Category Archives: Putin

Russian business tycoon Oleg Tinkov attends a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, June 7, 2019.

Maxim Shemetov | Reuters

Sanctioned Russian digital bank founder Oleg Tinkov on Tuesday blasted his nation's "insane" war against Ukraine and called on Western nations to give Russia's leader Vladimir Putin "a clear exit to save his face and stop this massacre."

Tinkov, in an impassioned Instagram post, also claimed that "90% of Russians are AGAINST this war!" He also argued that the remaining 10% are "morons," and that the Russian army has been exposed as 'sh---y."

The screed by the founder of TCS Group Holding and the digital Tinkoff Bank came weeks after the United Kingdom sanctioned Tinkov, freezing his personal assets in the U.K. The U.K. also sanctioned a number of other Russian individuals and entities.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the 54-year-old Tinkov's wealth had been estimated at more than $4.42 billion.

But Forbes reported last month that he had lost his status as a billionaire, as his shares in Tinkoff Bank tanked in value since November.

"I do not see ONE beneficiary of this insane war!" Tinkov wrote in Russian in his Instagram post. "Innocent people and soldiers are dying. The generals woke up from a hangover, realized they had a sh---y army."

"And how will the army be good if everything else in the country is s--t and dirty in nepotism."

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"Kremlin officials are shocked that not only they, but also their children will not go to the Mediterranean in the summer," Tinkov wrote. "Businessmen are trying to salvage what remains of property."

"Of course there are morons drawing Z" the symbol in Russia for support of the invasion of Ukraine "but morons in any country [are] 10%."

"Dear 'collective West' please give Mr. Putin a clear exit to save his face and stop this massacre," Tinkov wrote in closing. "Please be more rational and humanitarian."

Tinkov on Oct. 1 pleaded guilty to tax fraud in a United States criminal case, where federal prosecutors said he had filed a false tax return when he renounced his American citizenship in 2013.

He agreed as part of his sentence to pay more than $500 million in penalties to settle that case, which was more than double the amount he had sought to avoid paying the U.S. Treasury in taxes when he renounced his citizenship and tried to conceal large stock gains from the sale of shares in TCS.

Tinkov had fought extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. successfully after being indicted in 2019.

"In public records, Tinkov has disclosed that he is undergoing a UK-based intensive treatment plan for acute myeloid leukemia and graft versus host disease, which has rendered him immunocompromised and unable to safely travel in the foreseeable future," the U.S. Justice Department said in October.

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Sanctioned Russian bank founder Oleg Tinkov condemns 'insane' Ukraine war, calls on West to give Putin face-saving exit - CNBC

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President Biden again blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for much of inflation in the United States, while warning that the war in Ukraine will "continue to take its toll" on the worlds economy.

During remarks in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the president acknowledged that American families are "struggling with higher prices" amid record-high inflation, but again said the reason for the surge was due the COVID-19 pandemic and Putins unprecedented war in Ukraine.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION RESUMES OIL AND GAS LEASES ON FEDERAL LANDS AS GASOLINE PRICES SOAR

"The second big reason for inflation is Vladimir Putin. Not a joke," Biden said Tuesday. "Putins invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world."

Biden said that last month, "about 70% of the increase in inflation was a consequence of Putins price hike."

Former President Trump has long referred to his political rival as "Sleepy" Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Inflation numbers were released last week revealing a new four-decade high in March as Russias war in Ukraine fueled rapid price gains for oil and gas that wiped out the benefits of rising wages for most Americans.

The consumer price index rose 8.5% in March from a year ago, according to the Labor Department report released Tuesday, marking the fastest increase since January 1982 when inflation hit 8.4% The CPI, which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, jumped 1.2% in the one-month period from January.

At grocery stores, Americans have seen meat prices increase by 14.8%, fish by 10.9%, eggs by 11.2%, milk by 13.3%, fruits and vegetables by 8.1%, and coffee by 11.2% since last year.

As for gas prices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans have been paying 32% more for energy than last year, and 48% more for gasoline.

Biden, last month, announced a ban on all imports of Russian oil, gas and energy to the United States, targeting the "main artery" of Russia's economy amid Russian President Vladimir Putins war on Ukraine, but warned that the ban would cost American families.

WHITE HOUSE BLAMES RUSSIA FOR RECORD-HIGH GAS PRICES, COINING '#PUTINPRICEHIKE'

Russian oil accounts for about one-thirdof Europes oil imports, but is just under 10% of U.S. overall imports.

"Im doing everything I can to bring down the price to address Putins price hike," the president said Tuesday, recalling his administrations move last month to release 1 million barrels of oil each day for the next six months from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to combat soaring gasoline prices.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Roscosmos space agency employees at a rocket assembly factory during his visit to the Vostochny cosmodrome. (Evgeny Biyatov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Last week, the Department of Interior announced that it will resume the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land beginning this week.

The Bureau of Land Management will begin issuing final environmental assessments and sale notices on Monday for future oil and gas projects and will offer for lease "approximately 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres, an 80 percent reduction from the acreage originally nominated," BLM stated.

Biden had said during the campaign that he wanted to end such leases and put a moratorium on them the first day of his presidency. The administration, in making the announcement, sought to emphasize that it was trying to reopen drilling responsibly.

"How we manage our public lands and waters says everything about what we value as a nation," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. "For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries above local communities, the natural environment, the impact on our air and water, the needs of Tribal Nations, and, moreover, other uses of our shared public lands."

BIDEN BLAMES PUTIN, COVID FOR RECORD-HIGH INFLATION IN US

And last month, upon announcing the move, Biden said his plan would release around 180 million additional barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve, which would leave the already-depleted stockpile down to around 388 million barrels, the lowest level since March 1984.

But the White House said the "historic" release would provide oil supply to "serve as a bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up."

The president spoke Tuesday with European allies and partners and noted that he has gotten other countries to also "release petroleum from their reserves."

"So we work with the U.S. oil producers to ramp up the production, and we coordinate this release with our partners and allies around the world," the president said, adding that since his announcement, 30 countries have agreed to "60 million additional barrels a day on the market," calling it "the largest collected reserve release in history."

Biden said that nations are "coming together to help deny Putin the ability to weaponize energy resources against American families and families in Europe and around the world."

"The fact is that we are in a situation where the war in Ukraine is going to continue to take its toll on the world economy," Biden said.

The president said the U.S. would take on the "challenges" of inflation from "a position of strength."

"Im more optimistic about America today than I have ever been in my whole career because I see the future thats within our grasp," the president said. "We cant be afraid, though."

"Were the only nation on Earth that has always turned every single solitary crisis weve had into an opportunitythats exactly what were going to do today," he continued.

Biden added: "If we do it togetherit is about being together, the United States of Americathere is not a single thing we cant do."

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Biden blames Putin for inflation, warns war in Ukraine will 'continue to take its toll' on economy - Fox News

Historian Jeremy Black has given a withering diagnosis of Putins invasion, finding multiple parallels between it and Russias war with Japan in 1904-5. The historic war did not end well for Russia - and neither will todays, warns Mr Black. The first key similarity is the sinking of Russias flagship vessel, the Moskva.

It was claimed by the Kremlin that the ship sank due to ammunition exploding on board during stormy weather - but this was later contradicted by images which appeared to show the ship riddled with explosions on calm seas.

There have been conflicting claims on Russian state media about the true fate of the ship, and even a suspiciously short and silent video released by their military claiming to show the crew safe and sound.

The lengths Putin appears to be going to to downplay the victory for Ukraine that the ships sinking represents perhaps indicates how devastating a loss it is for Russia - and for Mr Black, it rings very familiar.

Writing for the Telegraph, he said: The last time the Russian Navy suffered a comparable blow was at the battle of Tsushima, in the final stages of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5.

Across the two days of the battle, two thirds of the Russian fleet was sunk and a number of surviving ships captured.

It was a disastrous defeat, and it is not the only striking parallel between then and now.

Another key way in which history is repeating itself is in Russias humiliation at the hands of a foe who was presumed to be inferior.

Speaking of the Russo-Japanese war, Mr Black wrote: the result was a calamity for the Russian regime.

It was the first time in the modern era that a European power was defeated by an Asian nation, and not just any Asian nation but one that had been an isolationist feudal state a few decades earlier.

The sense of national humiliation was acute for Russia as it ought to be again today, as the world witnesses the supposed cream of the Russian military being ground to a halt by a nation that, so Putins logic goes, is not even a real country.

To be fair to the Russian despot, his FSB officers tasked with assessing Ukraines strength reportedly gave a disingenuously positive view of a possible Russia invasion, both for fear of displeasing their tyrannical leader and because they had no idea such an event was even being considered.

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Mr Black also highlighted the difference between Russia and Japans military technology in 1904, with Russia woefully ill-equipped for the war.

This is one element that does not ring quite so true today, with Russias military widely regarded as more expensive and technologically advanced than Ukraines.

However, Ukraine has seen substantial military support from western NATO countries, while Russia has seen repeated logistical failures and crumbling morale hamper their progress.

Where Putins war does appear to echo that of Tsar Nicholas II is in his inability to learn, as Mr Black calls it, the dangers of a wartime leader digging in his heels.

Mr Black stated that during the Russo-Japanese war, the crucial contrast that opened up was between the early arrogant and in part racist assumptions of the Russian leadership and the reality of an intractable conflict.

So also today. Instead of facing up to the difficulties his military faces, President Putin is renewing his assault, shifting the focus to the Donbas presumably in the conviction that this time he will be more successful.

Tsar Nicholas II had opportunities to negotiate peace but decided against it in favour of military aggression, wrote Mr Black - a disastrous decision which led to open revolt and a full revolution just over ten years later.

He concluded: If I were Vladimir Putin, I would find enough in the story to worry me.

His forces face a similar humiliation and, though it could again be years in the making, defeat may yet mark the beginning of the end for this modern Tsars hideous reign.

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Putin on the brink of major 1905 humiliation after disastrous naval defeat - Express

Vinnytsia, Ukraine Nana Grinstein fled Russia because the Kremlins new laws punishing criticism of its so-called special operation in Ukraine may land her in jail.

Grinstein, a playwright, her husband Viktor, a video editor, and their 14-year-old daughter, Tonya, left behind the hysteria in Russia caused by the war in Ukraine, and the persecution of anyone who dares to say that President Vladimir Putins special operation is, in fact, a war.

The world that weve been building for years, that seemed unshakable, important and relevant, crumbled before my very eyes like it was made of cardboard, Grinstein told Al Jazeera from a rented apartment in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

Arriving in Armenia in early March, the family found that tens of thousands of other Russians had made the journey before them, and they have witnessed the arrival of many more since.

Grinstein and her family fled Russia fearing the very real possibility of persecution for being, to use Putins own words, scum and national traitors slurs that have spurred a witch-hunt reminiscent of the Stalin-era purges.

The Grinsteins are now among at least 200,000 Russians who have abandoned their homes and jobs because they are disgusted by the Kremlins attack on Ukraine and the largely enthusiastic response to the war by their compatriots.

They want nothing to do with Putins sham-Imperial project and dont want to be associated with his war crimes, columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote in mid-March.

Others [leave] because they cannot imagine living under the Soviet-style autarky to which Western sanctions have doomed Russia, he wrote.

The post-invasion flight from Russia is the latest but hardly the final chapter of the exodus of millions who cannot stand to live under Putins rule.

From 2000, when Putin was first elected president, to 2020, four to five million Russians have emigrated, according to research published by the Takie Dela magazine in October.

The figures werebased on surveys, official national data from dozens of countries from Kazakhstan to Canada as well as Russian statistics on the number of people who had cancelled their residence registration.

In the early 2000s, Russians migrated mostly to Europe and North America, but after 2014 more moved to former Soviet republics, the magazine reported.

The new tide of Russian migrants is huge and rising.

At least 200,000 people left Russia in the first 10 days of the war in Ukraine, according to calculations by Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born economist at the University of Chicago.

The tragic exodus not seen for a century, Sonin wrote in atweet, where he compared the ongoing flight with the White Emigration that followed the 1917 Bolshevik revolution when some five million people fled the former Russian empire ending up in Germany, France, the United States, Argentina and China.

Among the emigres were novelist Vladimir Nabokov, composer Igor Stravinsky and Ukrainian-born helicopter designer Igor Sikorsky.

Nowadays, emigration is faster and far easier, especially for digital nomads who can live almost anywhere as long as there is access to broadband internet and online banking.

A survey of more than 2,000 emigrants conducted in mid-March by OK Russians, a nascent nonprofit that helps emigres, found that about a third of those who left were IT experts, managers of all sorts constituted another third, and the remainder were office workers and creative freelancers designers, bloggers, journalists.

The survey concluded that at least 300,000 Russians had left the country by March 16, mostly to Georgia, Turkey and Armenia.

Others have left for more exotic destinations.

When the war started, Leonid Shmelkov was on vacation in Sri Lanka.

The 39-year-old animator, whose My Own Personal Moose cartoon won a special prize at Germanys 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, decided to stay in Sri Lanka and urged a dozen friends to join him.

Shmelkov and his friends work on long-distance projects despite imperfect web access and power supply in Sri Lanka. They have learned how to get by living on an island where web access and the power supply are far from perfect.

Sri Lankas tourism-dependent economy nosedived because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and authorities have allowed thousands of Russian tourists to extend their stay because they are welcome of the business, Shmelkov said.

Reflecting on the conflict, Shmelkov feels that Moscow is not just at war with Kyiv.

Propaganda exaggerating the role Soviet forces played in the victory over Nazi Germany led to a cult of war that acted as a precursor to the current war hysteria in Russia, he explained.

Weve had some sort of a cult of war, a very wrong cult of war, not in the sense of lets do everything so that it doesnt happen again, Shmelkov told Al Jazeera.

The Russian government is waging two wars one against Ukraine and the other one against normal people in Russia.

Two-thirds of Russians feel pride, inspiration or joy about the war in Ukraine, according to a March 4 survey by the Levada Center, Russias last independent pollster. Only 18 percent felt anger, shame or depression at the war.

A resident of Moscow, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, compared the current environment in Russia as being more like a plot in a Stephen King horror novel than to the anti-Utopia of George Orwells 1984.

I am surrounded by zombies. No one forces them, they support the war voluntarily and with joy. This is not Orwell, this is King, she said.

Propaganda-filled television shows are broadcast almost around the clock, and their influence on the hearts and minds is as devastating as nuclear weapons, she added.

Its killing everyone and everything, turning black into white and vice versa. Year after year, drop after drop, fake after fake.

Thousands of war critics have been jailed, harassed, their homes raided, subjected to smear campaigns, and physically attacked by unidentified thugs, human rights groups say.

This new witch-hunt surpasses any previous quashing of dissent under Putin, who said in mid-March that scum and national traitors should be purged.

For two decades, the argument has been that oppression and human rights violations are a necessary evil to ensure economic growth and stability, [but] in the end, Putins regime has neither, said Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a rights monitor.

The increasing brutality in Russian society has forced the countrys brightest to leave in search for a better future for their families, he told Al Jazeera.

Newly resident in Yerevan, Grinsteins professional and personal history is a reflection of the evolution of oppression in Russia.

The 51-year-old Muscovite penned scripts for award-winning movies and television shows, but it was her lesser-known writings that drew the ire of Russian authorities. Since 2011, she has been writing for Teatr.doc, Russias most political, persecuted, and outspoken theatre.

Grinstein based her plays on interviews and documents that described the lives of LGBTQ Russians, Muslim labour migrants and the post-WWII co-existence of Germans and Russian settlers in the Soviet-occupied Baltic exclave of Konigsberg.

For years, the Teatr.doc troupe faced threats, arrests and interrogations, but their shoestring-budget performances won accolades and awards.

When the war in Ukraine began in February, Grinstein tried to rally filmmakers she knew in opposition to the conflict. Her appeals were in vain, because too many of their film projects depended on government funding.

Grinsteins own family history epitomises the new divisions in Russian society and the not-so-distant Soviet past.

Her husband, Viktor, refrains from discussing the war with his elderly pro-Russian parents who live in the separatist-controlled southeastern region of Luhansk.

Her daughter, Tonya, saw how the Kremlins war propaganda affected her peers, who mostly cheered the invasion.

She was scared more than we were, Grinstein told Al Jazeera.

For Grinstein, their recent arrival in Armenia echoes another war that uprooted her family a generation ago.

She was born in 1971 in Baku, the capital of then-Soviet Azerbaijan, into an Armenian-Jewish family where she remembers wearing a classy dress to her high school graduation in 1988 and walking home past soldiers in armoured vehicles.

The troops were deployed by Moscow during the Azeri-Armenian tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh that would spark a war four years later.

Anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan soon forced the Grinsteins to leave for Armenia, from where she later moved to Moscow to study in a prestigious film school.

She realises now that despite her anti-war stance, her family will still be blamed for allowing Russias war against Ukraine to happen.

My forefathers were persecuted for being Jewish, then for being Armenian, and we will be persecuted for being Russian, she said.

What soothes her is working on plans to move to Germany, the immense hospitality of Armenians and the view in Yerevan she has of Armenias most sacred mountain.

I see Mount Ararat from my window, and thats inspiring, she said.

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Hundreds of thousands flee Russia and Putins two wars - Al Jazeera English

Theres a semiconductor supply crunch, the cost of tooth fillings is spiking in Japan, sofas in Britain are becoming pricier, and American breweries are scrambling to find enough aluminum cans for their beer. All these economic headaches can be traced back to Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to invade Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves across global commodities markets as many of Ukraines most vital exports grind to a halt under Putins war machine and new waves of international sanctions begin shutting off Russian industries from the global markets. Western policymakers are spending the bulk of their time trying to fight rising energy prices and figure out how to wean off Russian oil and gas, not to mention feed the millions of people who relied on Russian and Ukrainian grain.

But other industries are trying to weather their own supply shocks caused by the war. Russia, and to a lesser extent Ukraine, are something like global superstores, playing key roles in the global production, manufacturing, or export of such vital commodities as neon, palladium, nickel, wood, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum. Beyond higher prices at the gas pumps and economic pressure from inflation, the knock-on effects of Putins invasion are beginning to trickle into new and unsuspecting corners of the global supply chain in ways that show the economic reverberations from the war in Ukraine are far from over.

Theres a semiconductor supply crunch, the cost of tooth fillings is spiking in Japan, sofas in Britain are becoming pricier, and American breweries are scrambling to find enough aluminum cans for their beer. All these economic headaches can be traced back to Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to invade Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves across global commodities markets as many of Ukraines most vital exports grind to a halt under Putins war machine and new waves of international sanctions begin shutting off Russian industries from the global markets. Western policymakers are spending the bulk of their time trying to fight rising energy prices and figure out how to wean off Russian oil and gas, not to mention feed the millions of people who relied on Russian and Ukrainian grain.

But other industries are trying to weather their own supply shocks caused by the war. Russia, and to a lesser extent Ukraine, are something like global superstores, playing key roles in the global production, manufacturing, or export of such vital commodities as neon, palladium, nickel, wood, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum. Beyond higher prices at the gas pumps and economic pressure from inflation, the knock-on effects of Putins invasion are beginning to trickle into new and unsuspecting corners of the global supply chain in ways that show the economic reverberations from the war in Ukraine are far from over.

Neon is a prime example. The noble gas is required to manufacture semiconductor chips, which power everything from smartphones and laptops to cars. The gas is a byproduct of Russian steel manufacturing, which is then sent to Ukraine to be purified and in turn shipped to semiconductor producers abroadduring peacetime, that is.

Neon is an important element in semiconductors, because its used in the lithography tools, said Peter Hanbury, a semiconductor expert at Bain & Company. These are the most critical part of the semiconductor manufacturing process.

Around half of the worlds semiconductor-grade neon comes from just two Ukrainian companies, both of which were forced to shutter their operations amid the Russian invasion. One of the companies is based in Mariupol, currently under siege by Russian forces; the other is based in the vital port town of Odesa, another city on Russias hit list.

This has left some of the worlds largest suppliers of semiconductors, already grappling with a supply crunch from the COVID-19 pandemic, scrambling to find alternative sources of the gas. South Korea, a major chip manufacturer, immediately removed its import tariffs on neon, while ASML Holding, a key chip supplier, swiftly moved to secure other neon supplies.

If the situation gets protracted, we are very concerned that its impact on the economy will likely expand, South Koreas Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said last month.

Its not the first time that Russias military advances have rattled the semiconductor industry: In 2014, concerns surrounding Russias invasion of Crimea sent neon prices skyrocketing by 600 percent, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. That spooked major semiconductor manufacturers, which moved to store extra reserves in case of another supply shock and have now stockpiled enough neon to weather the economic storm in the short term.

The actions that were taken in response to that crisis are the things that are setting up the industry pretty well to deal with it now, Hanbury said.

Micron, an Idaho-based technology company and one of the largest chip producers in the United States, says it has supplies for the next few months. Right now, we do not expect any negative impact to our near-term production volumes, but this is an evolving situation, a spokesperson for Micron said. We have sufficient supply for the next few months and are taking steps to secure additional supply for a longer period.

For smaller companies that werent equipped with these reserves and are thereby more vulnerable to price and supply shocks, the loss of Ukraines neon output has been more painful. If the war drags on and vendors existing neon stores are depleted, experts say these disruptions could come to be felt across the entire semiconductor manufacturing industry. If vendors run out of their inventory and struggle to secure alternative neon supplies, it could sort of bring a halt to chip production to different extents, said Gaurav Gupta, a semiconductor analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm. That could be the worst-case scenario.

Its not just neon, either. Fears of market disruptions also pushed up the price of palladium, a platinum-like metal, to a seven-month high in Marcha spike that has been felt most clearly across the automobile industry, where it is used in catalytic converters. In Japan, these skyrocketing costs have had a knock-on effect for dentists: The price of tooth fillings, which use palladium, is spiking, causing a government panel to approve price hikes for such procedures covered by national health insurance plans. More than one-third of Japans palladium imports came from Russia in 2021; globally, Russian mines account for nearly 40 percent of palladium production.

The price of nickel, another metal used in stainless steel and battery production, has also spiked because of the war. Russia is the fourth-largest nickel producer in the world, especially through its mining giant Nornickel. In March, fears of supply shortages sent the metals price shooting up by 110 percentand pushed the London Metal Exchange to halt trading.

Still, some analysts say the actual supply of nickel may not dip as dramatically as other commodities caught in the crossfire of the war and ensuing sanctionsdespite price fluctuations from nervous traders. As far as we are aware, the reality of the situation is that for the moment, there has been no impact or very minimal impact, really, on the utilization of that Nornickel material around the world, said Andrew Mitchell, the director of nickel research at Wood Mackenzie.

American breweries are also feeling an economic pinch, as both Russia and Ukraine are among the worlds top suppliers of barley, a key ingredient in beer. Russia is also a top producer of aluminum, and supply disruptions from the war and aftershocks of the global pandemic have left breweries scrambling to find stable and affordable supplies of aluminum cans to package their beer.

In the lumber market, uneasy commodities traders and Western companies efforts to shed Russian suppliers in anticipation of more sanctions on Moscow are shaking up prices before theres even any drop in lumber supplies. British furniture suppliers are warning customers that their sofas and other furniture are becoming more expensive as the war drives up the price of timber. By April, European timber prices increased 35 percent from prewar prices, driven in part by skittish markets in expectation of supply reductions that have yet to take shape. (In the United States, meanwhile, the price of lumbertimber that has been cut and processeddipped amid a red-hot real estate market cooling off as mortgage rates go up.)

Although Russia accounts for nearly a quarter of the global softwood lumber trade, more than half of its exports go to China, which has maintained trade relations with Russia throughout the war, according to Fastmarkets RISI, a market analysis firm.

But these price fluctuations are forcing countries to reassess existing export and import arrangements, all part of a trend that is shaking up the contours of the global lumber markets.

At a minimum, were going to have a big reshuffling of global trade, said Dustin Jalbert, a lumber economist with Fastmarkets RISI. That reshuffling of supplyeven if theres not a net impact in terms of actual productionits going to be very chaotic as global buyers are trying to detach themselves from Russian supplies.

As Russian forces advance into Ukraines Donbas region, economists, aid agencies, and big international organizations warn that things could get worse before they get better.

The war is supercharging a three-dimensional crisisfood, energy, and financethat is pummeling some of the worlds most vulnerable people, countries, and economies, U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres said in a press conference. The impact of the war is global and systemic.

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Putin's War Threatens Neon, Palladium, and Aluminum Supplies - Foreign Policy

If you listened to some Republican politicians reactions as the Ukraine crisis was developing, you could be excused for thinking the late Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy may have been retroactively right when he claimed in the 1950s that Soviet spies, sympathizers and advocates had infiltrated the U.S. political system.

Paradoxically, 70 years later, it turns out that those sympathizers are not communist saboteurs undermining the American republic, but Republican activists, influencers, political operators and even members of Congress.

The point of departure of any analysis of Republican positions on Russia is that there is a generally familiar and known commodity called the Republican Party, and that it has discernible foreign policy principles and values. If such an analysis was conducted in the 1980s or 90s, the reference would be clear and the term Republican recognizable. But today, this is an erroneous and misleading assumption: that Republican Party is no longer in existence.

The entire party has turned RINO, meaning Republican in Name Only. The word Republican has lost all its previous meanings. Instead, there is a conspiracy-inclined, angry Trump cult that goes by the name Republican. It is mostly white, predominantly rural and constitutes the Red America that voted twice for Donald Trump. It is not remotely connected to the entity previously known as the Republican Party.

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The new version is first and foremost an antidemocratic party: its values, principles and policies are negatively defined by what they are against, not what they are for.

They are anti-coastal elites dictating cultural norms and language, anti-liberal, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-minorities and, most importantly, anti-government.

This most certainly is not the party of Reagan, nor that of George H.W. Bush, nor even George W. Bush. This is a new political phenomenon, molded, shaped and willingly taken over by Trump, Trumpian populism and cultural Trumpism.

The last Republican presidents the Bushes, Reagan, Gerald Ford, together with the likes of Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, George Shultz, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell and John McCain would today not be regarded by Republican voters or members of Congress as real Republicans.

This background is important for understanding why eight Republican members of the House of Representatives voted against stripping Russia and Belarus of their preferred trade status with the United States in light of the Ukraine war. All eight are shiny and noisy debris in the Trump orbit.

Then there is Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who last month called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a thug. A Republican senator, Rand Paul, meanwhile, said that his Republican colleague Ted Cruz only supported sanctions on Russias energy exports to help the oil industry in his home state of Texas.

That Trump adored, admired and was enchanted by Russian President Vladimir Putins autocratic, bullying, brutal, police-state-style of governance is not new.

Putin is very smart. When he declared a part of Ukraine independent, I said, How smart is that? said an astute American president who wanted to buy Greenland, exchanged love letters with North Koreas Kim Jong Un, considered himself a stable genius and recommended that Americans drink delicious bleach in order to fight the Chinese virus.

But what is new is Trumps success in instilling his adulation of Putin and derision of NATO into the minds of so many other Republicans, from voters to lawmakers. In fact, a recent poll showed that among Western nations, the one in which the largest percentage of the population blames the United Statesfor the war in Ukraine is the United States.

That is why the denunciations of Putin by some senior Republicans suggest the party is exhibiting schizophrenia. Because while its undoubted leader, Trump, admires Putin, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aka Moscow Mitch recently described Putin as a ruthless thug who invaded another sovereign country and killed thousands of innocent people.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who went out of his way over the years to prove his complete servitude to Trump, suggested in a recent tweet that Russian generals should assassinate Putin, while Nikki Haley, Trumps UN ambassador when he praised Putin repeatedly, is now calling the Russian invasion a war for freedom and not just a war for Ukraine. Where was she when Trump wanted to stop all military aid to Ukraine unless it opened an investigation against the son of his political opponent?

The remnants of the old Republican Party, the establishment wing that has failed to stop its takeover by the Trump grassroots element, is trying to talk tough on Ukraine. But there is a strong and enduring sentiment among Republicans to be suspicious and averse to liberal internationalism which invariably involves foreign intervention, often with a substantial military component to it.

This feeds into another conservative-Republican tradition: isolationism. That is why the Trumpist Republican Party is equally hostile to both liberal democrats and neoconservatives who find themselves in the same foreign policy category.

Some have adopted a convenient, middle-of-the-road Putin is bad, but approach. On the one hand, they blame the United States for sponsoring and encouraging NATO expansion that allegedly caused the war. And on the other, they criticize the Biden administration for not arming Ukraine early and heavily enough with sophisticated platforms and systems.

All this shows that, right now, there is no Republican Party in terms of the political party that once represented and expressed American conservatism. Furthermore, the new mutation has no coherent foreign policy other than one principle: opposing whatever step is being taken by President Joe Biden.

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For the Putin-admiring Trump cult, Ronald Reagan would be just another RINO - Haaretz

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin detailed an employment plan worth $41 million in an effort to mitigate the dearth in jobs.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Moscow's mayor says 200,000 Russians in the city are likely to soon be without work.

Hundreds of Western companies have distanced themselves from Russia, creating a dearth in jobs.

Some global firms pledged to continue paying their local workers, though it's unclear for how long.

Moscow's mayor said on Monday that hundreds of thousands of city residents could lose their jobs as Western companies suspended or pulled their operations from Russia.

"According to our estimates, about 200,000 people are at risk of losing their jobs," Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote in an official blog post.

In the post, Sobyanin said Moscow had approved an employment-support program worth 3.36 billion rubles, or roughly $41 million, that would supply temporary jobs or training to those without work.

Sobyanin wrote that about 58,000 employees were expected to benefit from the program and that Russia would provide a monthly allowance for children and loans for small and medium-size businesses.

Sobyanin's comments came as Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to deny Western sanctions had affected Russia's economy.

"We can now confidently say that such policy (of sanctions) towards Russia has failed," he said on Monday. "The economic blitzkrieg strategy didn't work. Moreover, the initiators themselves couldn't get away with the sanctions."

More than 750 companies have publicly announced that they will cut operations in Russia to some degree since the invasion of Ukraine began, according to the Yale School of Management.

Some companies have pledged to continue paying their Russian workers while they're closed in the country, though it's unclear how long they plan to sustain their support.

McDonald's, one of the first major businesses to withdraw from Russia, said its store closures in the country cost the company $50 million a month because it kept its about 62,000 local workers on the payroll. Some of its locations are still open because the franchisees who own and operate those restaurants have refused to close, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Story continues

Sobyanin's post indicated that Moscow was still grappling with a long list of crises. City authorities will discuss in the next two weeks how the capital will maintain its stock of medicines without imports and how it will keep its hospitality industry afloat, he wrote.

"There is a lot of work to be done, the results of which will appear only in a few years," Sobyanin wrote.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Despite Putin's claims that the West's 'economic blitzkrieg strategy didn't work,' Moscow's mayor says the city is about to lose 200,000 jobs - Yahoo...

Bill Browder, a former American banker and one of Moscows most wanted, will not stop speaking out against serial murderer Vladimir Putineven if it means having to always look over his shoulder for the Russian presidents cronies sent after him.

Ive been threatened with death, with kidnapping, with eight Interpol arrest warrants, with all sorts of other terrible things from Russia. Ive been arrested while traveling in Spain and Switzerland, he tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.

Browder also details stories of other people who have spoken out against Putin, who have been poisoned, much like Alexei Navalny, or arrested. But that still isnt deterring him from speaking out and debunking myths about the leader, such as one he describes in his book, Freezing Order.

Theres no safety anywhere when these people are after you, he says. They found me in Aspen, Colorado. They ambushed me outside The Daily Show when I was launching my first book.

So how does Browder see Russias war with Ukraine playing out? At least one of three ways, including Putin losing or moving on to the next country if he does win.

People really need to know what Putin is capable of, he says.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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Putin Hunted Me Down All Over the World - The Daily Beast

This is a subscriber-exclusive edition of Peacefield, a newsletter about the survival of liberal democracy in the United States, plus contrary, often curmudgeonly takes about everything from nuclear weapons to classic rock.

For most of the Christian world, Easter is over. For Orthodox Christians, however, Easter week has just begunand Russia, the largest Orthodox country in the world, is still relentlessly pursuing the invasion and barbaric destruction of its mostly Orthodox neighbor, Ukraine. In fact, the renewed Russian offensive in the Donbas, replete with day and night bombardment of mostly Orthodox, mostly Russian-speaking areas in eastern Ukraine, began just after Russians and Ukrainians observed Palm Sunday.

I note this because I, too, am an Orthodox Christian, and I am watching one nominally Orthodox nation try to slaughter another.

In most of my comments on the Russian war against Ukraine, Ive tried, as best I can, to provide you with dispassionate analysis. But I hope this week youll allow me a few personal observations as I head toward Easter. I realize that sometimes the cold equations of political analysis can seem far removed from our emotions, and so I thought I would share with you some of my own.

This page is exclusively available to Atlantic subscribers.

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Putin's Unholy War - The Atlantic

Russian president Vladimir Putin plans to carry out forced mobilization in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Pseudo-referendums in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions are aimed at declaring forced mobilization. After it is completed, Russias FSB plans to throw the mobilized Ukrainians to the hottest spots of the front to storm the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the control of barrage detachments. In fact, this is an attempt to destroy Ukraine at the hands of Ukrainians themselves," the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine posted on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

The Chief Directorate of Intelligence notes that personal data of residents of the temporarily occupied territories are collected allegedly for residents to receive "humanitarian aid" or social benefits. In reality, the data will be used at "referendums". On the day of the vote, FSB officers will fill out ballots using the information obtained without the consent and physical presence of the Ukrainians themselves.

According to the Ukrainian intelligence, this special operation pursues the following goals: eliminating members of the Ukrainian ethnic group; conducting propaganda activities to impose on the population of Russia and the world the myth that "the population of the regions liberated from the Nazis began to fight against nationalist battalions."

"It is another crime of the Putin regime against Ukraine and proof of the genocide against the Ukrainian nation," the Chief Directorate of Intelligence underscores.

On February 24, 2022, Russia expanded its military aggression against Ukraine, launched in 2014, and began mass bombing of peaceful Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages. The Russian military unleashed mass terror in the temporarily occupied territories. The Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Territorial Defense Forces are fiercely resisting the Russian invaders and inflicting heavy losses on them.

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Putin plans to force mobilized Ukrainians to storm positions of Ukraines Armed Forces intel report - Ukrinform