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Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost Putin's war effort in Ukraine
Russia at least 16 times smuggled gold out of Sudan, Africa's third largest producer of the precious metal, over the last year and a half.
Multiple interviews with high-level Sudanese and US officials and troves of documents reviewed by CNN paint a picture of an elaborate Russian scheme to plunder Sudan's riches in a bid to fortify Russia against increasingly robust Western sanctions and to buttress Moscow's war effort in Ukraine. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/07/29/a...ntl/index.html
That was an very informative article.
About the only good thing about the whole gold theft operation is that the money will end up in mostly private hands due to the corruption in Russia. Sanctions force Russia to buy what they need in the black market, if it can be bought at all.
If America withdraws somewhat from its involvement in world affairs as outlined in "The Accidental Superpower", these sorts of operations will become more numerous and Americans will become less and less interested. That attitude, however depends on the degree to which Presidential administrations create a self-sufficient America. There is loud clamoring for such a country now and since America has most of the energy and food resources in-country, it may happen relatively quickly.
Russia and China will simply evaporate as world super powers, says the author, and although they will still be able to make life difficult and expensive for their unfortunate neighbors and business partners, they will no longer be a world threat. Population decline will create hardship in the form of permanent recession in almost every country and militaries will necessarily become poorer and poorer. That can be a very, very good thing.
By the time this whole Ukraine thing is over for Russia, they will have become very poor indeed, with no hope of rebuilding their military to anything even close to what it was as recently as last year.
The US ambassador to the United Nations said there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and dissolve it from the world map entirely.”
Quote:
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday it had killed scores of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kyiv’s counter-offensive in the south and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines. It said more than 100 Russian soldiers and seven tanks had been destroyed in fighting on Friday in the Kherson region, the first major town captured by the Russians following their Feb. 24 invasion.
That speaks volumes....and this fits the MO of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group....the arrows are pointing in that direction....hopefully they can uncover evidence that can corroborate this event.
The ISW daily updates sure do pack alot of info into a compact space but I do like their stating their level of confidence on the information available. Cutting through the Fog of War is the most difficult reporting there is.
"...On Friday, after the prison attack, the Russian embassy in the UK tweeted that Azov "militants deserve execution, but death not by firing squad but by hanging, because they're not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death"."
"....The Ukrainian General Staff also noted that Ukrainian analysis of the damage to the building, intercepted phone conversations between Russian servicemen, the lack of reported shelling in Olenivka, and the absence of casualties among Russian personnel serving at the penal colony all point to a Russian deliberate “terrorist act” as the cause of the incident.[7] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) accused Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin of ordering the “terrorist act” without consulting with the Russian Defense Ministry, to conceal the embezzlement of funds allocated for the maintenance of Ukrainian POWs before an official inspection on September 1.The Ukrainian Office of the General Prosecutor reported that the explosion killed at least 40 and wounded 130 Ukrainian POWs. ISW is unable to assess the nature of the event or the party responsible for it with any confidence at this time...."
More:
Quote:
Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, told The New York Times that expert analysis of photos and videos released by Russia indicated that the center of the explosion was inside the building, with the building’s exterior practically undamaged.
“Any military expert will say the consequences of the explosion are not similar to a missile or artillery strike,” he said.
Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday maintained its claim that the Ukrainians had killed their own soldiers using precision-guided, American-made missiles, known as HIMARS, to strike the prison camp in Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.
The competing claims could not be immediately independently verified.
Quote:
Mr. Podoliak said that Ukrainian prisoners had been moved to the barracks where the explosion occurred only days before the incident and said it was suspicious that no Russian soldiers or workers at the prison were injured.
He accused Russia of moving debris from other locations where the Ukrainians have hit targets using HIMARS to the prison camp before the explosion.
Ukraine has asked for an international investigation into what it calls a "terrorist attack".
Yale University analysis: sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy. Contrary to Putin’s illusions that Russia can return to a Soviet-era state of economic selfsufficiency, the Russian economy has
significant
That link led to a really good article. Of course I think it's good because it says what I have been saying all along. I don't have Yale leadership and management backing me up, but the authors do.
Looking ahead, there is no path out of economic oblivion for Russia as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure against Russia, and The Kyiv School of Economics and McFaul-Yermak Working Group have led the way in proposing additional sanctions measures.
Defeatist headlines arguing that Russia’s economy has bounced back are simply not factual - the facts are that, by any metric and on any level, the Russian economy is reeling, and now is not the time to step on the brakes.
Russia is being destroyed. Smart people in the world see that as a good thing. China is watching, aghast, even if their blustering headlines do not show it.
The reports and analyses are a bit confusing.
I read that Russia is still doing pretty well, despite sanctions. Russia is now under almost 11,000 individual sanctions. Sanctions have a lot of loopholes.
They started trying to sanction proof their economy long time ago. They are also self-sufficient in basic food supplies.
The sanctions didn't lead to quick and complete collapse, but should weaken Russia economically over time. The "time", however, is not helping Ukraine now.
IMF expects a smaller GDP drop in Russia than earlier forecast.
Thanks to years of preparations, Russia has become far more self-sufficient, and has massive foreign exchange reserves. It has also reopened several companies that were previously under foreign management.
The Kremlin has time to find alternative sources of spare parts and components from countries willing to circumvent western sanctions.
The reports and analyses are a bit confusing.
I read that Russia is still doing pretty well, despite sanctions. Russia is now under almost 11,000 individual sanctions. Sanctions have a lot of loopholes.
They started trying to sanction proof their economy long time ago. They are also self-sufficient in basic food supplies.
The sanctions didn't lead to quick and complete collapse, but should weaken Russia economically over time. The "time", however, is not helping Ukraine now.
Russia increased oil exports to China and India.
The ruble is now the world's strongest performing currency. (!!)
Thanks to years of preparations, Russia has become far more self-sufficient, and has massive foreign exchange reserves. It has also reopened several companies that were previously under foreign management.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters into its fifth month, a common narrative has emerged that the
unity of the world in standing up to Russia has somehow devolved into a “war of economic attrition which is taking its toll on the west”, given the supposed “resilience” and even “prosperity” of the Russian economy. This is simply untrue – and a reflection of widely held but factually incorrect misunderstandings over how the Russian economy is actually holding up amidst the exodus of over 1,000 global companies and international sanctions.
That these misunderstandings persist is not surprising. Since the invasion, the Kremlin’s economic releases have become increasingly cherry-picked, selectively tossing out unfavorable metrics while releasing only those that are more favorable. These Putin-selected statistics are then carelessly trumpeted across media and used by reams of well-meaning but careless experts in building out forecasts which are excessively, unrealistically favorable to the Kremlin.
I mean this is coming from YALE...what do they know??
I mean this is coming from YALE...what do they know??
You have to be skeptical of anything these days. So called "experts" increasingly have agendas. But everything they say makes sense and the things the Russia bots say make zero sense.
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