Thank you @SeventyTwoTrillion for all your effort. :sankara-salute:
If you have any useful resource links please tag me in a comment with the link:
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to this if you can, thank you.
Links
Time/Map: https://time.is/Ukraine
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ukraine/@49.1162725,31.7993839,7z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x40d1d9c154700e8f:0x1068488f64010!8m2!3d48.379433!4d31.1655799?hl=en
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1B1PLMhbHmG1aJ2-QNxHY1TksI6HlNhqF&ll=48.60777942568106%2C36.4496511633501&z=7
Leftist discussion threads:
https://hexbear.net/post/177324
https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/t03foy/genzedong_russiaukraine_master_discussion_thread/ :kitty-cri-texas:
https://lemmygrad.ml/
Twitter military updaters:
https://nitter.42l.fr/RWApodcast
https://nitter.net/ASBMilitary :kitty-cri:
https://nitter.net/Militarylandnet
https://nitter.net/MihajlovicMike
https://nitter.net/KofmanMichael
https://nitter.net/TadeuszGiczan/status/1498673348183744518
https://www.youtube.com/c/DefensePoliticsAsia/videos
obvious disclaimers about taking all of them with tonnes of salt etc
Global South Perspective: https://nitter.net/kiranopal_/status/1498723206496145413
Better war/propaganda analysis:
https://www.understandingwar.org
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
News updates:
https://www.cgtn.com/special/UkraineCrisis.html
Live: https://www.cgtn.com/special/Live-update-Ukraine-Russia-border-crisis.html
YT/Video in Ukraine:
https://www.youtube.com/c/PatrickLancasterNewsToday/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/RussellBentleyTe
Previous megathreads
!news@hexbear.net RSS Feed https://hexbear.net/feeds/c/news.xml
I'm fucking exhausted. I can't say anything counter to the western narrative without being accused of consuming Russian propaganda or being pro Russia. Meanwhile my friends can run with "NATO is a defensive organization" and "it's clearly Russian propaganda to emphasize and exaggerate the role of Nazis in Ukraine".
I don't argue with faceless people on the internet, but I do try and challenge my friends when dumb shit gets said. I'm starting to think if I want healthy relationships I just have to shut the hell up
It's hard, I'm legitimately afraid to say anything and anyway my blood boils at the hypocrisy. People irl actually blame Russia for Trump, as if Trump was even close to the suffering the US has caused in the world under each and every Democrat president.
I fucking hate smug liberalism so much, the fact checking, gaslighting, NPR brain idiots who think they are virtuous and intelligent by allowing neoliberals to program them toward hatred of The East. I've honestly just become too angry and righteous to reach anyone or change minds, and that's something I should work on for myself.
It's perfectly human reaction to current fash-hysteria, time will heal it (well maybe with just a tiny-miny bit of your help).
That's not a healthy relationship either. I know you shouldn't block out IRL friends flippantly, but never feel like you need to shut the hell up about being a moral person who actually gives a fuck for the benefit of others' comfort. If nothing else just don't forget that you are correct and if there is any moral arc to history, you will be vindicated
if I want healthy relationships I just have to shut the hell up
Possibly but here’s some ammo if you haven’t seen it https://hexbear.net/post/183325/comment/2291016
It’s kind of a smoking gun to my mind. Link to source vid is in the sub-comments. Zelensky and US plotted this whole thing.
There’s a video of Lindsey Graham and John McCain in Ukraine in 2016 saying “Russia needs to pay a heavy price and we (US) will provide you with everything you need to win.”
This is 100 percent a proxy war and the Ukrainian people - and Russian soldiers - are being sacrificed. Maybe some people think that is just and “worth it” and “cool” but make them say it.
There's this video about the BBC reporting on Ukrainian Nazis pre-war vs during the war. Not sure if this will help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvsnYJPqLSI
Yes. If you do want healthy relationships then you need to stfu about politics.
If me and the boys are sitting around playin video games and drinking beer and smoking, the absolute last thing that ever needs to be brought up is politics. Don’t be that guy.
Keep your personal convictions to yourself and be humble
US official: "We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisors about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth.”
Pure projection lmfao, while the ruble is almost back to pre-war levels, Europe is on the verge of recession and Ukraine's military is being stomped.
I'm confused about how that would even work? Like, Putin is inside some bubble where he can't see his own economic figures and frontline reports? Do these people think that for the last month he's been constantly sitting evilly at the end of a long table, with a messenger coming in every hour on the hour going "s-sir, here's o-our newest reports from the f-front and economic g-graphs" and he glances at them and goes "Excellent. Truly excellent. Your family shall see another winter yet."
westerners are so totally fucking movie-brained it's unbelievable.
It's genuinely insane to me how people read this war.
Russia opened up by essentially destroying tonnes of military resources and infrastructure but Ukraine (allegedly) shoots down a plane and everyone talks like it's game over for Russia.
I honestly would not be surprised if Russia comes out of this with most of its goals reached and everyone on Reddit calls it a Russian defeat because they didn't kill every last soldier or take over the whole country or something.
They have no idea how wars work and view it only through the lens of map painting games like Total War and the Paradox games.
That's given, nazis are absolutely going to "win" no matter what happens.
They think it's a war of conquest while it's actually more of a punitive expedition.
the western media has convinced themselves that putin has become unhinged and plans to annex all of ukraine and then keep going west, so absolutely any real outcome of this conflict over separatist regions will be panned as a complete humiliating defeat and proof that russia is a useless backwater that only barely demolished the largest military in europe without even dipping into their new-generation weaponry
lol at the replies
"you were wrong about your invasion prediction so therefore this graph youre presenting of the objective reality of publicly-available currency exchange data is fake news and can be safely ignored"
I also like "It doesn't count because they're propping it up." Like, yeah, that's the point, they have the means to prop it up.
kind of like when the US propped up the stock market for the entire year of 2020
oh fug I whatabouted
Wonder what they're "propping it up" with? :thinkin-lenin: Could it be the vast amounts of natural resources the world is heavily dependent on? Could it be the fact that Putin has demanded the west pay for these heavily demanded commodities in rubles?
Russia needs to construct additional pylons and the sanctions are stopping him
Really should have invested in rubles, then I could be an oligarch
I just picked the biggest number I could think of and made it my username
Central Bank of Russia announces that the ruble is now on a gold standard, and that 1 gram of gold = 5000 rubles. Therefore, 1 dollar = 70 -75 rubles.
Temperature likely to be 15 degrees below average across much of Europe (including Ukraine) for first half of April due to polar vortex.
Seem like a double whammy for EU in the upcoming week
Guy who puts "we accept Bitcoin" stickers on gas stations in hopes of destroying the petrodollar :very-smart:
- Ukraine has suspended the recruitment of mercenaries in the "Foreign Legion" due to a lack of weapons and low qualifications of militants who have no combat experience.
Excuse me Zelensky, but what the Reddit brigade lacks in combat experience, it makes up for with a strong knowledge of the full list of logical fallacies and can engage in tough verbal combat with the Russian forces. All they need is a few weeks of duolingo and they'll be ready for battle.
There are plenty of other wars and conflicts, we could rotate. I'd legit not be opposed to a conflict news thread maybe megathread for just c/news
have another great purge due to a site-breaking struggle session over something dumb like indoor cats vs outdoor cats.
There's no shortage of other proxy wars to choose from. The problem is the libs don't give a shit about any of the other wars going on so there's no hot takes to scream about. You can't have a megathread about the war in Yemen because no one in the Anglosphere cares about Yemen.
I mean you have a fair point, but I also think if there was the same amount of reporting by large english media outlets on Yemen; if we were able get constant updates/something new to talk about everyday I feel like there would be a megathread
anyways it looks like a peace deal in Yemen is imminent since both the Houthis and Saudis declared a full truce on offensive actions
The Vatican Bank transferred 10 million euros to buy rubles from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in payment for gas supplied by Russia, media report
Everything was done according to the scheme established by the government of the Russian Federation.
Imao, someone smells which way the wind is blowing
Breaking: 3D games are being banned in NATO countries, due to their use of the Z-axis
I will post this article by nakedcapitalism before my battery dies, with another interview with Michael Hudson:
I will summarize the interviewer questions in brackets.
spoiler
[What is dollar hegemony?]
Dollar hegemony seems to be the position that has just ended as of this week very abruptly. Dollar hegemony was when America’s war in Vietnam and the military spending of the 1960s and 70s drove the United States off gold. The entire US balance of payments deficit was military spending, and it began to run down the gold supply. So, in 1971, President Nixon took the dollar off gold. Well, everybody thought America has been controlling the world economy since World War I by having most of the gold and by being the creditor to the world. And they thought what is going to happen now that the United States is running a deficit, instead of being a creditor.
Well, what happened was that, as I’ve described in Super Imperialism, when the United States went off gold, foreign central banks didn’t have anything to buy with their dollars that were flowing into their countries – again, mainly from the US military deficit but also from the investment takeovers. And they found that these dollars came in, the only thing they could do would be to recycle them to the United States. And what do central banks hold? They don’t buy property, usually, back then they didn’t. They buy Treasury bonds. And so, the United States would be spending dollars abroad and foreign central banks didn’t really have anything to do but send it right back to buy treasury bonds to finance not only the balance of payments deficit, but also the budget deficit that was largely military in character. So, dollar hegemony was the system where foreign central banks keep their monetary and international savings reserves in dollars and the dollars are used to finance the military bases around the world, almost eight hundred military bases surrounding them. So, basically central banks have to keep their savings by weaponizing them, by militarizing them, by lending them to the United States, to keep spending abroad.
This gave America a free ride. Imagine if you went to the grocery store and you just paid by giving them an IOU. And then the next week you want to buy more groceries and you give them another IOU. And they say, wait a minute, you have an IOU before and you say, well just use the IOU to pay the milk company that delivers, or the farmers that deliver. You can use this as your money and just you’ll as a customer, keep writing IOU’s and you never have to pay anything because your IOU is other people’s money. Well, that’s what dollar hegemony was, and it was a free ride. And it all ended last Wednesday when the United States grabbed Russia’s reserves having grabbed Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and Venezuela’s foreign reserves and those of other countries.
And all of a sudden, this means that other countries can no longer safely hold their reserves by sending their money back, depositing them in US banks or buying US Treasury Securities, or having other US investments because they could simply be grabbed as happened to Russia. So, all of a sudden this last week, you’re seeing the world economy fracture into two parts, a dollarized part and other countries that do not follow the neoliberal policies that the United States insists that its allies follow. We’re seeing the birth of a new dual World economy.
[Are other countries starting to shed the dollar? What about the treasury bonds that have been basically funding our domestic economy? Are the central banks shedding those bonds?]
No, they haven’t been funding our domestic economy because the Federal Reserve can create its own money to fund the domestic economy. We don’t need to borrow from foreign countries to fund our economy. We can print it ourselves. What the dollar hegemony does is fund the balance of payments deficit. It funds our spending in other economies, our spending abroad. It doesn’t help our economy, but it does help us get a free ride from other countries. The more dollars we spend in making a military base, all these military expenditures get turned over to the local Central Bank that turns and sends them back to the Federal Reserve or deposits them in US bank accounts. So, it’s the international free ride we get, not a domestic free ride.
Well, figures are only available at the end of each month, reported at the end of each month and then there’s a two-month delay, so we don’t have any idea what’s happening. But I’ve been talking to people all over the world in the last few days and the consensus is that everybody is now deciding the only place, certainly if you’re China or Russia or Kazakhstan or you’re in the Eurasian orbit, South Asia, East Asia, you realize, wait a minute, if all we have to do is something like Allende did in Chile or all we have to do is refuse to sell off our industry to American investors and they can treat us like they’ve treated Venezuela. So you can imagine that everybody’s watching this and there’s an expectation that as a result of the war in Ukraine, that’s really America’s NATO war, that this is going to create a balance-of-payments crisis throughout the whole Global South as their energy prices go up, oil prices soar, food prices are going to soar and this is going to make it impossible for them to pay their foreign debts unless they go without food and energy. Obviously, this is a political crisis. That is, the only result can be to split the world in two.
[Are we seeing the end result of de-dollarization? People have said it's been getting faster and could happen quickly.]
Yes, and nobody expected that it would happen this quickly. Nobody expected that it would be the United States itself that ends de-dollarization. People thought that, well, most of the sales of my book describing this super imperialism were bought by the Defense Department and they looked at it as a how -to-do-it book. And I was brought down to the White House and the Defense Department to explain to them how imperialism works.
I had expected that maybe China, Russia, and other countries would say, “We don’t want to give America free rides.” And yet it was the United States itself that broke all of this, by grabbing Russia’s reserves right after it grabbed Afghanistan’s and Venezuela’s reserves.
Nothing like this has happened in modern history, even in the 19th century wars. In the Crimean War in the mid-19th century, Russia, England and Germany, everybody kept paying the debts to the countries they were fighting against because the idea is that debts were sacrosanct. And now, all of a sudden, not only are debts are not sacrosanct, but countries can just grab foreign savings. I guess the problem began after the Shah of Iran fell and the United States grabbed Iran’s money and refused to let it pay its bond holders and started the whole war against Iran for trying to take control of its own oil resources. So, all of a sudden, the United States grabbing this has ended what everybody thought was an immutable morality.
[So, since the Shah fell in Iran basically, the US has increasingly been using economic warfare - they call it sanctions but it's really coercive measures - and that's set the stage for today?]
Yes, the International Monetary Fund has operated, basically, as an arm of the Defense Department. It’s been bailing out dictatorships, bailing out Ukraine, lending money to countries whose client oligarchies America wants to support, and not lending any money to countries that America doesn’t want to support, like Venezuela. So, its job is basically to promote neoliberal policies, and to insist that other countries balance their payments by undergoing a class war against labor.
The conditionality that the IMF insists upon for foreign borrowing is that countries devalue their currency and lower their wage rates and pass anti-labor legislation. Well, when you lower the currency’s exchange rate, what do you really lower? Food prices are set in dollars internationally, raw materials prices are, and prices for machinery and many goods. The only economic variable devalued is domestic labor (and domestic rents). The IMF has been using this kind of junk-economic free-trade policy as a means of keeping the wage rates in the Global South down. You could say it’s a financialization of an ultimately military conflict to promote neoliberal ideology.
[And you mentioned lowering wages, which is favourable to US businesses and investors?]
It’s even worse than that. The central aim of the World Bank is to prevent other countries from growing their own food. That is the prime directive. It will only make loans for countries to earn foreign currency and it has insisted ever since about 1950 that countries that borrow from it must shift their agriculture to plantation export crops to grow tropical crops that cannot be grown in the United States for environmental and weather reasons. And the countries must not grow their own food and must not undertake Land Reform or small family-based farming. So, it insisted on foreign-owned agribusiness in large plantation agriculture. And what that means is that countries that have borrowed for agricultural loans have not been loans to produce their own food. It’s been to compete with each other producing tropical export crops while being increasingly dependent on the United States for their food supplies, and for their grain. And that’s part of the corner they painted them into that is going to be creating such a world famine this summer.
[continued below]
spoiler
[This has been driving other countries to seek alternatives. Russia was kicked out of SWIFT and threatened China, so the US is driving countries out of its orbit?]
That’s the whole point. Well, fortunately they’ve been threatening to kick Russia out of SWIFT for the last two years. And so, Russia and China have been putting in place an alternative system. So, they almost pretty smoothly are shifting over to using their own currency with each other instead of using the dollar. And that’s part of what has ended the dollar standard and ended dollar hegemony.
If the way you have dollar hegemony is to have other countries deposit your money in your banks and handle their oil trade with each other by financing it in dollars, but all of a sudden you grab all their dollars and you don’t let them use US banks to pay for their oil and their trade with each other, then they’re going to shift to a different system. And that’s exactly what has ended the dollar hegemony, as you just pointed out.
[Let's get into the current situation a bit more. You mentioned the food crisis?]
Well, as President Putin and Lavrov have said, the fighting in Ukraine isn’t really over Ukraine at all. It’s a fight over what shape the world will take and whether the world will be unipolar or, as it now appears, multipolar. The US, for the last year before it began to escalate attacks on the Russian-speaking Ukraine, was trying to block Europe from, and especially Germany, from buying Russia gas and oil.
There are three pillars of American foreign policy that base American power. The first pillar is the oil industry. That’s the most powerful industry next to banking in the United States. And United States throughout the 20th century, along with Britain and France, have controlled the world oil trade.
That has benefited the United States in two ways. Number one, we are a major oil exporter because we have a big oil and gas industry. But, number two, our US companies control the foreign oil trade. So that if some country, say Chile or Venezuela, does something that the United States doesn’t like, like growing their own food or pursuing a socialist policy, the United States can simply cut off their oil and sanction them. Without oil, they don’t have energy to drive the cars or power their factories or drive their GDP.
So, the American war in Ukraine is really a war against Germany. Russia is not the enemy. Germany and Europe are the enemy and the United States made it very clear. This is a war to lock in our allies so they cannot trade with Russia. They cannot buy Russian oil. They must be dependent on American oil for which they will have to pay three or four times as much. They will have to be dependent on American liquefied natural gas for fertilizer. If they don’t buy American gas for fertilizer, and we don’t let them buy from Russia, then they cannot put fertilizer on the land and the crop yield will fall by about 50% without fertilizer.
So, the, the war in Ukraine was to make Russia look so bad by defending itself against the attacks by the Ukrainian right wing in the Russian-speaking areas that the US has said, look at how bad Russia is. You’ve got to forego buying oil and gas or grain or titanium or palladium or anything else from Russia.
And so, the effect of this war has been to lock the NATO countries into dependency on the United States because the great fear of the United States in the last few years is that as America is de-industrializing, these countries are looking to the part of the world that’s growing, China, Central Asia, Russia, South Asia. And the United States feared losing control of its satellites mainly in NATO, but also in South America. So, it sanctioned and blocked their ability to buy non-US energy. They’re blocking their ability to buy non-US food, blocking their ability to invest in or use their surplus to get prosperous by investing in China, Russia, or Eurasia.
So, this is basically a war of America to lock in its allies. Well, the result is that oil prices, now that you can’t get Russian oil, are going to go way, way up, and that is going to create a crisis for many of the Global South countries that are oil deficit countries. The fertilizer companies in Germany have already been closing down because they say, without Russian gas, we make our fertilizer out of gas, and if we can’t get Russian gas, we can’t produce the fertilizer that. So, world fertilizer prices are going way up.
Russia is the largest grain exporter. And now that grain exports are being blocked by the sanctions, the question is, what are North Africa and the Near East going to do that have been depending very largely on Russian grain exports? Their food prices are going to go way up.
You can imagine just from seeing what’s happening in the United States when gas prices go up here, food prices go up here, not only does it put a squeeze on individual family budgets, but throughout the world, it puts the squeeze on the balance of payments of other countries. And so, they’re desperate. How are they going to pay the higher prices unless they borrow even more money from US banks?And of course, that’s another arm of US policy. The US banks hope to make a killing in making loans at rising interest rates to third world countries.
And of course, arms exports. NATO in the last few days has agreed to make American arms exports to increase their purchase of arms. So, the stock market has been soaring in the last few days. They say this, the world famine, the world crisis is a bonanza for Wall Street. The oil company stocks are going way up, the military, industrial stocks, Boeing Raytheon way up, the bank stocks. This is America’s great power grab, and it realizes, when it can create a crisis and tell the Global South or poor countries your money or your life. This is how most of the great property grabs and conquests have been made throughout history.
[And Biden said earlier that food prices are going to go up and that's just the price we have to pay.]
Well, what he should have said, this is the price they have to pay us. That’s how the stock market took it. When he said this is the price we have to pay, this is the price consumers have to pay to the American oil companies, to the American Agricultural food distribution companies. It’s the price other countries have to pay to the United States.
This is to say to the rest of the world, you know, we’ve got you completely, I don’t know how to put it, what phrase to use, but you don’t have any choice, your money or your life. We’ve got you trapped. And he’s crowing over the fact that this resulting inflation is exactly what was intended by the war in Ukraine that has led to the isolation of Russia and other countries following a non-US policy.
[More and more countries - in South America, in Africa, etc - are looking to China for investments and partnerships. Do you see all those countries outright shunning the US and moving into China's orbit?]
That is exactly what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is, China’s investment is very different from US investment. US and European investment will give financial investments to countries at interest that the whole country is liable for to repay. China’s investment is taking place by means of the Belt and Road Initiative and direct capital investment in developing ports, infrastructure and railways. And instead of having a general financial claim against these countries, China has an equity claim, a property claim backed by the physical means of production that it puts in place.
Well, this summer, when countries say they cannot afford to pay their foreign debts, the United States has as a backup plan, okay, let’s write down everybody’s debts, government debts, to each other so that governments can pay the private bond holders and the banks. And they’re going to try to, essentially the US will forgive its debts so that Latin America can pay Chase Manhattan Bank and Citibank and the bondholders. And China is going to say, wait a minute, we don’t have any financial claim against these countries. We didn’t lend them dollars. We didn’t lend them our foreign currency at all. We built assets there and the assets are still in place. There’s no problem there.
So,the question is, whose debts are going to be written down to whom?And all of this is going to lead to, as you can imagine, destabilization. The United States is probably going to try to push regime change on countries that try to trade with China as it’s already threatened China with. And the more sanctions the United States imposes on Latin America, Africa and the Near East and South Asia, they will be creating a crisis, but the crisis will lead the rest of the world to treat the United States in the same way that Russia and China are treating the United States as just the enemy threatening the entire world with their neoliberal power grab. So, the United States in a way is isolating itself from the rest of the world by declaring war on it.
[continued below]
spoiler
[And that's not good for the US. How will this impact the climate crisis, which we're way behind in?]
Here’s what Biden said, in effect: “We’re way behind in the pace of global warming.” American policy is based on increasing and accelerating global warming. That has been a central point of US policy ever since I joined the Hudson Institute in the 1970s. The United States is opposing any attempt at trying to preventglobal warming because you can imagine what would happen if other countries go to solar energy and renewable energy. That will reduce their dependency on the US oil industry. If you look at American policy, it is being run basically by the oil industry to establish dependence of other countries on oil. Then obviously the last thing the United States is ever going to do is prevent global warming. So, if we’re behind in global warming, it’s that the sea level is not rising fast enough. The world is not getting hot fast enough not to lock in foreign reliance on America’s oil.
And I think you’ve seen what in the last few weeks, what President Biden has said, the fuel of the future is coal and oil. Right now, he’s in Poland. I think he’s suggesting that Polish coal, which is one of its major products, should be used in Europe instead of Russian gas. So, American foreign policy is based on the accelerated use of coal and oil, not renewable energy.
Now, that’s why I think the environmental movement should become an anti-war movement and the movement against this neoliberal dollar hegemony. You’re not going to avoid global warming unless you stop the dominance of American foreign policy by the oil industry.
[And we're seeing that shift, of the environmental movement realizing that you need to address the US military. So, to close, how do you predict things going in the US?]
Well, the United States has been getting a free ride internationally. So, much of the prosperity here has been the result of our not having to pay for our own military spending, not having to pay for many of the foreign investments that we’ve got that supply the US with low priced foreign raw materials. All that is being ended by President Biden’s policy, which, of course, the Republicans support just as much as the Democrats.
So, there’s really a political movement that is ending up impoverishing, I’d say, 99% of Americans. While the Federal Reserve saves the stock and bond market for the 1%, there’s going to be a huge squeeze that’s going to force, I think, most American families into debt leading to probably a close down of a lot of businesses just as you had the Covid crisis closing down a lot of businesses. You’re going to have the rising fuel prices, the rising food prices utterly force families into default and an inability to be self-supporting without either running into debt or selling their homes and becoming renters.
Well, and nobody can really ,it’s really Uncharted Territory because nobody thought there was an alternative. The economic view was as Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no alternative.” Well, now, America’s forced the world to find its own alternative.
So if a multipolar world does arise, won’t the global south still be exploited by more powerful nations, just to a lesser extent?
Well, strictly speaking, yes. All relations to the working class under capitalism are exploitative by definition. But the difference should be very significant.
Economically:
- Medvedev said that Russia will supply food and crops to only friendly countries, both in rubles and their national currency. He says that these food exports are a "quiet but formidable weapon".
- According to the Central Bank of Russia, for the first time since February 24th, the Russian banking system is in structural liquidity surplus.
- Last year, Brazil's central bank quadrupled it foreign reserves in yuan. China represents 28% of Brazil's international trade, more than double that of the US, its next largest trade partner.
- The Eurozone's inflation was 7.5% in March, an all-time high.
- 300,000 Ukrainian refugees arrive in Germany.
- Russia "will not ask Europe to lift sanctions".
Russian Gas:
- Notifications about the new procedure for paying for gas in rubles are sent to counterparties today, says Gazprom.
- Slovakia says it's fine with buying gas from Russia in rubles.
- The CEO of Germany's largest chemical company, BASF, says that he strongly opposed the embargo on Russian energy supplies saying that it would lead Germany to the most serious crisis since the end of WW2.
- Hungary's PM, Orban, says that Europe will not be able to replace Russian gas with expensive American gas. "It is not necessary to count on the volume of LNG transportation across the ocean, so there is no alternative to gas supplies to Hungary." ... "It's not about putting on a sweater in the evening and reducing the heating a little, but about the fact that if there are no energy sources from Russia, then there will be no energy in Hungary at all."
- Japan rejects Russia's demand to pay for gas in rubles.
- Gazprom has terminated its participation in the Germany company GAZPROM Germania GmbH and all its assets. Earlier, the media wrote about possible nationalization of Gazprom and Rosneft subsidiaries in Germany.
- Russia starts pumping more gas to China than previously planned.
- Von Der Leyen apparently left on hold for 6 hours trying to open Russian bank account so EU can make ruble transfers. I feel like this is an April Fool's joke but I don't fucking know anymore tbh. If anything here is like "yeah, that's actually an April Fools joke, why is it here?" then I have been owned; let me know and I'll edit the post.
Diplomatically:
Ukraine/Russia:
- Lavrov says that there's been "much more understanding" of the situation with Crimea and Donbass from Ukraine.
- The President of South Ossetia is going to Donbass.
- The Investigative Committee of Russia charged 22 Ukrainian military officials with genocide of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.
- Russian Foreign Ministry says that political dialogue with NATO is currently "impossible" and "makes no sense".
- The air strike of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the oil depot in Belgorod “does not create comfortable conditions for the continuation of negotiations" says Peskov.
- Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service: "Ukraine has informed Britain that it does not intend to comply with the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Russian Prisoners of War. ... The West is not only aware of Kiev's gross violations of international humanitarian law, but is also trying to help it avoid responsibility."
Elsewhere:
- The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that NATO should have been dissolved after the collapse of the USSR. It also said that the UN should study and give a professional assessment of the material provided by Russia about the US biological laboratories in Ukraine.
- EU's high representative of foreign policy, Josep Borrell, says that he "regrets" the countersanctions on EU leaders by Russia.
- Putin will talk to "several" global leaders today, though only Erdogan and Lukashenko have been named as one of them.
- Georgia says that the recall of Ukraine's diplomat in Georgia due to its "refusal to help Ukraine" is an "insult to the authorities, but also a significant part of society"
- The US says that it will not recognize Russia's attempts to divide Georgia's territory (and therefore, South Ossetia joining Russia).
- "A new reality is taking shape: the unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past and a multipolar world is being born. Nobody on Earth will be considered a second-rate player. All nations are equal and sovereign." - Lavrov
- US deputy NSA went to India the day before Sergei Lavrov's arrival to tell them to please not "create mechanisms that prop up the rouble and that attempt to undermine the dollar-based financial system", saying that the US is "ready to help India diversify both energy supplies and military hardware" by supplying India with American energy and weapons.
- Pakistan's Prime Minister apparently has proof of foreign funding to overthrow him in a regime change.
- Spanish government calls for an abrupt end to Spain's decades-long position of neutrality over the Western Sahara, by calling for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed region. This risks ending Spain's commercial relations with its biggest provider of natural gas, Algeria. Algeria is also Italy's second largest supplier of gas after Russia.
Militarily:
Russia:
- Ukraine hits a fuel depot in Belgorod (city), which is relatively close to Kharkov in Ukraine. Two Ukrainian helicopters came in at low altitude and hit the depot. While it is very difficult to detect helicopters at very low altitudes, it is still embarrassing for Russia - but far from a catastrophe. Some cope on Russian Telegram but not as much as I thought there would be.
- A village in Belgorod (oblast) was also hit - this time, a printing house.
- An object - perhaps a drone - was shot down over Belgorod.
Ukraine in general:
- Russia continues to post footage of captured/destroyed Ukrainian equipment.
- A surrendered Ukrainian soldier says that Azov shot not only civilians in Mariupol, but also military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
- Kyiv mayor says that "huge" battles are being fought to the north and east of Ukraine's capital.
- At the same time, Al Jazeera reports that Moscow does appear to be withdrawing units around Kyiv and Chernihiv.
Eastern Ukraine:
- Ukraine continues shelling Donetsk city - this time, a school (but with no casualties - not sure if anybody was inside)
- Ukraine confirms that Izyum is under Russian control and that Russian troops are pushing in the direction of Slovyansk. This was announced by the Russians several days ago.
Southern Ukraine:
- According to Russia, there were three helicopters that flew into Mariupol. They were allowed to enter the city, and then the plan was to shoot them down when they left. One helicopter was hit by a Stinger (two survivors); one was hit and fell into the sea (no survivors); and one, after seeing what happened to the previous two, returned back to the city.
- The civilians of Mariupol wished Azov to feel all the suffering that the neo-Nazis have inflicted on them. "Damn Poroshenko, Zelensky, and all their henchmen" says one resident.
Dipshittery and Cope:
- Fukuyama says that "We could be facing the end of "the end of history""
