Category Archives: Russia

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

RUSSIA claims it is close to a peace deal that will see Ukraine become a neutral country, its foreign minister has claimed.

The apparent willingness of Vladimir Putin to find a way out of the war he started comes as his forces have been mauled by heroic Ukrainian defenders and could even buckle in ten days.

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The Russian tyrant expected a quick victory when he ordered the invasion on February 23 but Kyivs forces say they have killed more than 13,500 of the invaders.

Moscow has seengenerals killed, pilots blasted out of the sky, tanksambushedand videos ofsobbing soldiersafter surrendering to the Ukrainians.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks with Ukraine are now focused on a neutral status for the war-torn country.

"A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees,"Lavrov told Russian television.

"There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed."

The model which is being pursued is that of Austria which has its own military but is bound to neutrality by the 1955 Austrian State Treaty.

Austrias constitution prohibits entry into military alliances and the establishment of foreign military bases on its territory.

"This is a variant that is currently being discussed and which could really be seen as a compromise," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

If a similar deal were to be struck, then Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO.

Ukraine is not a member of the alliance but has it has repeatedly said it wants to join to benefit from its protection.

Read our Russia - Ukraine live blog for the very latest updates

Russia has said it cannot allow that to happen, and cited it as part of the reason for its invasion.

But Kyiv said it now understood it does not have an open door to NATO membership and was seeking other types of security guarantees.

It comes as both a senior UK defence source and the former commander of US forces say the game could soon be up for Russia.

Ukraine has Russia on the run, the source told the Daily Mail.

It comes as...

Retired US army General Ben Hodges has predicted Russian forces will be unable to continue their assault on Ukraine 10 days from now if Ukraine can hold out that long.

The latest Russian losses saw a fourth general killed, in the fighting thats been raging in the southern city of Mariupol.

The Ministry of Defence said Russian troops have remained largely on the road and have "demonstrated a reluctance to conduct off-road manoeuvre".

The destruction of bridges by Ukrainian forces has also played a "key role in stalling Russia's advance".

Russia's continued failure to gain control of the air has drastically limited their ability to effectively use air manoeuvre, further limiting their options, said the ministry.

"The tactics of the Ukrainian armed forces have adeptly exploited Russia's lack of manoeuvre, frustrating the Russian advance and inflicting heavy losses on the invading forces."

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Excerpt from:

Russia claims its close to a PEACE DEAL after Putins ...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the U.S. Congress by video on Wednesday to plead for support as his country is besieged by Russian forces. J. Scott Applewhite/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the U.S. Congress by video on Wednesday to plead for support as his country is besieged by Russian forces.

As Wednesday draws to a close in Kyiv and in Moscow, here are the key developments of the day:

A theater sheltering civilians was bombed in besieged Mariupol, Ukrainian officials say. Russia denies the airstrike. Mariupol's city council shared images of a smoldering building, saying hundreds of residents had taken refuge inside and the number of casualties was not yet known. Elsewhere in southern Ukraine, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov, captured by Russian troops last week, has been freed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed U.S. Congress, calling on it "to do more." Specifically, Zelenskyy continues to push for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which most U.S. lawmakers and the Biden administration do not back. President Biden, meanwhile, approved $800 million more in security assistance to Ukraine and vowed to send more weapons. He also called Russian President Vladimir Putin "a war criminal."

A top Ukrainian negotiator says Ukraine and Russia might be moving closer to a possible cease-fire. Some Russian officials have also hinted that the two sides may be closer to a deal, but Putin has not signaled a readiness to pull back forces.

The United Nations' top court in The Hague has ordered Russia to halt its military operation in Ukraine. The International Court of Justice said evidence did not support the Kremlin's justification for the attack. Its rulings are binding, but countries have ignored them in the past.

Russia is facing a debt-payment deadline that could mean a historic sovereign default. The country needs to pay $117 million in interest payments on two bonds that are denominated in dollars, but Russia has lost access to much of its foreign reserves.

What does Ukraine war news look like from Russia? Narrative-shaping begins with words both chosen and left unsaid.

Lviv takes in displaced Ukrainians, but space and resources are strained. See photos from the city's cultural hubs.

A Russian-owned superyacht named Ragnar is stuck in Norway because no one will sell it fuel.

Ukraine scrambles to protect artifacts and monuments from Russian attack.

A college student in occupied Ukraine says buying food means it's a lucky day.

Former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch warns that Putin will move west if he wins in Ukraine.

You can read more news from Wednesday here, as well as more in-depth reporting and daily recaps here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR's State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

Go here to see the original:

Russia-Ukraine war: What happened today (March 16) - NPR

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, on Feb. 4, 2022.

Alexei Druzhinin | AFP | Getty Images

As Russia's war on Ukraine continues, Moscow has looked to tighten control over its domestic internet, cutting off apps made by U.S. technology giants, even while other firms have pulled their own services from the country.

But a move to emulate the internet as it exists in China perhaps the most restricted online environment anywhere is a long way off, and Russian citizens are still manage to bypass controls in the system, analysts told CNBC.

Over the last few years, companies like Facebook owner Meta, Google and Twitter have operated in an uneasy environment in Russia.

They have faced pressure from the government to remove content the Kremlin deems unfavorable. The Washington Post reported this month that Russian agents threatened to jail a Google executive unless the company removed an app that had drawn the ire of the President Vladimir Putin. And companies have lived under threat of their services being throttled.

While Russia's internet became progressively more controlled, citizens could still access those global services, making them gateways to information other than state-backed media or pro-Kremlin sources.

But the war with Ukraine has thrust American technology giants into the cross-hairs once more, as Putin's desire to further control information increases.

Instagram is now blocked in Russia after its parent company Meta allowed users in some countries to call for violence against Russia's president and military in the context of the Ukraine invasion. Facebook was blocked in Russia last week after it put restrictions on government-backed news outlets. Access to Twitter is heavily restricted.

Those incidents highlight how Big Tech companies have to balance their pursuit of a large market like Russia with increasing demands for censorship.

"For Western tech companies, they made a strategic decision at the beginning of the conflict to support Ukraine. This puts them on a collision course with the Russian government," Abishur Prakash, co-founder of the Center for Innovating the Future, told CNBC. He added that companies like Meta are "picking politics over profits."

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its media and internet watchdog Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Russia's tightening online grip has revived talk about a "splinternet" the idea that two or more divergent internets will operate in increasingly separate online worlds.

Nowhere is that separation clearer than in China, where services from Google, Meta, Twitter and foreign news organizations are blocked.

Instead of WhatsApp, Chinese citizens use WeChat, the popular messaging app with over 1 billion users, for example. Google search is replaced by Baidu. Weibo replaces Twitter.

The country's massive censorship system, known as the Great Firewall, has developed over two decades and is continually being refined.

Even virtual private networks, services that can mask users' locations and identities in order to help them jump the firewall, are hard to get for regular Chinese citizens.

While Russia's increasing internet controls will likely accelerate this push toward divergent internets, the country is far off from creating anything near the technical capability behind China's restrictions.

"It's taken years for the Chinese authorities to get where they are today. And their strategy has evolved and adapted during this time. Russia cannot do this overnight," said Charlie Smith, founder of GreatFire.org, an organization that monitors censorship in China.

Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and technology policy lead at strategic advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group, said that China's system allows "internet censors and internet controllers much more granular leeway to monitoring traffic, turn off geographical areas, including down to the block level in cities, and be very precise in their targeting of offending traffic or users."

That is something Russia cannot replicate, he added.

It is difficult for Chinese citizens to get around Beijing's tight internet controls. The government has regularly clamped down on VPN apps, which are the best option for evading the Great Firewall.

But Russians have been able to evade the Kremlin's attempts to censor the internet. VPNs have seen a surge in downloads from Russia.

Meanwhile, Twitter has launched a version of its website onTor, a service that encrypts internet traffic to help mask the identity of users and prevent surveillance on them.

"Putin appears to have misjudged both the level of technical savvy of his citizens and their willingness to seek workarounds to continue to access non-official information, and the many new tools and services, plus workarounds and channels that have sprung up over the past five years that enable people who really want to maintain access to outside information channels to do so," Albright Stonebridge Group's Triolo said.

As U.S. and European firms suspend business in Russia, Chinese technology companies could look to take advantage of that. Many of them, from Alibaba to smartphone maker Realme, already have business there.

So far, Chinese companies have remained silent on the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Beijing has refused to call Russia's war on Ukraine an "invasion" and has not joined the United States, European Union, Japan and others' sanctions against Moscow.

It's therefore a tricky path for Chinese corporates.

"So far there does not seem to be any guidance coming from central authorities in China on how companies should deal with the sanctions or export controls, so companies with a large footprint outside China are likely to be reluctant to buck restrictions," Triolo said.

"They will be very careful in determining both Beijing's wishes here, weighing how to handle demands from Russia customers old and new, and gauging the risks to their broader operations of continuing to cooperate with sanctioned end user organizations."

The Chinese are likely to make their moves depending on the tone from Beijing, according to Prakash.

"If Beijing continues to tacitly support Moscow, then Chinese tech firms have several opportunities. The biggest opportunity is for these companies to fill the gap that Western companies created when they exited Russia," he said. "The ability of these companies to grow their footprint and revenue in Russia is massive."

Originally posted here:

Russia may aspire to a China-style internet, but it's a long way off - CNBC

Russias offensive around Kyiv appears to have largely ground to a halt despite the regular bombing of residential areas in the capital as the invaders attempt to regroup and resupply in the north-west and east of Ukraine.

A week ago, the influential Institute of the Study of War, a US thinktank tracking the fighting, had thought that an encirclement of the capital could be achieved within 24 to 96 hours but the events of recent days have prompted it to change its mind.

On Monday and Tuesday, the Russian invaders could only muster local attacks involving a few hundred troops, leading the expert monitors to conclude that Russian forces were likely unable to complete the encirclement of Kyiv or resume mobile offensive operations in north-eastern Ukraine in the near future.

Some of this has been down to a spirited resistance from Ukrainian forces, who have managed to prevent the Russian advance on both sides of the capital to the suburbs beyond the city, around Brovary to the east and most notably around Irpin to the north-west, a once leafy district that has been the centre of fighting for over a fortnight.

Russian forces appear to have been proven unable to cross the Irpin River, which runs along the western edge of the city and the invaders remain 20km or more from the city centre, ruling out the cruel use of short-range artillery against the population that has proved so damaging in the eastern cities of Mariupol and Kharkiv.

That may offer some respite, but a critical period looms, if the war continues. The question is whether the Russian forces complete an encirclement of Kyiv and begin what could be a fearful siege of the city, which had a population of about 3 million people before the war began.

Mathieu Boulgue, a research fellow at Chatham House, said in an event organised by the thinktank on Tuesday that the danger of bombing of city centres underlined the importance of preventing a battle of Kyiv because Russia has no other way of capturing its most important strategic objective.

Three weeks into the conflict, footage from Kyiv showed the effort to defend the city centre with military reservists, volunteer soldiers who are former journalists, lawyers and prosecutors, guarding defences built out of sandbags. Steel hedgehogs lie scattered in the roads, intended to stop Russian armour from advancing at speed and generate opportunities for ambush.

But as Boulgue pointed out, Russia has sought to avoid urban warfare so far in the conflict where it is considered that an attacker needs numbers of five to one in its favour to have a chance of success. Instead, as Russian forces close in on a city, they have resorted to ground shelling and indiscriminate bombardment said Boulgue, to break the will of the residents to resist.

For both sides in the war, Kyiv is everything, and uncertainty also lingers over what would happen if Russia cannot close in on the city or if its inhabitants fight vigorously in its defence, as expected. Boulgue worried that could lead to increased frustration and risk-taking by the Kremlin.

Western leaders have repeatedly voiced concern denied by Russia that Moscow could use chemical weapons in Ukraine. Even if those fears were not realised, as Russia has showed throughout the conflict, it can launch cruise missile strikes on city centre targets, as happened in Kharkiv, or air-to-ground strikes, as against the Yavoriv military base at the weekend.

For now, Russias forces are pegged back. But an uneasy wait in the capital goes on.

Read more:

Uneasy wait in Kyiv continues as Russian advance appears to have stalled - The Guardian

Jake Sullivan looks flushed and his jaw is clenched. Across from President Joe Bidens National Security Adviser, over a row of ferns at a matching table draped in blue cloth, sits Chinas senior foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi, his mouth frozen in a sanguine smile. The official photograph released by Chinas state-run news agency of the two men sitting face to face on March 14 in Rome is a snapshot of how Beijing wants to be seen at this moment as Chinas sometime ally Russia continues its deadly invasion of Ukraine: as a confident, emerging power facing a frustrated and worried United States.

The reality is more complicated. Russias President Vladimir Putin is hoping Chinas leader Xi Jinping will see Russias invasion of Ukraine as another step forward for the two countries broader effort to push back against the worlds democracies. Russia is courting Chinas support of its assault on Ukraine and hopes China will prop up Moscows faltering economy battered by sanctions. But if China further backs Russias aggression with significant monetary help oreven more unsettlingweapons, the blowback from the U.S. and European countries could threaten Chinas long-term effort to rise as the dominant global power.

What China decides to do about Russias needs could mark a turning point in both the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations, and the outcome of Chinas choice will define what a new global order looks like. Will China continue to try to reshape the current global economy in its image by participating in it? Or will China join Russia behind a new Iron Curtain of sanctions, cut off from the U.S. and Europe and left to navigate a new monetary system and trading framework?

Yang Jiechi, left, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, right in Rome on March 14

Jin MamengniXinhua/Alamy

This is really a crucial moment and potentially a turning point, says Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. They really are siding with the Russians. They are more closely aligned with the Russians than theyve ever been.

China and Russia have occasionally had a strained relationship over the past several decades. Moscow and Beijing fought a border war in 1969 along the edge of Chinas northeast territory, and the two countries have never developed strong person-to-person ties across their shared 2,500 miles of border. As China has risen in global influence, Russias leadership have resented the prospect of becoming a client state of Beijing.

But Chinas leaders are now leaning toward Moscow much more heavily than they did when trying to appear neutral following Putins seizure of Crimea in 2014. When Xi and Putin met at the opening of the Beijing Olympics on Feb. 4, the two agreed their countries relationship would have no limits and no wavering, according to a Chinese government description of the meeting. That was two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

This has presented the Biden Administration with a delicate and growing challenge in how to talk to China about its assistance to Russia. The seven hours of talks between Sullivan and Yang inside the Rome Cavalieri hotel were intense and reflecting the gravity of the moment, a senior Administration official said, adding that the two officials had an extensive conversation about Russias war in Ukraine. Sullivan made it clear that the U.S. and European allies would consider cutting off Chinese financial institutions involved in backing Russias war financially, said a person familiar with the discussions.

Broadly, Xi Jinping has calculated that the U.S. is in decline and Western democracies have failed, Glaser says, and that Russia is one ally that can work alongside China to create a different international system thats more favorable. But with Russias violent effort to take Ukraine, that assessment comes with considerable risk for China. If Russia emerges weaker from its war in Ukraine, and China backed it, China could suffer major economic backlash. China relies heavily on its trading relationships with European countries and has worked hard to prevent Europe from restricting trade. That would be huge, if China ends up with a vast amount of countries around the world that are aligned against it because it has sided with Russia, Glaser says.

Convincing European powers to punish China could be a tall order for President Biden, whos had to work hard to convince Europe to limit its financial and energy ties to Russia. Biden is set to travel to Europe next week to meet with NATO allies, and Chinas degree of support for Russia will surely come up in those meetings. U.S. officials want to prepare allies for how to respond if China begins contributing more financially or militarily to Russia. Meanwhile, Xi showed the importance he puts on keeping lines of communication open with European powers when he joined a video call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 8 to talk about the war in Ukraine.

This moment has put on a collision course two competing objectives of Chinas foreign policy, says David Shullman, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst on East Asia. China wants Russia to be its partner in building a new global order, but it also wants to be viewed as a responsible power that can someday lead the current one, or at least be at the center of a new system of global governance and connectivity, Shullman says. If China provides Russia with drones, surface to air missiles, or other weapons, It would very clearly demonstrate that we have a break in what we expected out of the world order, Shullman says. It would be clear that China had very firmly sided with Russia against the democratic world and against developed democracies.

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How China's Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order - TIME

How close are China and Russia?

Under the rule of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin China and Russia have become increasingly isolated from the west and closer to each other.

Russias invasion of Ukraine came just days after Xi and Putin cemented a significant partnership on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics the first in-person, bilateral meeting Xi had attended since the pandemic began.

A joint statement from the two leaders said the bonds between the two countries had no limits and there were no forbidden areas of cooperation. It called on the west to abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war, and expressed support for each others stance on Ukraine and Taiwan.

Analysts say that the leaders believe they are stronger united.

Beijings rationale for the China-Russia relationship is that both countries confront a hostile west and both will be better able to withstand western pressure by standing together than apart, says Ryan Hass, a Brookings Institute scholar on China and Asia. Without Russia, the thinking goes, China would be alone to deal with a hostile west determined to obstruct Chinas rise.

Its worth bearing in mind that China and Russia do not have perfectly aligned interests, says Hass. China has a lot more to lose than Russia. China sees itself as a country on the rise with momentum behind it. Russia is essentially fighting the tides of decline.

The timing of the partnership signed between Russia and China has raised questions about what Chinas government knew of the invasion. Some analysts and US officials have suggested it was likely Beijing knew of the Russian plans for Ukraine but not the extent of them, and was caught somewhat by surprise. Beijing denies this. In the Washington Post on Wednesday, Chinas ambassador to the US said any assertions it knew about, acquiesced to or tacitly supported this war are purely disinformation.

One of the first signs that there might be limits on the partnership came on 25 February, when China abstained from voting on a UN security council resolution which would have deplored Moscows invasion of Ukraine. Russia used its veto power to quash the resolution but Chinas decision to not actively support the veto was reportedly seen as a positive sign by western officials.

Dr Courtney J Fung, an associate professor at Macquarie University and associate fellow at Chatham House, says China wants recognition as a responsible major country, but is applying this selectively when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine. China focuses on second order issues that result from the Russian invasion like humanitarian aid, civilian protection, evacuation and while these are of course important concerns, China is sidestepping efforts for it to mediate or resolve the crisis itself.

Chinas government and state apparatus are mostly not referring to it as an invasion or a war, although official English-language readouts of bilateral phone calls by Xi and foreign minister Wang Yi included the word war. It is instead usually referring to it as a situation, a crisis, or sometimes a conflict, and has emphasised a complexhistoricalbackground and context. It has expressed support for both Ukraines sovereignty and Russias security concerns.

Speaking to media after the annual two sessions meeting last Friday, Premier Li Keqiang said China was deeply concerned and grieved over the conflict.

On Ukraine, indeed the current situation there is grave, he said. The pressing task now is preventing tensions from escalating or even getting out of control.

Beijing has sought to present itself as neutral, and signalled it could act as a mediator, but Chinese media have amplified Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Government spokespeople have also promoted an anti-western narrative, blaming the US and Nato for inflaming tensions.

China has struggled to navigate a path between its partnership with Russia and the huge global condemnation of the invasion. China continues to back Russia through its comprehensive strategic partnership and to oppose Nato expansion and sanctions on Russia, Paul Haenle, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told China File.

At the same time, it is paying lip service to its principles of non-interference and positive relations with Ukraine. Haenle said Beijings aims were incompatible, but in recent days it had started to solidify its messaging into an attempt to straddle them anyway.

According to reports in US media, citing unnamed government officials, Russia has requested military equipment and support from China, as well as economic assistance as global sanctions and private sector abandonment starts to bite.

The initial reports didnt detail the types of weapons Russia was seeking or Chinas response, but drew warnings from the US that China would face consequences if it agreed. Subsequent reports, citing US diplomatic cables to allies, said Russia had requested equipment including drones, armoured vehicles and surface-to-air missiles, and that China had signalled a willingness to agree.

Chinese officials angrily dismissed the claims as malicious disinformation. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said hed never heard of such a request.

US officials fear China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones.

The Russian relationship remains important to Xi, and he is unlikely to jettison it in favour of aligning with a declining west, the director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Bonnie Glaser, told China File. But he must decide to what extent hell help the Russian economy as sanctions which China has long opposed kick in.

China is likely to find ways to help Moscow mitigate the impact of the sanctions, without blatantly violating them. The playbook it has used to assist Iran and North Korea evade sanctions provides possible actions China can take.

China has little incentive to provide direct military aid, says Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australian National University.

Beijings preferences are: one, international stability; two, to ensure the Russian economy and polity does not collapse under the weight of the international sanctions, and three, to not be seen as an overt enabler of Russian aggression.

Hass says its more likely that China will remain rhetorically committed to showing support for Russia but will largely comply with international sanctions against it, in order to avoid attracting secondary sanctions.

I also expect China to remain cautious in providing any materiel support to Russia, given that such support likely would have limited impact on the outcome of hostilities in Ukraine, but significant impacts on Chinas relations with the west.

See the rest here:

How close are China and Russia and where does Beijing stand on Ukraine? - The Guardian

While the precise scope of Russian President Vladimir Putins military operation in Ukraine is unclear, experts like Thomas Graham, a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff between 2004 and 2007, believe hes seeking regime change and the destruction of Ukraines military infrastructure in a bid to bring Kyiv back under the influence of Moscow.

But reports documenting a deepening bitterness toward Putin across Ukraine are a reminder that the fury and suffering hes generating with his brutal invasion could undermine his plans to control the country.

According to a recent New York Times report, the "one overriding emotion gripping Ukraine right now is hate." It said:

Billboards have gone up along roadsides in gigantic block letters, telling Russians in profanity-laced language to get out. Social media posts in spaces often shared by Russians and Ukrainians have been awash in furious comments.

The article described how the backlash against the invasion which has targeted civilian infrastructure, appears to be using indiscriminate cluster bombs and has already displaced millions of Ukrainians is not just driving hatred of Putin, but hatred of Russian society more broadly.

Yuri Makarov, the chief editor of the Ukrainian national broadcasting company and the head of a national literature and arts award committee, said the war had driven a deep wedge between the Ukrainian and Russian societies that will be hard to heal, the Times reported. Russians, he said, have become Ukrainians collective enemies.

This kind of shift in national sentiment undermines the idea that this invasion could serve as a straightforward way for Moscow to bring Kyiv back under its control after years of Kyiv drifting toward Western influence. Instead, its looking like the operation could backfire by intensifying anti-Russian attitudes and laying the groundwork for a potential long-term insurgency.

Experts like Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, have noted that Putin appears to be surrounded by yesmen who may want to confirm the assumptions that underlie his own worldview. That may have included an unwillingness among his advisers to point out that some of his assumptions about Ukrainian identity and Russia's ability to intervene militarily without much resistance were out of touch with reality.

I think, in general, Graham told me in an interview shortly after the invasion began, senior people in the Kremlin underestimate the degree of unity among the Ukrainian people at this point and that's Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers.

They have underestimated the consequences of their annexation of Crimea and what they've done in the Donbas over the past eight years and how that has changed attitudes towards Russia, he added, referring to Russias support for separatist rebels in Ukraines southeastern region since 2014.

Ukraine has a mix of Ukrainian and Russian speakers, with the eastern regions of the country being more Russian-speaking and historically more receptive to or susceptible to Russian political influence. But it seems that Putin is providing a stronger force for fostering a more coherent and strongly held Ukrainian national identity than couldve ever emerged from within the country itself in the short to medium term.

As civilians organize resistance, take up arms or leave the country out of fear, we could be seeing the birth of the very kind of united anti-Russian sentiment and action that Putin constantly seemed to fear before his invasion. He may have just created his own worst nightmare.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation and elsewhere.

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Why Russia's attempt to bend Ukraine to its will could have the opposite effect - MSNBC

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. Vishegirskaya later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol. Mstyslav Chernov/AP hide caption

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. Vishegirskaya later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol.

The immediate toll of the Russian airstrike that devastated a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last week was three people dead and 17 injured, but the impact did not stop there. In the AP photo that has come to symbolize the attack, a wounded pregnant woman lies on a stretcher, holding her lower belly and splattered with blood, being rushed out of the hospital by emergency workers seeking care for her elsewhere. Neither she nor her baby survived.

An injured pregnant woman is carried from the maternity hospital damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. The woman and her baby subsequently died. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP hide caption

An injured pregnant woman is carried from the maternity hospital damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. The woman and her baby subsequently died.

The attack was condemned worldwide. The World Health Organization issued a statement: "To attack the most vulnerable babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives is an act of unconscionable cruelty."

WHO further pointed to the ongoing ripple effects such attacks pose by limiting access to health care as well as potentially endangering those who seek it and also straining and threatening the viability of the health-care system itself.

Yet this was only one of 31 attacks on health-care workers, medical sites and facilities documented thus far in the Ukraine conflict by WHO's Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA). Moreover, health facilities have been targeted in other wars, including those led or supported by Russia, like Syria's ongoing civil war and the war in Chechen from 1999 to 2009.

What happens to the health needs of the local population in the short-term and what are the long-term consequences of this kind of destruction? How can what happened in past conflicts help us gain insight into the plight of those in Ukraine now?

To learn more, we spoke with Leonard Rubenstein, professor at the Johns Hopkins University school of public health and author of Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War; Dr. Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights and a professor of internal medicine and of public health at the University of Michigan; and Dr. Houssam al-Nahhas, the Middle East and North Africa researcher at Physicians for Human Rights. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Physicians for Human Rights has documented 601 deliberate attacks on 350 medical facilities in Syria from 2011 onward. Why target medical facilities?

Heisler: It is a devastatingly effective weapon of war because there are few greater ways of terrorizing the population, of breaking their will and lowering morale, than through attacking health care. An article in The Lancet called this strategy "the weaponization of health care."

Al-Nahhas: When a country attacks health-care facilities they are sending the message that they don't have any boundaries to what they can do. This is targeting people who cannot defend themselves and who cannot pose a threat because they're patients. It is a way to break people's resilience. Going to the hospital becomes dangerous, going there to get help means risking your life.

In this photo from May 2016, citizens and firefighters gather at the scene after a rocket hit the Dubeet hospital in Aleppo, Syria. As attacks have continued during the war, some health-care facilities have moved underground to try and serve their patients in relative safety. SANA via AP hide caption

Was that one of the immediate consequences you saw in Syria and elsewhere?

Al-Nahhas: We documented this in a case history of what happened after three airstrikes hit al-Altareb hospital in Aleppo in March 2021. Afterward, there was a significant decrease in consultations and beneficiaries of health care due to the risk of being bombed at the facility.

There was a decrease of 78% of prenatal and reproductive care consultations. We also witnessed a 27% decrease in normal deliveries. Many would elect to do a C-section in order to know when they will come in and when they will go out and to limit the time spent in the facility.

That is also what I witnessed in Aleppo during my time there as an emergency physician between 2014 and 2016, when we saw a spike of C-sections in conjunction with military escalations in 2014.

What else happens when health-care facilities are attacked?

Heisler: In the short-term there is chaos. Supplies, medications, oxygen are in short supply. People are not getting IV fluids or necessary surgery or other treatments, such as dialysis, and there are needless deaths as a result.

Rubenstein: On top of that, the hospitals may not have a track record of dealing with the complex injuries resulting from these powerful weapons. There may also be fewer staff members. In Syria, many of the most experienced physicians left, leaving behind the less experienced and younger physicians. There was an effort at quick training and a shifting of inexperienced people doing more complex things. For instance, technicians who supported the anesthesiologists may have to do the anesthesia or dentists [may have to] do oral surgery.

A man walks with crutch in a hospital in western Aleppo, Syria, damaged by attacks by the Bashar al-Assad regime during the country's ongoing civil war. Muhammed Said/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption

A man walks with crutch in a hospital in western Aleppo, Syria, damaged by attacks by the Bashar al-Assad regime during the country's ongoing civil war.

Are there additional ramifications for health care as the conflict continues?

Rubenstein: Childhood vaccinations tend to decline because the vaccinators are attacked as in Afghanistan and whole vaccine initiatives have to be suspended. Measles vaccinations have to be suspended either because of attacks on the vaccinators or because of the general insecurity, where it's too dangerous to go house to house. Attacks on a health-care facility in Zemio in Central African Republic [in 2017] led to HIV and AIDS programs being suspended.

In Yemen the Saudis have bombed both hospitals and water and sanitation infrastructure, such as pumping plants, which then led to a cholera epidemic that affected more than 2 million people.

Heisler: In Syria, hospitals went underground. You go from flying the white flag and when you realize that might indeed be a target, you take down the flag and you go underground. In Syria there was a whole system of underground hospitals.

Al-Nahhas: If all the intensive care units are occupied by people with war injuries, that equipment is not available to be used to help COVID patients or heart patients or any non-war related illness.

And what longer term consequences have you seen from such attacks?

Rubenstein: Even after a conflict ends it often takes a very long time to restore health capacity. And in the meantime people's health continues to suffer in ways similar to during the conflict.

Heisler: The concern is this might lead to the complete collapse of the health-care system. The continuing shortage of health-care workers and no supplies and no system to provide necessary care that is devastating. In Yemen, and in Tigray [Ethiopia, where a war began in 2020 and is still going on] almost all health-care systems are not functioning.

A nurse moves scrap from a damaged part of the Wukro General Hospital, which was shelled as government-aligned forces entered the city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on February 28, 2021. EDUARDO SOTERAS/Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A nurse moves scrap from a damaged part of the Wukro General Hospital, which was shelled as government-aligned forces entered the city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on February 28, 2021.

What about the impact on the physicians and health-care workers? The stress must be acute.

Al-Nahhas: I think it's important for people to know what the health-care workers are experiencing in Ukraine especially when health care is not protected in conflict.

It's knowing that you are in a hospital and treating patients and yet you can be targeted and killed at any moment. You need to provide the best care for your patients but you're also worried about your own safety.

I was in Syria for two years literally living in the hospital. It was rewarding to see the impact of [our] the work on people, but it was not sustainable because of the stress on all the health-care providers. We were not used to seeing so much trauma. We had to learn as we went along how to treat war-related injuries that we had never seen before.

This sense of how bad things can get the flashbacks from Syria are still with me after eight years.

What is being done to stop such attacks? Three international courts are now investigating possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. Could that make a difference?

Heisler: We need to establish accountability by documenting and gathering evidence of what has happened. That is the role of organizations like ours. If we live in a world in which you can bomb hospitals in war, killing patients and health-care workers, then we really would be returning to no-holds barred wars where no one is safe. We have to be sure that this does not continue.

Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is DianeJoyceCole.com.

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Russia's bombing of Ukraine hospital reflects a terrible wartime pattern : Goats and Soda - NPR