July last year he announced that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and in his furious rant on the eve of invasion, he described Ukraine as a colony with a puppet regime, where the Orthodox Church is under assault and NATO prepares for an attack on Russia.

This brew of attitudes complaints about Western aggression, exaltation of traditional values over the decadence of individual rights, assertions of Russias duty to unite Eurasia and subordinate Ukraine developed in the cauldron of post-imperial resentment. Now they infuse Mr. Putins worldview and inspire his brutal war.

The goal, plainly, is empire. And the line will not be drawn at Ukraine.

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Opinion | Russias War, Driven by the Grand Theory of Eurasianism - The New York Times

Employees pass beneath pipes leading to oil storage tanks at the central processing plant for oil and gas at the Salym Petroleum Development oil fields near the Bazhenov shale formation in Salym, Russia.

Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Faced with stiffening sanctions from Western countries over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is considering accepting bitcoin as payment for its oil and gas exports.

In a videotaped news conference held on Thursday, the chair of Russia's Duma committee on energy said in translated remarks that when it comes to "friendly" countries such as China or Turkey, Russia is willing to be more flexible with payment options.

Chair Pavel Zavalny said that the national fiat currency of the buyer as well as bitcoin were being considered as alternative ways to pay for Russia's energy exports.

"We have been proposing to China for a long time to switch to settlements in national currencies for rubles and yuan," Zavalny said in translated comments. "With Turkey, it will be lira and rubles."

He didn't stop with traditional currencies.

"You can also trade bitcoins," he said.

Bitcoin is up close to 4% over the last 24 hours to about $44,000. The price of the cryptocurrency spiked around the time that news reports of Zavalny's remarks first crossed.

The energy chair also doubled down on President Vladimir Putin's promise on Wednesday to require "unfriendly" countries to pay for gas in Russian rubles. Putin's announcement sent European gas prices soaring over worries the move might aggravate an energy market already under pressure.

"If they want to buy, let them pay either in hard currency, and this is gold for us, or pay as it is convenient for us, this is the national currency," Zavalny said, in comments that echoed the president's warning from the day before.

Though the U.S. has banned imports of Russian oil as part of its response to Moscow's war on Ukraine, sources have told CNBC it's unlikely that the European Union will follow suit, given its heavy dependence on Russian energy, in part to heat homes during the winter months.

"Russia is clearly looking to diversify into other currencies," said Nic Carter, co-founder of Coin Metrics. He told CNBC that Russia had been preparing for that kind of transition since 2014, when it started to divest all U.S. Treasurys.

"But the country wasn't fully prepared for foreign FX assets to be frozen," said Carter, who is also a founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, an early-stage firm focused on cryptocurrency.

Russia now appears to be serious about moving away from the dollar.

"They have something the world needs," Carter said. "Russia is the No. 1 exporter of natural gas globally."

Russia could potentially convert energy reserves into hard assets that could be used outside the dollar system.

Putin has changed his tune on bitcoin. In 2021, the Russian leader told CNBC's Hadley Gamble that while he believed bitcoin had value, he wasn't convinced it could replace the U.S. dollar in settling oil trades. Now, the Kremlin's top brass is weighing it as a form of payment for major exports. It's unclear, however, whether bitcoin's relative lack of liquidity could support international trade transactions of that magnitude.

WATCH: How blockchain networks could be used to boost energy production

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Russia is considering selling its oil and gas for bitcoin as sanctions intensify from the West - CNBC

The French carmaker Renault said on Wednesday that it was halting operations at a plant in Moscow and was reassessing its partnership with AvtoVAZ, Russias largest auto manufacturer.

Renault owns 68 percent of AvtoVAZ, the maker of Lada vehicles, and has relied on Russia for about 18 percent of its global vehicle sales.

Regarding its stake in AvtoVAZ, Renault Group is assessing the available options, taking into account the current environment, while acting responsibly towards its 45,000 employees in Russia, the company said in a statement. Renault Group reminds that it already implements the necessary measures to comply with international sanctions.

The company also revised its financial outlook for 2022, saying it now expects an operating profit margin of 3 percent, down from a previous forecast of more than 4 percent.

Several other automakers have ceased operations in Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine and international economic sanctions that have greatly curtailed trade with the country.

Volkswagen has idled two Russian plants. Ford Motor and Stellantis have stopped production at Russian plants they own with other automakers. Those and other automakers have also halted exports of cars and parts to Russia.

Renault sold more than 482,000 vehicles in Russia last year, more than any other Western automaker. Last week it halted production at two other AvtoVAZ plants, in Togliatti and Izhevsk, because of parts shortages. Those plants are several hundred miles east of Moscow.

Renault acquired a 25 percent stake in AvtoVAZ in 2008, when Russia was thought to have great potential for automakers, along with China, Brazil and India. But only Chinas market has taken off as expected, and Russia was slowed in particular by Western sanctions imposed after it annexed Ukraines Crimea region in 2014.

Since the annexation, some automakers have scaled back their operations in Russia. General Motors pulled out of a joint venture with AvtoVAZ in 2019, ending its presence in Russia.

Renault was one of the few that continued investing there. It bought Nissans stake in AvtoVAZ in 2017 and consolidated the Russian unit into its global operations.

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Renault Halts Operations in Russia - The New York Times