True Left

Russian imports have plunged on the back of the Ukraine War — but revenue from its oil and gas exports has more than made up for it
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Russia has reported its largest current account surplus in around three decades, as revenue from the country's oil and gas exports surged, Bloomberg records show. The surge in oil and gas exports came as imports plunged on the back of sweeping sanctions over the Ukraine war.

Russia's current account surplus hit $58.2 billion in the first quarter of this year, the country's central bank announced on Monday. This was more than double the $22.5 billion it recorded in the same period last year. Current account surplus is a key gauge of trade and investment flows, and trade is a big component of the measure.

Russia is an energy powerhouse, so even amid sanctions and boycotts, the country will still reap nearly $321 million from its energy exports in 2022 — 36% more than in 2021, Bloomberg Economics forecast in April. That's as oil prices have soared to 14-year highs this year amid fears of trade disruptions over infrastructure damage and sanctions against Russia.
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The windfall from high oil and gas prices has also helped the Kremlin bolster its emergency government reserves with 273.4 billion rubles ($3.2 billion) from its oil and gas sales.

Despite sweeping Western sanctions, Russia's coffers appear to be holding up. The country was repaying its foreign debt on time until last Monday, when the US Treasury blocked the country's payment in dollars held with US banks. Russia then transferred the money in rubles. The currency has bounced back to prewar levels thanks to Russia's strict capital controls.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming his old colleagues at the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the intelligence agency successor to the KGB – for the quagmire.

Putin reportedly purged more than 100 agents from the FSB, and his government sent the head of the department responsible for Ukraine to prison.

Russia says its Moskva warship sunk as it was being towed to a port, hours after Ukraine said it hit the ship with a missile strike. Chris Livesay reports.

#Moskva #Ukraine #Russia

The Russian warship, “Moskva,” that was badly damaged in combat was one of the ships involved in the now famous run-in with Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island.

“There is mud in the fields, everywhere. It's making it very difficult for the Russians to advance from the north down to the pocket to do what they were going to do five days ago.”

Robert Fox, defence editor at the Evening Standard, discusses Russia’s war with Ukraine on times.radio.

A Russian philosopher known as 'Putin's brain' said Russia's retreat from Kyiv was only 'temporary'
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In the interview, Dugin referred to the Russian retreat as a "purely tactical move" that would allow the Russian army to regroup and execute "revisions" under the newly appointed Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, a key figure in the 2015 Russian campaign in Syria.
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Despite repositioning Russian troops to the east, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that Putin still could seek to capture all of Ukraine. Dugin reinforced that notion in the interview, saying Russia's brutal campaign in eastern Ukraine alone is "not a victory" for the country.

"Our soldiers will not return home until targets across the country have been destroyed and security has been established, or until Zelensky surrenders," Dugin said, per Yahoo News.

Now the idea is to embargo Russia’s sale of  oil to the world. And the idea is to shut off Russia from not just raw materials but access to everything, including financial services.
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Does anyone really think that a personality like Vladimir Putin will put up with that and crawl into a corner and hide while his economy shrivels up around him? That’s not going to happen. And so, if not that, then what? We, the West, need to stop reveling in the expectation of our eventual “win” because “we” will never see it. Sanctions are not a winning strategy — we have already done that and failed.
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Putin is a dangerous man. But the Biden administration that has gauged the reaction of Putin wrongly in the past using sanctions may be gauging him wrongly again. Just ask former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
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And one problem with imposing sanctions is that there is no battle front. There is no way to know when their bite is drawing blood. And so there is no way to know how the risks of a confrontation with Russia grow as sanctions remain in force.

But just as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken incorrectly told us that the threat of sanctions would keep Putin out of Ukraine, we are now being told that, as long as we do not engage militarily or send too many weapons that are too modern or too destructive, we will not be in his sights. Not only does this increasingly seem naive on the face of it, but any scan of history suggests that sanctions, especially of this magnitude, are the equivalent of bombing a country’s factories and taking them out of action. In some ways they are the equivalent of neutron bomb-destroying economic activity but leaving the capital stock in place. Soon we will see how Putin reacts to that.

The U.S. has an obligation to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, in which the U.S. promised to help Ukraine secure its borders when it gave up its nuclear weapons. In fact, the U.S. has not done that.

What’s worse, Russia, a fellow signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, has been the violator.
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With this in mind, I think the “hot war” should be conducted more aggressively since if the West backs off the hot-war confrontation when Putin eventually threatens nuclear or more aggressive responses to sanctions, then what would the West do? The West must stand strong from the start and not pin its hopes on sanctions, which have let us down once already and will probably do so again.

Russia: “Ukraine did not sink our ship with Neptune cruise missiles”
Russia: “ in retaliation for our ship sinking, we will bomb the crap out of Kiev.”

Russia: "Our battleship sank by itself"
Also Russia: "We want revenge for sinking our battleship."

Russia: The sinking of the Moskva was a complete accident!
Also Russia: The attack on the Ukrainian facility was in retaliation for Moskva!

‘THAT WAS OURS’

The used audio is from the Youtube audio library

Military experts estimate that Russia has lost nearly 3,000 pieces of equipment in the conflict.

The losses are being blamed on Russian tactical miscalculations, and advanced weapons supplied by NATO countries.

Recently, US President Joe Biden announced $800 mn worth of military aid to Ukraine. Russia sent a diplomatic note to the United States to stop arming Ukraine. To get more details, we're joined by Fred Weir, Russian Affairs Expert.

#US #Russia #Ukraine

Russian Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Army, was buried Saturday after being killed in combat in Ukraine, Russian state media reported, which would make him the eighth Russian general killed in Moscow’s invasion, if Ukrainian claims are true.