Russia and economic war by the west #2

Indian MFA had a pretty interesting comment @re the "reexporting of Russian oil".
Well ... he said that in general, there is an oil shortage in the global market while the demand is growing.
So India would have been stupid selling the product in demand&shortage, rather than keeping it for themselves.
As we all know that they are doing that, seems like Indian officials give a damn what the west will think or comment.
Western leverage is getting weaker and weaker, and thing is getting clear only by observing.

New entry instead of edit, as funny & interesting :



Something I have addressed a while ago. Swiss is dancing on a rope but seems that common sense prevails.

Edit :
I was nit sure where to put that, as mostly economics but geopolitics either ...
So @Garry or @George - if you find better place please instruct.



A VERY interesting combo of the latest Putin address to the general assembly versus Zhyrinovsky calls made for years ...
It seems that finally, the Russian regime is just doing what he recommended years ago.
Fascinating.
It is in Russian but can be translated.
One of the brightest minds, sure he was.

Something I have addressed a while ago. Swiss is dancing on a rope but seems that common sense prevails.

Hilarious... Switzerland not bowing to western pressure to break their own banking rules and refuse to steal money from one of their customers and use it to pay Kiev is not about siding with Putin or Russia, it is about following their own bloody rules on banking which are pretty clear to everyone except the lying cheating west who steal funds from countries all the time and normally keep them for themselves like Venezuelas gold stolen by Britain.

Switzerland not sending weapons to the Ukraine is not the same as supporting Russia either because they are not sending weapons to Russia.

Whereas the west is opposing Russia by getting involved in the conflict by sending weapons to one side... the nazis.

Switzerland doesn't mind helping nazis when it suits them of course, but not this time around.

Swiss companies already left the Russian market which is an anti Russian move so they are not actually neutral, but this bullshit about not stealing from their customers including Russia is not support for Russia, it is self preservation... who will keep money in a bank that might decide to freeze and seize it tomorrow for what ever reason.

Not sending weapons is not supporting Russia either.

What a shit video.

It doesn't have a neutral stance because its companies left Russia and it is cooperating with sanctions against Russia too... those are hostile acts of a non neutral party.

Prices averaged $74 a barrel in first weeks after price cap

Ironically Russian companies will now be shipping and insuring the oil deliveries so they will actually be making more of the money on oil exports because the shipping companies from europe and the insurance companies from europe used to make money on shipping Russian oil... now all the money can go to Russia...

What makes me wonder, is the intensity of these "peace talks" runs.
Everyone wants to be a successful father.

Again true however Im afraid that western insurers might demand that they void port insurance if Russian ship docks . What can make this problematic... Im not sure Russians will find a workaround here. And if a ship docks anyway "sudden accident" can happen an oil spill or gas explosion,,,

First of all such accidents can happen to anyones ships at any time... would not be hard to pick the most hard core anti Russian western insurer and sink a few ships they have insured every week to deter business and to make things costly for them.

Western ports not allowing Russian insured ships just does themselves out of business and Russia can simply say only Russian ships with Russian or Chinese or Indian insurance can carry Russian oil or gas or material... so western ports can make the choice for themselves.

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that the Swiss Confederation, after joining the anti-Russian sanctions,

Once Swiss companies left Russia and they joined the anti Russia sanctions then they are no longer neutral... and Finland and Sweden are in the same boat too... no going back now.

Peace talks is a misnomer as long as Kiev expects to get all its territory back including the Crimea... they will be lucky to keep Kiev.

Russian aluminum will save the American economy, by Sergey Savchuk for RIANOVOSTI, 02.27.2023.

While the European Union agreed on the tenth package of sanctions against our country on the fourth day, another insidious blow was dealt from across the ocean. The White House announced that the United States is imposing a 200 percent duty on the import of Russian aluminum and products from March 10. This news, as usual, was immediately picked up by all sorts of free and democratic resources, presenting it as another murderous sanctions from hell.

But in order to understand the true prospects of the ongoing processes, it is necessary to know the basic numbers and mechanics of aluminum production and trade. To date, this metal is second only to steel in demand and has penetrated almost all areas of modern production, reaching a global output of 65 million tons per year.

Contrary to the crafty Western theory of the free market, where there is no place for monopoly and everything is regulated by free competition, the vast majority of specialized enterprises in any country in the world are vertically integrated holdings that include production at three key stages: bauxite mines, alumina and aluminum smelters. Russia is no exception in this regard. There are several dozen aluminum producers in our country, among which the major ones include Volgograd (VgAZ), Irkutsk (Rusal-IrkAZ), Kandalaksha (KAZ), Boguchansky (BoAZ), Novokuznetsk (NkAZ), Krasnoyarsk (Rusal Krasnoyarsk), Bratsk ("Rusal Bratsk") and Sayanogorsk (SAZ) aluminum plants. Among the medium-sized ones, one can note the Ankuver plant ( Vladivostok ) and "Permstvetmet" (Perm).

Even with such a variety of powerful enterprises, our country is not the main world producer. This title rightfully belongs to China , which, by a huge margin from other competitors, produces about 37 million tons of aluminum in ingots and in the form of other products. Russia is in fierce competition for second place with India : both countries produced 3.6 million each in 2021. Canada is on their heels with 3.1 million tons.

And now let's look very carefully at the list of the world's main exporters of aluminum products. This will help us to meaningfully move on to the next part of our conversation.

As you might expect, China is the world's top seller. The Celestial Empire sells almost $35 billion worth of aluminum every year. Next come Germany (18.8 billion), Canada and the United States (12 billion each), India (nine billion) and only then Russia with a very modest figure of 8.7 billion dollars of turnover. About Germany some other time, but Canada and the USA are very interesting to us.

The North American team, with the support of loyal vassals in Europe , attacked the Russian Rusal with sanctions for a reason, and long before the start of the NWO. The Russian company owns the richest deposits of bauxite in many parts of the world, and it was vital for the Americans and Canadians to change this state of affairs.

At the same time, as is absolutely always the case in Western unions, all such associations are situational, unreliable, and Bolivar never takes out two.

In June 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Canadian aluminum producers. Just like in the current situation with Russian metallurgists, protective duties of 250 percent were introduced on any core products. Canada then estimated its losses at $12.5 billion. Despite the ostentatious unity, the Canadians staged such a huge scandal that the very existence of the US-Canadian-Mexican trade union NAFTA was threatened . Ottawa and Mexico City directly threatened to break off trade relations with Washington , which nevertheless lifted the restrictions a year later. However, the desired result was obtained during this time.

We have repeatedly said that any geopolitical or economic event cannot be considered in isolation from other processes. The world economy is a complex system of communicating vessels, checks and balances, where major players build multi-level and multi-way strategies.

So while Western pundits and Ukrainian television are excited about the fresh sanctions against Russian aluminum, two banks that are part of the US Federal Reserve institutions have published calculations that show that the likelihood of a severe recession in the US economy in the coming months is 63 percent . This is the worst figure in the last forty years.

What follows is simple arithmetic.

As of 2022, the US imported 5.9 million tons of aluminum. Russia exported 3.5 million, of which only 210 thousand tons went to the United States. At the same time, our exports to North America have been falling for a long time and systematically, while in general they are growing all over the world. According to the Federal Customs Service of Russia, in 2021 the volume of foreign deliveries increased by a third and amounted to $8.7 billion in monetary terms. The conclusion here is simple: the introduction of US duties on the Russian aluminum sector will have almost no effect.

What is the essence of what is happening and why these gestures of the White House?

It's all pretty prosaic. As in the case of Canada three years ago, the US administration is frantically trying, if not to save its economy, then at least to minimize future problems. Blocking import routes in the presence of own production should spur a huge production cluster, a key employer and tax payer. A simple search suggests that the main consumers of aluminum in the United States are industries such as locomotive, railcar and shipbuilding, the automotive industry (remember, America is the most automotive nation in the world), the space industry, the production of electronics, construction and, of course, the production of lines transmission lines in all their vast diversity.
Just a year ago, the Biden administration launched a national infrastructure modernization program with $300 billion just to replace old power lines. That is, Washington staged a circus show for its allies, portraying unity and allegedly unbending anti-Russian will, but in reality, such sanctions are worthless. And the main thing lies in something completely different, namely, in the desire to lay straws under your unpleasantly losing weight sides and turn virtual money into physical infrastructure.

The literary professor Preobrazhensky, if he lived in our time, would certainly recommend not reading Western newspapers in the morning. And if you really read, then only with complex knowledge, so as not to pass for a simple-minded fool.

https://ria.ru/20230227/alyuminiy-1854433388.html

This video may give you all an idea of what might be up behind the scenes with potential Russian economic warfare tools.

These guys in my link are in the bullion market, primarily silver. The main guy speaking is very well respected and knows the financial markets inside out and back to front. Due to a possible related gold price increase, they have been closely watching the Russian's moves towards backing a replacement of the US$ in international trading, perhaps digital backed by gold.

But that is not what my post is about.

Almost mentioned just in passing, is a brief mention of Western vulnerability. As he says, it is not military but targeted economic moves that are likely to bring down countries like the US, that are reliant on complex financial systems. It could also be regarded as a financial blitzkrieg given its potential speed in our connected World.

Start the video at 35 mins for the relevant segment.

“Putin wins? The world order is changing in his favor”: The Spectator writes: apart from the outright US satellites, no one in the world has gone against Russia. This can already be considered a defeat for Washington.

“Last March, 25 African states out of 54 abstained or did not vote for a UN resolution condemning Russia, despite enormous pressure from Western powers. Their refusal to unequivocally side with Ukraine was a testament to Russia's ongoing diplomatic efforts in the developing world.

North African countries helped Russia offset the economic impact of Western sanctions. Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt imported Russian diesel fuel and chemicals.
Putin cultivates an alliance of nations that feel victimized by Western imperialism and puts Russia at the head of it. “They don't want equal cooperation. They want to rob us,” he says. This message is equally well received in Asia, where more than a third of countries have refused to condemn Russia at the UN, as well as in Central and South America, where waves of anti-Western sentiment continue to rise.
As former Indian Ambassador to Russia, Varma put it last week: “We have not accepted the Western interpretation of the conflict. In fact, there are very few people in the Global South who want to do this.”
The prevailing idea is that it is America and its allies that are the sources of global upheaval and instability. The setbacks in Afghanistan and the idea that the war in Ukraine was due to NATO expansion have fueled sympathy for the idea that Putin is simply opposing the West.
Moscow presents itself as a bastion of stability in a world gone mad. Its propaganda is backed up by politics and trade, using oil, gas, metals, and crops as temptations to play the Russian game.
China, which has called for negotiations and is hosting Putin's ally Lukashenko. Relations between Russia and China will always be difficult, but the invasion of Ukraine and the reaction of the West have created huge opportunities for their cooperation.”


https://t.me/Slavyangrad/35557

Russia manages to import chips despite Western sanctions, 03.03.2023.

A year after the conflict in Ukraine, Russia has also managed to circumvent sanctions on imports of chips and semiconductors. This is despite the fact that several Western officials have repeatedly stated that these Western measures against Russia are destroying it.

By the end of 2022, Russia managed to restore the average monthly volume of imports of chips and electronic components to the level of 2021, despite the sanctions applied on this technology sector, data published by The Wall Street Journal suggest. Russian imports of electronic components were even higher than before the conflict in Ukraine, as Matthew Klein, an American economist and expert on sanctions, points out, adding that exports to Russia began to recover since mid-2022.

Chinese companies now supply most cars, smartphones, computers, but also heavy equipment such as construction machinery and trucks. However, electronic chips are probably the most important from the Russian perspective. China supplied semiconductors worth $179 million in 2022, up from $74 million in 2021, as indicated by Chinese customs data.

Russia became the most sanctioned country in history, with sanctions designed to damage Moscow's economy and technological potential. What's more, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced that bans on the supply of electronic products should paralyze the Russian arms industry.

However, the data shows that this has not happened. Russia has managed to get around the sanctions of the technology sector, despite the fact that at the end of March 2022 Joe Biden, US President, proclaimed that Russia would return to the levels of the nineteenth century due to the Ukrainian conflict.

In September of the same year, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, added on her own that Russian industry was in ruins: "The Russian army uses dishwasher and refrigerator chips to repair its military equipment, because there were no semiconductors anymore."

Clearly, the arguments and speeches have fallen by their own weight, Russia has resisted the impact of the illegal sanctions imposed by the West and both the Russian economy and industry are still standing, while countries, such as the EU members, continue to threaten their own stability and that of their inhabitants with each new package of restrictions.

Yandex Translate from Spanish

https://sputniknews.lat/20230302/rusia-consigue-importar-chips-a-pesar-de-las-sanciones-occidentales-1136301290.html

It is not like the west does not do it themselves... not just buying ammo and weapons from Serbia, but they even did that with Iran getting the parts Iran needed and the American companies wanted to sell but could not sell directly to Iran so they sold it to other countries who could sell to Iran...

You make a product and you sell it... who cares about politics.

Following your own sanctions just means they either buy what they need from someone else or they work out how to make it for themselves... neither of which is good for your company and your company didn't to anything wrong.

Chinese firms filling gaps left by Western brands – Moscow.

More than 1,000 companies quit the Russian market in the past year due to Ukraine-related sanctions.

Russo-Chinese economic cooperation has been growing at a rapid pace in recent months and has “good prospects” for further expansion, Igor Morgulov, Russia’s ambassador to Beijing, said in an interview on China Central Television on Saturday.

According to the envoy, Chinese companies are actively filling the gaps in the Russian market left after the departure of Western companies, hundreds of which were forced to leave Russia due to Ukraine-related sanctions.

“We welcome the surge in Chinese exports to Russia, primarily of machinery and sophisticated types of goods, with which our Chinese friends are filling the niches vacated by the withdrawal of Western companies from the Russian market.

“These include computers, cell phones, and cars. You can see more and more Chinese cars on our streets... So, I see good prospects for the growth of Chinese exports to Russia,” Morgulov stated.

He noted that Russian products are also gaining popularity on the Chinese market.

“After four months of my stay in Beijing, I can say that Russian food products are in great demand among the Chinese. This is truly gratifying,” he said. The diplomat also noted that Russia currently accounts for just 2% of China’s agricultural commodities imports, which is “obviously not enough.”

“I am sure Russia could supply a lot more agricultural products, including oil-bearing plants, grain, meat, fishery products and many others.”

He added that there are expectations of further broadening the scope of Russian exports to China in spheres like the pulp and paper industry, chemical industry, fertilizer production and metallurgy.

After the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, over 1,000 Western firms quit the Russian market, pressured by sanctions, according to Yale University analysts. As a result, Russia was forced to reorient to non-Western partners, most notably China and India.

Over the past several months, China has been competing with India as Russia’s biggest buyer of oil, and has overtaken the EU as the top importer of Russian agricultural products.

Russo-Chinese trade turnover grew by nearly a third in 2022, reaching $185 billion, making Russia the leader among China’s 20 largest partners in terms of trade growth. Officials from both countries have been noting with growing certainty that the $200 billion turnover goal set by Moscow and Beijing for 2024 may now be achieved earlier than expected.

https://www.rt.com/business/572475-chinese-firms-filling-gaps-russian-market/

Chinese firms filling gaps left by Western brands – Moscow

Im wondering if Russia can emulate the Chinese approach to tech companies that's participating in its local markets, like joint ventures and technology transfers? So for example, a Chinese mobile phone firm Xiaomi partners with a local Russian tech company to develop and produce smartphones in a Russian plant and the final product labeled as a Russian brand, etc. Such approach will benefit both foreign and Russian companies while at the same time will allow Russia to help start up Russian tech companies.

The US Empire could be described as a "wealth pump", pumping wealth from the periphery towards the center.

That isn't done purely to enrich the center, it is done to resolve the internal contradictions in the center, because you don't have to do wealth redistribution if you can plunder others instead. So the elites get richer, but it is not at the expense of impoverishing the masses to the point where the masses would revolt. Thus the masses are indeed secondary beneficiaries of empire even if their lives aren't all that great in absolute terms -- it would be much worse otherwise.

But once the plunder stops, the system becomes unstable because the internal contradictions tear it apart and it collapses.

That is what happened to Rome and many others. It is the reason why we have a war and all the sanctions now.

In fact, the West should have collapsed in the 1990s after it went bankrupt in the 1970s. Instead it bought a couple decades more by plundering the former Eastern Bloc and its first meal of Russia but after Putin came to power limits were placed on that. Then the West went bankrupt again in 2008 and now it needs to buy more time by totally plundering Russia.

P.S. There is one exception in all of history -- the USSR, which operated the wealth pump in reverse, subsidizing the periphery. It could do so because it wasn't capitalist, but despite that it still imported instability instead of exporting it, and then it was collapsed from within.

West has only one way left to hit the Russian economy, 03.07.2023.

The West's "arsenal" of sanctions is almost empty, while Russia is still standing, 'Yahoo News Japan' publishes, stressing that the developed countries have only one way left to damage the economy of their adversary, and for this they need to attract Moscow's allies.

The US government has asked China not to provide military aid to Russia because it has been informed that Beijing is considering doing so.

Despite sanctions from developed countries, Russia imported goods worth $12.4 billion between March and November last year, according to the independent think tank Bruegel, based on customs data from 31 countries. As for China, it is economically supporting Moscow through increased trade - it became its most important trading partner.

In particular, the trade exchange between China and Russia between January and February amounted to 33.69 billion dollars, which represents an increase of 25.9% compared to the same period of the previous year. In 2022, trade between the two countries increased by 29.3%, reaching a record amount of 190.27 billion dollars, the General Administration of Customs reported.

In addition, Russia increased its imports of semiconductors and chips by about 34% last year and China is its main supplier. Although developed countries imposed sanctions on exports of such products to Russia, trade with other partners recovered, Yahoo said.

Diplomacy as the only recourse for pressure

Although China is the main exporter of goods to Russia, Moscow also acquires products subject to the export controls of developed countries through states such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Currently, the portal notes, the West is urging the UAE and other Gulf countries to refrain from exporting sanctioned products to Russia, but negotiations seem to have stalled. The UAE increased exports of microchips to Russia from 1.6 million dollars to 24.3 million in 2022, which is a 15-fold increase.

It is believed that dark clouds are hanging over Russia's economy and financial environment, but this does not seem to deprive the country of its ability to continue the armed struggle. Meanwhile, developed states are running out of sanctioning tools that could have dealt new blows to the Russian economy, the outlet indicates.

In this context, restrictions on exports of sanctioned products, as well as military and civilian goods from non-sanctioned countries, could cause serious damage to the Russian economy and limit its ability to continue the special military operation. But the only way to achieve this is to convince Russia's allies who oppose sanctions.

"The developed countries have only one resource left: to exert diplomatic pressure on them," the edition concluded.

Since February 24, 2022, Russia has been continuing a special military operation in Ukraine, the goal of which, according to President Vladimir Putin, is the demilitarization and denazification of the neighboring country. Numerous countries condemned the operation, imposing numerous sanctions on the Eurasian country.

However, according to the Russian president, the Western plan to crush the Russian economy in the short term did not succeed. It contracted by just 2.5% last year, a considerably smaller decline than those experienced during the financial crisis of 1998 (5.3%) and the great recession of 2008 (7.9%). The International Monetary Fund also forecast that Russian economic growth would surpass that of Germany and the United Kingdom in both 2023 and 2024.

Sanctions have also failed to turn Russia into a global pariah. A recent report from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) revealed that only 8.5% of European and G7 companies had disinvested in Russia between February and November 2022. At the same time, Russia's trade turnover with non-Western economic powers such as China, India, Turkey and Indonesia soared.

Yandex Translate from Spanish

https://sputniknews.lat/20230307/a-occidente-solo-le-queda-un-camino-para-golpear-la-economia-rusa-1136548521.html