The World Blog by humble servant.

Rubles-for-gas plan breaches contract – EU © Getty Images Leaders from some European Union member states have claimed that Moscow's demand that “unfriendly” countries pay rubles for Russia’s gas could breach supply contracts, Reuters reported on Thursday. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that gas contracts with “unfriendly countries” – those responsible for sanctions against Russia – be settled in rubles only. The announcement sent European gas prices soaring, raising concerns of a possible energy crunch in the EU. German chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday the currency that his country’s companies must pay for Russian fossil fuels is fixed in their contracts. “There are fixed contracts everywhere, with the currency in which the deliveries are to be paid being part of these contracts... in most cases it says euros or dollars,” Scholz said after arriving at the EU summit in Brussels. Ruble rockets on gas currency switchREAD MORE: Ruble rockets on gas cu...

Britain sanctions Russia’s gold The measure follows a similar move by the US Britain sanctions Russia’s gold The UK has added a ban on transactions with Russian gold to their list of restrictions placed on the country’s central bank earlier this month. This was announced in an updated version of the sanctions guidance published on the website of the British government on Friday. “Guidance updated to clarify that the prohibition on providing financial services for the purposes of foreign exchange reserve and asset management also applies to transactions involving gold… It is prohibited to provide financial services to carry out transactions with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation involving its gold,” the guidance document said. The document, initially published on February 28, states that British entities are restricted from conducting any transactions with the Russian Central Bank, Finance Ministry or wealth fund. The addition of the clarification on gold came after concerns...

The Russian Defense Ministry provided a rare update on the casualties the country's armed forces have suffered during the ongoing military offensive in Ukraine, on Friday. “Unfortunately, during the special military operation there have been losses among our comrades-in-arms. To date, 1,351 servicemen have died and 3,825 have been injured,” the deputy head of the Russian General Staff, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy told a media briefing. The official did not provide any figures on soldiers who have potentially gone missing in action or been taken prisoner amid the conflict. The Ukrainian side has sustained heavy casualties (around 30,000) over the past month, Rudskoy clarified. According to Russian military estimates, around 14,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, and a further 16,000 have been injured. Ukraine’s military has sustained major losses in hardware, with nearly 1,600 tanks and other armored vehicles destroyed, he alleged, adding that the Russian offensive has lar...

US President Joe Biden told American soldiers on Friday that “you’re going to see” Ukrainian civilians fighting Russian soldiers “when you’re there.” Despite signaling a potential US deployment to Ukraine, the White House says there’s been no change to Biden’s position of not sending troops into the country. “You’re going to see when you’re there … some of you have been there. You’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground’,” Biden told members of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Poland. Biden mentioned the same scenes of civilians blocking tanks – widely publicized by pro-Ukrainian outlets – earlier on Friday as well, calling the incidents “Tiananmen Square squared.” The president has thus far remained insistent that American troops will not intervene in Ukraine, and has ruled out establishing a NATO-enforced ‘no-fly zone’ over the country. The latter, he argued, would see ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared efforts by the elites in the West to weaponize “cancel culture” against famous Russian composers and writers – in response to the country’s military offensive in Ukraine – to Nazi book burnings. “Today, they are trying to cancel the whole of our thousand-year-old country, our people,” Putin said on Friday at a virtual meeting with recipients of presidential awards for achievements in fine arts and literature. The president blasted what he called “growing discrimination of everything connected to Russia” in some Western countries. He added that the process was “tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the ruling elites.” The so-called ‘cancel culture’ has turned into ‘the canceling of culture’. [Composers] Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff are getting erased from concert programs. Russian writers and their books are also getting banned. Such a massive campaign to destroy undesirable literature was carried out last time by the Nazis ...

Turkey’s long-planned use of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems will not be reversed, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists on Friday as he was flying home from a summit of NATO leaders in Brussels. Western media claimed the US was negotiating a possible transfer of the weapons from Turkey to Ukraine, while offering various defense concessions in return. “This is a done deal for us. They are our property serving our defense, so it’s over,” the Turkish leader said, when asked about the S-400 systems. Donald Trump's US government kicked Ankara out of the F-35 program in retaliation for buying Russian military hardware, back in 2019. Erdogan said his country’s reaction to the transfer idea was well-summarized in a letter from his spokesman, Fahrettin Altun, published by the Wall Street Journal this week. The official said the current US administration should reverse Trump's move without any preconditions, in order to repair relations. Erodgan claimed NATO has bee...

Top US spies explain Ukrainian ‘biolabs’ US intelligence community has pushed back against Russian allegations of “bioweapons” labs operating in Ukraine Top US spies explain Ukrainian ‘biolabs’ The US Senate Intelligence Committee holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, on March 10, 2022. © AP / J. Scott Applewhite The heads of US intelligence agencies rejected allegations of bioweapons research and development taking place in Ukraine with Washington’s during Senate hearings on Thursday. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Ukraine “operates a little over a dozen,” admitting that the US has “provided assistance” to the facilities at least in the past. Said “assistance” came only “in the context of biosafety”, she claimed, adding that it was “something we have done with a variety of different countries.” “We do not assess that Ukraine is pursuing either biological weapons or nuclear weapons,” Haines said, dismissing the new a...

The US has been involved in testing experimental drugs on “volunteers” from the ranks of the Ukrainian military, the commander of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov alleged during a media briefing on Thursday. The experimental drug testing came within the so-called UP-8 project, exposed by the Russian military earlier this month. “We continue to publish information about the research with the participation of Ukrainian military personnel. I would like to note that such work is prohibited in the United States and is carried out by the military outside of the country,” the official stated. “According to data published in the Bulgarian media, about 20 Ukrainian soldiers died during the experiments in the Kharkov laboratory alone, and another 200 were hospitalized,” Kirillov added, while claiming that “more than four thousand people” were involved in the testing in Ukraine. The official presented a document, purportedly sen...

The United States has no intention of using chemical weapons under any circumstance, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday. The comment comes after President Joe Biden said on Thursday that a Russian deployment of these weapons in Ukraine would trigger “a response in kind.” Biden’s statement led to speculation that the US would intervene militarily in Ukraine if Russia used chemical weapons, whether by conventional means or by using chemical weapons of its own. Biden, who has thus far ruled out American involvement in Ukraine, added that “the nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.” Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Sullivan said on Friday that Biden’s use of the phrase “response in kind” was referring to proportionality, and that “there will be a severe price if Russia uses chemical weapons.” Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have all warned Russia that the use of such weap...

Russia has denied that it used white phosphorus during its military campaign in Ukraine, responding to accusations by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukrainian soldiers of using prohibited weapons – a claim that was similarly rebuked by Kiev. White phosphorus munitions, which cause deadly burns and are highly toxic, are banned under international law. “Russia has never violated any international conventions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy to the UN, similarly insisted earlier that Moscow had long disposed of its chemical weapons arsenal, and it was “disgraceful” to accuse Moscow of using chemical munitions in Ukraine. Speaking to the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) member states on Thursday via video link, Zelensky claimed that “Russian troops used phosphorous bombs against civilians in Ukraine.” Other Ukrainian officials have made similar allegations. The Russian Defense Ministry cl...

The Russian central bank on Friday dismissed media speculation that gold reserves have been taken out of the country and are being held abroad. Western media began reporting the rumor after the US and EU authorities hinted of possible sanctions targeting Russian gold. “All the gold from our gold and foreign exchange reserves is in the vaults of the Bank of Russia on the territory of our country,” the regulator stated on its website. The central bank explained that gold and foreign exchange reserves are a tool with which the regulator can protect the country's economy from external threats. In particular, they can become a source of funds to cover the cost of foreign exchange debt, stabilize the foreign exchange market and help pay for critical imports. Earlier this month, the US and its allies froze roughly half of Russia’s reserves, worth $300 billion, as part of sanctions over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. However, the remainder of the country’s reserves, which inclu...

Russia wants to hear comments from the US government on the alleged involvement of Hunter Biden into financing a network of biolabs in Ukraine, which Moscow suspects of conducting bioweapons research, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The embattled presidential son was financially linked to the Ukrainian labs by the Russian military this week. “We will certainly demand explanations. And not us alone. You know that China has asked for explanations, demanded transparency over this program and this situation,” Peskov said. He was commenting on a connection, which the Russian military claimed to have discovered between the embattled son of President Joe Biden and biolabs in Ukraine. Hunter Biden used to head the now-defunct DC-based Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, a branch of the Rosemont Seneca investment fund. The Russian military claimed that the fund had close ties to the Pentagon and helped finance bioresearch in Ukraine. Russia makes Hunter Biden biolab claim Read m...

Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine has been underway for a month now. It has already led to a global economic crisis stemming from disruptions in supply chains and rising energy prices. And although the beginning of the hostilities came as a surprise to the whole world, the current state of affairs was not unpredictable – international relations experts have been warning about the risk of this escalation for the past 30 years. Why didn’t politicians in the West listen to their advice, instead of allowing war to break out in Europe, and fuel and food prices to skyrocket at home? Told you so “I want to make it clear to everyone, both in our country and abroad, to our partners, that it’s not even about the line that we don’t want anyone to cross. The fact is that we have nowhere to retreat. They have pinned us against a line from which, sorry for the bad manners, we have nowhere to retreat,” President Vladimir Putin stated at the end of December 2021, almost two months before he ord...

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki named three European countries on Friday that oppose blocking trade relations with Russia, and have acted as “brakes” with regard to further sanctions in retaliation to its offensive in Ukraine. “Poland strongly emphasized the need to limit the trade in hydrocarbons. Unfortunately, large countries, such as Germany, but also small ones, such as Austria and Hungary, are more restrained. They refrain from stopping trade with Russia here and now,” the prime minister said ahead of NATO talks in Brussels, adding that he hopes to convince them to share Poland’s point of view. Morawiecki said Poland’s stance towards Russia amid the offensive in Ukraine has not changed, and that his country will be pushing for further sanctions to be imposed immediately. “Those who point out that intensive sanctions are needed here and now are right. The impact of the sanctions in the long and medium term is obviously important, but it does not affect Russia’s decis...

A visit of a high-ranking UK delegation to India, consisting of members of different political parties and led by House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was called off at the last moment by the Indian authorities, The Guardian reported on Thursday. According to the article, the delegation of 10 high-ranking British officials had been in discussions with India since January and had plans to visit New Delhi and Rajasthan. The original goal of the delegation was reportedly to discuss a UK-India free trade deal, but the objective changed in the context of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine. The delegates were planning to persuade New Delhi to take a tougher stance towards Moscow, The Guardian says. It was reported that the Indian High Commission changed its decision and raised objections at the last minute. It is unclear whether the Indian officials had issues with individual members of the delegation or were concerned in general about the British Parliament members that sought...

The Russian Central Bank (Bank of Russia) on Friday imposed restrictions on the movement of funds to countries that introduced economic sanctions against Russia in connection with its military operation in Ukraine. “In response to the partial freezing of Russian reserves, Russia also introduced restrictions on the movement of funds that could be transferred to unfriendly countries, for a comparable amount,” a statement on the website of the Bank of Russia reads. The regulator explained that it is essentially applying a “mirror measure,” banning the movement of capital, the sale of securities by foreign investors, and their withdrawal of funds from the Russian financial system. In addition, payments on the corporate debt of Russian companies and government debt to holders from countries that support sanctions against Russia can now only take place with the permission of a government commission.

Replacing Russian natural gas on the European market is “not practically possible,” Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said in an interview with CNN on Thursday. The official, who is also the president and CEO of state-owned QatarEnergy, noted that “from 30 to 40% of the total volume of gas supplied to the world market comes from Russia.” The EU imposed economic sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, and announced it would move towards gradually slashing consumption of Russian natural gas this year. Over 40% of the EU’s gas imports come from Russia. However, Al-Kaabi said Qatar would not impose sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sector, stressing that “energy should stay out of politics.” According to the minister, Qatar will not take sides in the Ukraine crisis.

Russia had no other choice but to switch to its national currency, the Russian ruble, in its energy trade with Western nations, due to the nature of sanctions imposed on the country, the former head of state explained to RT and Ria Novosti journalists on Thursday. Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008-2012 and is currently the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, argued that President Vladimir Putin’s decision on Wednesday to switch to rubles in its energy trade with Western buyers is perfectly logical, with Moscow having no other option under the circumstances. “They shut down the correspondent accounts for our commercial banks, made settlements in dollars and euros impossible and disconnected the banks on the sanctions list from SWIFT, at least some of them. What did they think we were going to do?” the Russian politician inquired rhetorically. Touching on the plans to phase out Russian energy voiced by some European nations, Medvedev noted that, in the...