Poor countries will suffer massive food shortages due to Russia’s war with Ukraine, which has cut off grain exports from Ukraine. Meanwhile, the world’s second biggest food exporter, the Netherlands, is planning to restrict farming in the name of protecting the environment, which will gravely damage the Netherlands’ highly efficient agricultural sector, and cut the number of livestock by an estimated 30%.
Germany’s largest residential landlord which owns around 490,000 properties is set to impose energy rationing that will cut heating to tenants at night in response to falling gas imports from Russia.
Vonovia “will cut the heating output between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. to 17 degrees Celsius,” reports Reuters, adding that the company hopes the measures will save up to 8% of heating costs.
Residents have already been informed that they will face huge spikes in heating bills as a result of Germany being forced to respond to Russia restricting supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Canada has imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia’s media machine designed to puncture disinformation campaigns about the war in Ukraine.
The sanctions target Russian news agencies, TV stations and journalists, including Petr Akopov, who has written approvingly about President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for the invasion of Ukraine, and Tigran Keosayan, a pro-Kremlin television presenter.
Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin warned that “when [U.S. lawmakers] attempt to appropriate our assets abroad, they should be aware that we also have something to claim back” in a Monday session of the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, according to the Washington Examiner. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.
In the last decade, Venezuela has quickly become a hub for Russian and Chinese cyber technologies in the Western hemisphere. In an effort to expand its grip on power, the Maduro regime in Caracas has allowed the country to become a laboratory for digital surveillance and authoritarian social control. Moscow and Beijing are thus able to project their global ambitions into the Western hemisphere by sending their cybersecurity know-how and infrastructure to Venezuela. In other words, it’s a win-win exchange for both sides as they carve out an anti-American cyber partnership in Latin America.
There is a slow-motion buildup to a hot war with Russia happening. The NATO and western alliance motive for the war is clear. The question is rapidly moving from “if” to “when.”
When it starts to show around the world that food is running out (the inevitable result of western nations chasing climate change energy policy) visible starvation is the moment when NATO and the Western alliance will attack Russia as a distraction. (Threadreader for you anti-Tweeter peoplekind)
“President Joe Biden apparently unwittingly financed his son’s participation in an escort ring tied to Russia,” reports the Washington Examiner. That’s what “records from a copy of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show.”
Documents on the laptop show that “Hunter Biden spent over $30,000 on escorts, many of whom were linked to ‘.ru’ Russian email addresses and worked with an ‘exclusive model agency’ called UberGFE during a 3 1/2 month period between November 2018 and March 2019.”
He was able to do this due “to Joe Biden committing to wiring him a total of $100,000 to help pay his bills from December 2018 through January 2019.” For example, “Joe Biden wired his son $5,000 while he was actively engaged with an UberGFE escort.”
Germany says that its citizens may have to ration the use of natural gas this winter as the country faces an energy “crisis” due to Russia reducing its supplies last week.
Berlin’s top financial official announced on Thursday that Europe’s largest economy was activating the second phase of its three-step emergency plan for natural gas consumption.
As the war between Russia and Ukraine drags on into its fourth month, it is increasingly apparent that neither side is likely to achieve a decisive victory any time soon. It is similarly apparent that simply letting the sides bleed each other white, on the assumption that the conflict will remain a limited one, is reckless. The fresh dispute between Moscow and Vilnius over Lithuania’s decision to severely limit the transport of Russian goods to Kaliningrad is merely the latest example of how easily the confrontation between the two sides may spin out of control. The costs of indefinite hostilities now loom large, ranging from the disastrous local impact on Ukraine itself to severe global economic consequences—particularly in the food and energy sectors—going far beyond Ukraine, and Europe more generally—with the potential to destabilize the international system itself.
Russian mercenaries have mounted a series of bloody attacks on artisanal mines in the lawless border zones between Sudan and Central African Republic (CAR) in an effort to plunder the region’s valuable gold trade, witnesses and experts have said.
Dozens of miners are thought to have died in at least three major attacks this year allegedly involving mercenaries working for the Wagner Group, a private military company that has been linked to the Kremlin by western officials. There are also reports of further attacks on mines in at least six other places across CAR.
When the United Nations General Assembly voted on March 2, 2022 on a resolution to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, 17 African countries abstained, eight countries did not vote at all and one country (Eritrea) voted against the resolution. When Russia was suspended from the UN Human Rights Council on April 7, African countries were even less willing to counter Russia: Nine African countries voted against suspending Russia, while 24 countries abstained.
Their views are popular but government repression and internal strife have stunted the influence of Russia’s far right — while some fight alongside Kremlin’s troops in Donbas others reject the war as fratricide.
A few dozen small groups make up Russia’s right-wing nationalist scene. They call themselves “Nationalist Movement,” “Conservative Russia,” or simply, “The Conservatives.” Some support President Vladimir Putin and are fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, others reject the Kremlin outright.
A glimpse of just how splintered Russia’s right-wing scene is was evidenced by the varying positions they took in 2014 in reaction to the pro-European Maidan movement and the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
A Russian spy tried and failed to secure an internship at the international criminal court (ICC) using the false identity of a Brazilian citizen that he had built up over more than a decade, according to Dutch intelligence.
Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, 36, accused of being an agent of Russia’s GRU military intelligence, flew to the Netherlands in April believing he had succeeded in an extraordinary attempt to gain inside access to the war crimes court, using the false identity of Viktor Muller Ferreira, 33.
However, Cherkasov had already been found out by western intelligence officers. When he arrived to take up his position, he was detained by Dutch immigration officials and sent back to Brazil, marking failure after years of preparation.
The Canadian government, which has repeatedly emphasized the need to politically and diplomatically isolate Moscow over its military assault on Ukraine, nevertheless sent a senior representative to take part in the Russian embassy’s Russia Day party on Friday in Ottawa.
The reception took place at the embassy on Charlotte Street – recently rebranded Free Ukraine Street by the City of Ottawa – even as protesters outside the gates decried Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country’s smaller neighbour.
