The World Blog by humble servant.

The Russian economy has largely shrugged off “unprecedented sanctions” from the West, The Economist noted, crediting the sharp rise in revenues from oil and gas exports. Russian consumer spending is up again, interest rates are going down, and the ruble is stronger than before the conflict in Ukraine escalated. “Russia’s economy is back on its feet,” the British weekly pointed out on Friday, adding that it was “defying predictions of collapse” as a result of embargoes imposed by the US and its allies. The ruble is now “as valuable” as before, says The Economist, on account of “capital controls and high interest rates.” As of Friday, the Russian currency was actually stronger – 65.8 to the US dollar, compared to 81 on February 23. Russia is also continuing to pay its foreign-currency bonds, despite US and UK attempts to force it into a default. Russians are spending “fairly freely” on cafés, bars and restaurants once again, according to numbers from Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank....

'Her Majesty's Russia Unit': how British spies have launched a full-scale propaganda war to demonize Moscow The growing political feud between Russia and the West has spurred the activation of specialized propaganda and intelligence units. With regards to the Ukraine crisis, experts say one of the most active parties has been the United Kingdom, which in recent years has stepped up its efforts to demonise Russia by waging a full-scale propaganda war. As an analysis has shown, Britain’s "HMG Russia Unit," an interdepartmental government organization created several years ago, has acted as a front for soft influence operations against Moscow with the assistance of international consulting organizations. Up until now, the activities of the operation had not been publicly visible. However, last month publications containing its employees’ personal information appeared in a number of Russian Telegram channels. It is alleged that the email addresses included in thes...

Citing “discrepancies in content,” the German magazine Der Spiegel has removed a video showing the testimony of an evacuee from Mariupol’s ‘Azovstal’ factory, a stronghold of the neo-Nazi Azov militants and other Ukrainian fighters. The woman in the video had revealed that her family was basically being lied to, held hostage, and used as human shields by the Ukrainian militants. Another German outlet, Junge Welt, noticed the deletion on Thursday evening. According to JW, Der Spiegel published the three-minute video on Monday. It featured Natalia Usmanova, who had worked at Azovstal before the conflict and sheltered there with her husband and children. In the recording, Usmanova tells reporters that Azov militants “kept us in the bunker” for two months and did not allow her family to leave using the humanitarian corridors established by Russian troops. “They hid behind the fact that they are supposedly concerned about our safety,” Usmanova said, according to a German translation, ...

US markets fell sharply on Thursday in Wall Street’s worst day since 2020, eviscerating all the gains from the previous day, after the US Federal Reserve announced plans to raise the key interest rate. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 1,000 points, or 3.1%, marking its worst daily percentage drop since October 28, 2020. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 shed 153 points, or 3.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 5%, its worst daily percentage fall since June 11, 2020. Technology stocks slumped with Google-parent Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Tesla and Amazon all falling between 4.3% and 8.3%. On Wednesday, the Dow surged 2.8%, while the S&P 500 soared 3% and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 3.2%. The S&P 500’s gain was the largest one-day advance since May 18, 2020. UK issues grim economic forecastREAD MORE: UK issues grim economic forecast “I’ve been in the markets for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO an...

Western sanctions against Russia and Moscow’s retaliatory measures will have big implications for the global energy market, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in Vienna on Friday. “I believe that we are in the middle of the first global energy crisis. In the 70s we saw the oil crisis, which had great consequences for the economy and inflation. But then it was only oil,” he said. “Let’s remember that Russia … is the world’s number one oil and natural gas exporter, as well as a major player in the market for materials used by the energy sector,” Birol added. “Therefore, the sanctions that were imposed on Russia or political decisions from the Kremlin have and will have great consequences for the energy market.” According to Birol, it would be too optimistic to believe that the current volatility in the energy market could end soon and that the world could return to times of low prices and stable market conditions.

Ukraine's ambassador to Berlin, Andrey Melnik, has refused to apologize to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for comparing him to an “offended liverwurst” over his reluctance to visit Kiev. The abrasive Melnik's comments follow a phone call on Thursday between President Volodomyr Zelensky and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which was apparently organized to resolve a war of words over Steinmeier's supposed "pro-Russia" leanings. “I believe the problem that was supposedly on the way was cleared up in that phone call yesterday [between the Ukrainian and German presidents]. So, it’s not a matter of apologizing. It’s not about whether someone feels offended or not, it’s about whether they will help us to save people,” Melnik said in an interview with radio station Deutschlandfunk on Friday. “The point is that we pursue the right policy these days. As I said, this is something that is not yet clear to us, why do people here continue telling fairy tales instea...

Taiwan has accused the Chinese military of a mass air incursion into the island’s air defense zone. A fleet of 18 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including two nuclear-capable H-6 planes entered the zone on Friday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said. The nuclear capable bombers were accompanied by a Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, KJ-500 aerial warning and reconnaissance plane, as well as 12 J-11 and J-16 fighter jets. The incursion prompted the scrambling of Taiwanese fighter jets and the activation of anti-aircraft missile systems “to monitor the activities” of the Chinese air fleet. The aircraft, however, did not enter the air space that Taiwan claims as its own. The Chinese military has, so far, remained silent on the run-in with the island’s military. Beijing, which views Taiwan as an integral part of its territory under its ‘One China’ policy, has regularly flexed military muscle near the island, buzzing it with large aircraft units and sending in warships. Taiw...

After hounding the US and other NATO members for weeks about his need for heavy weapons to defend against Russia’s ongoing “special military operation”, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to have been granted his wish. The US Congress, on April 28, passed legislation that breathed life into a World War II-era law that would allow the US to quickly supply weapons to Ukraine on loan. By a vote of 417 to 10, the House of Representatives sent the revised 80-year-old law to the desk of President Joe Biden, where he is expected to sign it (the US Senate had earlier passed the legislation unanimously.) “Passage of that act enabled Great Britain and Winston Churchill to keep fighting and to survive the fascist Nazi bombardment until the United States could enter the war,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland who has been at the forefront of anti-Russian legislation over the years. “President Zelensky has said that Ukraine needs weapons to sustain themselve...

What Is Cost-Push Inflation? Cost-push inflation (also known as wage-push inflation) occurs when overall prices increase (inflation) due to increases in the cost of wages and raw materials. Higher costs of production can decrease the aggregate supply (the amount of total production) in the economy. Since the demand for goods hasn't changed, the price increases from production are passed onto consumers creating cost-push inflation. Cost-push inflation can be compared with demand-pull inflation. KEY TAKEAWAYS Cost-push inflation occurs when overall prices increase (inflation) due to increases in the cost of wages and raw materials. Cost-push inflation can occur when higher costs of production decrease the aggregate supply (the amount of total production) in the economy. Since the demand for goods hasn't changed, the price increases from production are passed onto consumers creating cost-push inflation. 0:59 Cost-Push Inflation Understanding Cost-Push Inflation Inflation is a m...

Several high-ranking Russian officials have denied reports that President Vladimir Putin plans to formally declare war on Ukraine and launch a full mobilization of forces as early as May 9. Earlier this week, unnamed US and Western officials told CNN that the Russian leader was going to use “the symbolic significance and propaganda value” of Victory Day – the day the defeat of Nazi Germany is celebrated annually – to make the announcement. “No, no, no, I’ll tell you this on air and off air,” Vyacheslav Volodin, Russia’s State Duma speaker told Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station when asked about the prospects of mobilization. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had earlier also slammed the reports as “lies and nonsense,” saying that such suggestions should just be ignored. The possibility of mobilization being announced in Russia was “non-existent,” he insisted. There are no grounds to announce mobilization in Russia now and there won’t be any in the future, the deputy head of the Russ...

India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti, has accused the Netherlands of “patronizing” his country after the Dutch ambassador to the UK publicly scolded New Delhi for abstaining on UN General Assembly resolutions on the war in Ukraine. "Kindly don't patronise us, Ambassador. We know what to do," Tirumurti wrote in a tweet to Dutch envoy Karel van Oosterom on Thursday. Tirumurti’s tweet came in response to van Oosterom’s (now-deleted) warning that India “should not have abstained” from votes pertaining to Russia and the war in Ukraine and that it should “respect the UN Charter.” Despite repeated calls and pressure to join the West in isolating Russia over the Ukraine war, New Delhi has been reluctant to cut ties with Moscow. India has abstained on multiple votes and resolutions at the UN General Assembly this year, including a vote moved by the US in April to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over accusations of the killin...

Food giants and other companies in Britain have been cutting the size of their products lately in response to rising costs to keep the price the same. Economists warn that inflationary pressure will remain for the rest of the year, meaning Britons will further feel the impact of ‘shrinkflation’ as companies pass the costs on to customers. According to the Institute of Grocery Distribution, 80% of UK shoppers have noticed ‘shrinkflation’ - the practice of reducing the size of a product - happening in retail in the last 12 months. Sweet snacks, chilled products, as well as fresh meat and fish, have all been getting smaller in the last year, consumers said. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average price paid for food and non-alcoholic beverages was up 5.9% over the last year, and the cost for restaurants and hotels surged 6.9%. Experts point to rising costs, labor shortages and supply chain issues among the factors putting inflationary pressure on food supply...

Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has roasted the US for its reluctance to aid development in Central America, while swiftly finding billions of dollars to assist Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. “The US have already approved $30 billion for the war in Ukraine, while we have been waiting since President Donald Trump, asking they donate $4 billion, and as of today, nothing, absolutely nothing,” López Obrador pointed out on Friday. “Honestly, it seems inexplicable,” the President said, describing the decision being made by the American authorities.López Obrador, who was speaking in Guatemala, the first stop on his five-day tour of Central America, promised that he was “going to continue to respectfully insist on the need for the US to collaborate.” Pentagon press-secretary John Kirby announced last week that Washington has already spent $4.3 billion on supporting the Ukrainian military since 2021. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden urged another $33 billion for Ki...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has criticized a plan to phase out Russian oil imports proposed by the European Commission, saying that such an embargo would be tantamount to “dropping a nuclear bomb” on his country’s economy. Speaking to Hungary’s public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban claimed that EU member states had agreed earlier that any bloc-wide measures concerning energy should take into account each nation’s individual situation. The Hungarian premier also warned that the latest proposal on Russian oil by the European Commission “either willingly or unwillingly, attacked this hard-fought European unity.” Orban pointed out that countries with sea ports were in a far more advantageous position, as they could switch to fossil fuels delivered by ship with relative ease, while landlocked nations like Hungary were wholly dependent on pipelines. The official added that the “pipeline leading to Hungary starts in Russia,” noting that Budapest would not accept any E...

The European Union has reportedly proposed a revision to the latest Russia oil embargo that is expected to give several member states extra time to comply with the ban. The measure will grant Hungary and Slovakia an extra year, until the end of 2024, to phase out oil imports from Russia, people familiar with the matter said, as quoted by Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic will reportedly get an exemption until June 2024. All other member states are expected to eliminate their oil purchases from Russia by the end of the current year as originally proposed. Under the plan, European businesses and individuals would be banned from providing vessels and services needed to transfer Russian oil to third countries. According to the revision, the measure would kick in within three months of the new sanctions being adopted, up from one month, Bloomberg sources say. Earlier on Friday, EU Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni said the bloc’s embargo will come into force within nine m...

Former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has shared in his soon-to-be-published memoirs that in 2020, concerned with increasing drug flows across the southern border, US President Donald Trump considered striking Mexican cartels by launching missiles at their drug laboratories, the New York Times reported on Thursday. “They don’t have control of their own country. We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly. No one would know it was us,” the former Pentagon boss quoted Trump as saying. In 2020, US Customs and Border Protection reported the seizure of 706,800 lb (320 metric tons) of various drugs at the southern border. The Mexican government has been fighting the cartels for decades, and according to Justice in Mexico, a US-based activist group, in 2019 drug-related violence in Mexico claimed the lives of 34,588 people. Mr. Esper was reportedly left all but speechless when the president shared his idea for combating drug crime in Mexico. The former offici...

European countries will not be able to replace Russian natural gas without an energy transition, according to Shell CEO Ben van Beurden. Increasing gas supplies from Africa and Scandinavia as well as boosting purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot help in replacing Russian energy on the European markets, van Beurden said on Thursday. “Bringing more LNG to the market, increasing liquefaction and regasification capacity, and raising pipeline supplies from North Africa and Norway are reasonable things,” he said adding that “it is also inevitable to have an energy transition in the medium term.” “There is no way to simply buy more pipeline gas and LNG to completely replace all the Russian gas that we currently consume. This is not feasible,” van Beurden said. Russia is currently the largest European gas provider, delivering about 40% of natural gas consumed by the region. Russian gas is transferred by several routes, including Nord Stream, running directly to Germany via the ...

Attorneys General from two Republican-led US states, Missouri and Louisiana, have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, Fox News reported on Thursday. The states are accusing high-ranking officials, including President Joe Biden, of having “pressured and colluded” with social media companies to censor and suppress information on a number of big stories over the past two years. Among the officials named as defendants are White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and the President’s Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. They, and others, are accused of exerting undue pressure on, or working together, with a number of Big Tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and YouTube to suppress information regarding the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, the origins of Covid-19, and security concerns associated with mail-in voting during the pandemic. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry claim the Biden Administration has been doing so “under th...

German industrial companies are finding it “impossible” or “not economically viable” and “only partially possible” to replace imports from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which came to a halt due to the conflict in Ukraine and the introduction of harsh economic sanctions on Moscow and Minsk, a poll by the Ifo Institute has revealed. When asked if they’ll be able to substitute deliveries from those countries, 13.8% of the German companies polled said that “this was not possible at all,” according to the study published by the Munich-based think-tank on Tuesday. Another 16.3% pointed out that finding other sources of supplies was “not economically viable” for them. And a staggering 43.4% of the companies confessed that replacing deliveries from Russia and its neighbors would be “only partially possible,” with just 13.8% saying that the situation won’t cause them problems. The numbers were even worse in the wholesale sector where 17.3% of firms insisted that coping without the sanctione...

German automotive giant Volkswagen (VW) said this week it was keeping its options open in terms of how it powers its huge European manufacturing plant. VW admitted that coal would still be needed regardless of the EU’s plans to end reliance on Russian natural gas. When asked by CNBC how concerned the company was about gas supplies from Russia stopping and what that would mean for the firm’s operations, VW chief Herbert Diess said: “That’s actually really a threat… because it’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen. Here in Wolfsburg, we still have coal-fired power plants which we wanted to – and we are – converting to gas.” Volkswagen’s manufacturing facility in the German city of Wolfsburg covers an area of 6.5 million square meters. It uses two cogeneration plants that provide it with heat and power. The company had been planning to replace its coal-fired boilers with gas and steam turbine units in a bid to lower carbon dioxide emissions. “It’s all prepared but now we are ...

The eastern part of Germany will face petrol shortages if the EU adopts an embargo on Russian oil, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck warned in a TV interview on Wednesday. The EU nations are preparing to vote on a proposal which would see Russian crude phased out within six months and refined products by the end of the year. The measures are part of the latest Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow. “It cannot be ruled out, unfortunately, I have to say, that there will actually be shortages,” Habeck told broadcaster RTL. “There may be a short period of low oil and therefore low fuel availability,” Habeck continued, assuring however that the government was working to ensure that didn’t happen. German inflation hits four-decade highREAD MORE: German inflation hits four-decade high The eastern part of Germany is supplied by the Schwedt refinery, which runs wholly on Russian imports. It’s one of the largest crude oil processing facilities in Germany and provides 90% of the...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has limited its approval of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine to those over the age of 18, pointing to dangerous side effects observed in younger recipients. The agency announced the move in a press release on Thursday following a review of data, saying the J&J shot (alternatively known as the Janssen vaccine) would no longer be authorized for minors due to “rare and potentially life-threatening blood clots.” “After conducting an updated analysis, evaluation and investigation of reported cases, the FDA has determined that the risk of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)... warrants limiting the authorized use of the vaccine,” it said, referring to the blood-clotting ailment. It noted that symptoms typically appear “approximately one to two weeks” after the jab is administered. Survey reveals parents’ stance on Covid vax for childrenREAD MORE: Survey reveals parents’ stance on Covid vax for children Individuals under 18 y...

ATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said the US-led bloc will carry out new troop deployments near Russia’s borders if Sweden requests to join – even before it’s officially accepted into the organisation. Speaking to Swedish state TV about Stockholm’s prospective membership application on Thursday, Stoltenberg said NATO could immediately leap into action to bolster the country’s defenses during the process, which could take up to a year to conclude. “From the potential moment Sweden is applying, and NATO says that they want Sweden to join, there is a very strong obligation from NATO to be able to guarantee Sweden's security,” he said. “We have different ways of doing it, including through an increased presence of NATO forces in the area around Sweden and the Baltic Sea. ” The comments follow weeks of public discussion centered on Stockholm’s potential NATO application, as well as that of its neighbor Finland. Though both have remained neutral throughout the military bloc’...

Elon Musk is expected to serve as Twitter’s interim chief executive officer for a few months after he completes his $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant, CNBC reported on Thursday. According to an SEC filing, also released on Thursday, Musk secured approximately $7.14 billion in equity commitments from friends and other investors to buy Twitter. CNBC sources said the businessman handpicked the investors, ranging from $1 billion from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to $5 million from Honeycomb Asset Management, which invested in SpaceX. Sources added that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey may back the takeover, and Musk was discussing with him the possibility of contributing shares immediately or prior to closing the merger. Media reported earlier that Musk had lined up a new CEO for Twitter who will replace current chief executive Parag Agrawal. Musk repeatedly criticized Twitter’s content moderation practices and a top executive responsible for setting speech and safety ...

The Pentagon has denied media reports suggesting it has shared intelligence with Ukraine to specifically target high-ranking Russian military officials. “The United States provides battlefield intelligence to help Ukraine defend their country,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said during a media briefing on Thursday. We do not provide intelligence on the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield or participate in targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military. At the same time, Kirby admitted that Kiev “combines” intelligence it gets from multiple unspecified sources to take its “own decisions,” apparently shifting the blame for reported killings of Russian generals onto Ukraine itself. “Ukraine combines information that we and other partners provide with the intelligence that they themselves are gathering, and then they make their own decisions and they take their own actions,” he said. Kirby’s remarks echoed the statements made by the National Security Council s...

Sweden’s ruling political party is reportedly divided on whether to join NATO, as the women’s wing of the Social Democrats has called for keeping the country militarily neutral. Annika Strandhall, the country’s climate and environment minister, told Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that the women’s faction of the party opposes joining NATO. The faction has “a long history and struggle in matters concerning peace, disarmament, détente and military freedom of alliance,” said Strandhall, who is federal board chair of the women’s wing. We in the federal board have decided to remain in line with our congressional decisions that Sweden should be militarily non-aligned and stand outside NATO. Strandhall’s comments mark the first major political pushback against a proposal for Sweden to apply for membership of NATO and they come shortly before an assessment on the country’s security policy that is due out by May 13. The coalition government is scheduled to decide on the issue by May 2...

UK expats living in EU nations – frustrated by Brexit – have grown so disenchanted with their native country that some are even “embarrassed to be British,” a new academic study has shown. The survey, which was released on Wednesday and conducted by Lancaster and Birmingham universities, revealed that Brits living throughout the continent have been alienated by their home country’s breakaway from the EU, among other factors. “The long tale of Brexit is evident in its continuing impacts both on the way they live their lives and in its lasting significance for their sense of identity and belonging,” said study co-leader Michaela Benson, a sociology professor at Lancaster University. In fact, survey respondents showed far more “emotional attachment” to their country of residence and the EU than to the UK. About 75% said they are either “extremely” or “very” attached to the EU, while 59% had such feelings for their country of residence. Only about 30% expressed strong attachment to the ...