Punishing Russia With Sanctions by THG

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Not much news about the Russia Oil Ban Sanctions bill. Voted 414-17.

Maybe they are still trying to hide it.

Within the bill are new laws giving Lord Darth Obiden great powers to sanction anyplac3e for anything, forcing the world to have abortions.
Chip Roy had a good explanation for all that, but I didn't catch all the details correctly. Heard him being interviewed by Glenn Beck.

The text is here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6968/text

One hundredth seventeenth Congress of the United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday,
the third day of January, two thousand and twenty-two

An Act To prohibit the importation of energy products of the Russian Federation, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be known as the “Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act”.

SEC. 2. Prohibition on importation of energy products of the Russian Federation.

All products of the Russian Federation classified under chapter 27 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States shall be banned from importation into the United States, in a manner consistent with any implementation actions issued under Executive Order 14066 (87 Fed. Reg. 13625; relating to prohibiting certain imports and new investments with respect to continued Russian Federation efforts to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine).
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/eo_prohibitions_imports_inv
estments.pdf

SEC. 3. Termination of prohibition on importation of energy products of the Russian Federation.

(a) In general.—The President is authorized to terminate the prohibition on importation of energy products of the Russian Federation under section 2 if the President submits to Congress a certification under subsection (c). Such termination shall take effect beginning on the date that is 90 calendar days after the date of submission of such certification, unless there is enacted into law during such 90-day period a joint resolution of disapproval.

(b) Consultation and report.—The President shall, not later than 45 calendar days before submitting a certification under subsection (a)—

(1) consult with—

(A) the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives; and

(B) the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate; and

(2) submit to all such committees a report that explains the basis for the determination of the President contained in such certification.

(c) Certification.—A certification under this subsection is a certification in writing that—

(1) indicates that the President proposes to terminate under subsection (a) the prohibition under section 2; and

(2) contains a determination of the President that the Russian Federation—

(A) has reached an agreement to withdraw Russian forces and for the cessation of military hostilities that is accepted by the free and independent government of Ukraine;

(B) poses no immediate military threat of aggression to any North Atlantic Treaty Organization member; and

(C) recognizes the right of the people of Ukraine to independently and freely choose their own government.

(d) Joint resolution of disapproval.—

(1) DEFINITION.—For purposes of this section, the term “joint resolution of disapproval” means only a joint resolution—

(A) that does not have a preamble;

(B) the title of which is as follows: “Joint resolution disapproving the President’s certification under section 3(c) of the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act.”; and

(C) the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That Congress disapproves the certification of the President under section 3(c) of the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, submitted to Congress on ___ ”, the blank space being filled in with the appropriate date.

(2) INTRODUCTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.—During a period of 5 legislative days beginning on the date that a certification under subsection (c) is submitted to Congress, a joint resolution of disapproval may be introduced in the House of Representatives by the majority leader or the minority leader.

(3) INTRODUCTION IN THE SENATE.—During a period of 5 days on which the Senate is in session beginning on the date that a certification under subsection (c) is submitted to Congress, a joint resolution of disapproval may be introduced in the Senate by the majority leader (or the majority leader’s designee) or the minority leader (or the minority leader’s designee).

(4) FLOOR CONSIDERATION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.—

(A) REPORTING AND DISCHARGE.—If a committee of the House to which a joint resolution of disapproval has been referred has not reported such joint resolution within 10 legislative days after the date of referral, that committee shall be discharged from further consideration thereof.

(B) PROCEEDING TO CONSIDERATION.—Beginning on the third legislative day after each committee to which a joint resolution of disapproval has been referred reports it to the House or has been discharged from further consideration thereof, it shall be in order to move to proceed to consider the joint resolution in the House. All points of order against the motion are waived. Such a motion shall not be in order after the House has disposed of a motion to proceed on a joint resolution with regard to the same certification. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the motion to its adoption without intervening motion. The motion shall not be debatable. A motion to reconsider the vote by which the motion is disposed of shall not be in order.

(C) CONSIDERATION.—The joint resolution shall be considered as read. All points of order against the joint resolution and against its consideration are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final passage without intervening motion except two hours of debate equally divided and controlled by the sponsor of the joint resolution (or a designee) and an opponent. A motion to reconsider the vote on passage of the joint resolution shall not be in order.

(5) CONSIDERATION IN THE SENATE.—

(A) COMMITTEE REFERRAL.—A joint resolution of disapproval introduced in the Senate shall be referred to the Committee on Finance.

(B) REPORTING AND DISCHARGE.—If the Committee on Finance has not reported such joint resolution of disapproval within 10 days on which the Senate is in session after the date of referral of such joint resolution, that committee shall be discharged from further consideration of such joint resolution and the joint resolution shall be placed on the appropriate calendar.

(C) MOTION TO PROCEED.—Notwithstanding Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, it is in order at any time after the Committee on Finance reports the joint resolution of disapproval to the Senate or has been discharged from its consideration (even though a previous motion to the same effect has been disagreed to) to move to proceed to the consideration of the joint resolution, and all points of order against the joint resolution (and against consideration of the joint resolution) shall be waived. The motion to proceed is not debatable. The motion is not subject to a motion to postpone. A motion to reconsider the vote by which the motion is agreed to or disagreed to shall not be in order. If a motion to proceed to the consideration of the joint resolution of disapproval is agreed to, the joint resolution shall remain the unfinished business until disposed of.

(D) DEBATE.—Debate on the joint resolution of disapproval, and on all debatable motions and appeals in connection therewith, shall be limited to not more than 10 hours, which shall be divided equally between the majority and minority leaders or their designees. A motion to further limit debate is in order and not debatable. An amendment to, or a motion to postpone, or a motion to proceed to the consideration of other business, or a motion to recommit the joint resolution of disapproval is not in order.

(E) VOTE ON PASSAGE.—The vote on passage shall occur immediately following the conclusion of the debate on the joint resolution of disapproval and a single quorum call at the conclusion of the debate, if requested in accordance with the rules of the Senate.

(F) RULES OF THE CHAIR ON PROCEDURE.—Appeals from the decisions of the Chair relating to the application of the rules of the Senate, as the case may be, to the procedure relating to the joint resolution of disapproval shall be decided without debate.

(G) CONSIDERATION OF VETO MESSAGES.—Debate in the Senate of any veto message with respect to the joint resolution of disapproval, including all debatable motions and appeals in connection with such joint resolution, shall be limited to 10 hours, to be equally divided between, and controlled by, the majority leader and the minority leader or their designees.

(6) PROCEDURES IN THE SENATE.—Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, the following procedures shall apply in the Senate to a joint resolution of disapproval:

(A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a joint resolution of disapproval that has passed the House of Representatives shall, when received in the Senate, be referred to the Committee on Finance for consideration in accordance with this subsection.

(B) If a joint resolution of disapproval was introduced in the Senate before receipt of a joint resolution of disapproval that has passed the House of Representatives, the joint resolution from the House of Representatives shall, when received in the Senate, be placed on the calendar. If this subparagraph applies, the procedures in the Senate with respect to a joint resolution of disapproval introduced in the Senate that contains the identical matter as the joint resolution of disapproval that passed the House of Representatives shall be the same as if no joint resolution of disapproval had been received from the House of Representatives, except that the vote on passage in the Senate shall be on the joint resolution of disapproval that passed the House of Representatives.

(7) RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE.—This subsection is enacted by Congress—

(A) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the Senate and the House of Representatives, respectively, and as such is deemed a part of the rules of each House, respectively, but applicable only with respect to the procedure to be followed in that House in the case of a joint resolution of disapproval, and supersedes other rules only to the extent that it is inconsistent with such rules; and

(B) with full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedure of that House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of that House.

Attest:

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Attest:

Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, April 17, 2022 12:16 PM

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Sunday, April 17, 2022 12:19 PM

Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

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Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Monday, April 18, 2022 2:04 PM

Bleak Assessments of Russian Economy Contradict Putin’s Rosy Claims

Russia’s central bank chief warned on Monday that the consequences of Western sanctions were only beginning to be felt, and Moscow’s mayor warned that 200,000 jobs were at risk in the Russian capital alone, stark acknowledgments that undermined President Vladimir V. Putin’s contention that sanctions had failed to destabilize the Russian economy.

While experts say Russia faces an economic time bomb as its inventory of imported goods and parts runs low, Mr. Putin is using the fact that the Russian economy has not yet collapsed to bolster his contention that sanctions will not deter him.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bleak-assessments-of-russian-econ
omy-contradict-putin-s-rosy-claims/ar-AAWkVqL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=f8204fb618cf47909e4e10566271c5aa

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Saturday, April 23, 2022 11:30 AM

Sanctions hit Russian economy, although Putin says otherwise

NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly two months into the Russian-Ukraine war, the Kremlin has taken extraordinary steps to blunt an economic counteroffensive from the West. While Russia can claim some symbolic victories, the full impact of Western sanctions is starting to be felt in very real ways.

As the West moved to cut off Russia’s access to its foreign reserves, limit imports of key technologies and take other restrictive actions, the Kremlin launched some drastic measures to protect the economy. Those included hiking interest rates to as high as 20%, instituting capital controls and forcing Russian business to convert their profits into rubles.

As a result, the value of the ruble has recovered after an initial plunge, and last week the central bank reversed part of its interest rate increase. Russian President Vladimir Putin felt emboldened and proclaimed — evoking World War II imagery — that the country had withstood the West’s “blitz” of sanctions.

“The government wants to paint a picture that things are not as bad as they actually are,” said Michael Alexeev, an economics professor at the University of Indiana, who studied Russia’s economy in its transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A closer look, however, shows that the sanctions are taking a bite out of Russia’s economy:

— The country is enduring its worst bout of inflation in two decades. Rosstat, the state’s economic statistic agency, said inflation last month hit 17.3%, the highest level since 2002. By comparison, the International Monetary Fund expects consumer prices in developing countries to rise 8.7% this year, up from 5.9% last year.

— Some Russian companies have been forced to shut down. Several reports say a tank manufacturer had to stop production due to the lack of parts. U.S. officials point to the closing of Lada auto plants — a brand made by Russian company Avtovaz and majority-owned by French automaker Renault — as a sign of sanctions having an effect.

— Moscow’s mayor says the city is looking at 200,000 job losses from foreign companies shutting down operations. More than 300 companies have pulled out, and international supply chains have largely shut down after container company Maersk, UPS, DHL and other transportation firms exited Russia.

— Russia is facing a historic default on its bonds, which will likely freeze the country out of the debt markets for years.

Meanwhile, Treasury officials and most economists urge patience that sanctions take months to have full effect. If Russia can't get appropriate amounts of capital, parts or supplies over time, that will cause even more factories and businesses to shut down, leading to higher unemployment.

It took nearly an entire year after Russia was sanctioned for seizing Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014 for its economic data to show signs of distress, such as higher inflation, a decline in industrial production and a slowdown in economic growth.

“The things that we should be looking for to see if the sanctions are working are, frankly, not easy to see yet,” said David Feldman, a professor of economics at William & Mary in Virginia. “We’ll be looking for the price of goods, the quantity of goods they are producing and the quality of goods. The last being the hardest to see and probably the last to appear.”

Russia Ukraine War Effectiveness of Sanctions
Transparency into how sanctions are affecting the Russian economy is limited, largely because of the extraordinary lengths the Kremlin has taken to prop it up and its largest sector — oil and gas — is largely unencumbered due to European, Chinese and Indian reliance on Russian energy.

IMF chief expects "deep recession" in Russia due to sanctions

Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, estimated in a report released last month that if the European Union, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and natural gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. Current projections forecast a 15% contraction.

While the EU has agreed to ban Russian coal by August and is discussing sanctions on oil, there’s been no consensus among the 27 nations so far about halting oil and natural gas. Europe is far more reliant on Russian supplies than Britain and the U.S., which have banned or are phasing out Russian oil. In the meantime, Russia gets $850 million a day from Europe for its oil and gas.

The U.S. and its allies have argued that they have tried to tailor sanctions to affect Russia’s ability to wage war and financially hit those in the highest echelons of government, while leaving everyday Russians largely unaffected.

But Russians have noticed a spike in prices. Residents of one Moscow suburb said 19-liter jugs of drinking water they regularly order have become nearly 35% more expensive than before. In supermarkets and stores in their area, the price for 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of sugar has grown by 77%; some vegetables cost 30% to 50% more.

Local news sites in different Russian regions in recent weeks have reported that multiple stores are shuttered in malls after Western companies and brands halted operations or pulled out of Russia, including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Apple.

The Kremlin and its allies on social media have repeatedly pointed to the recovery of Russia’s ruble as a sign that Western sanctions aren’t working. The ruble crashed to around 150 to the dollar in the early days of the war but recovered to around 80 to the dollar, about where it was before the invasion. A gauge of weekly inflation by Rosstat has shown inflation slowing, but that is not surprising after the central bank raised interest rates as quickly as it did.

Russia’s central bank had doubled its benchmark interest rate to support the ruble’s plunging value and stop bank runs. It dropped the rate to 17% from 20% this month and signaled it might lower it further.

This isn’t the first time Russia has thrown its full force behind defending the ruble’s value as a symbol of resistance against the West. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the Soviet Union had an official exchange rate of one ruble equaling about $1.35, whereas the black-market exchange rate was closer to four rubles to the dollar. The Russian debt crisis of the late 1990s also was caused partially by the Kremlin’s active defense of the currency’s value.

U.S. Treasury officials have dismissed the significance of the ruble’s recovery.

“The Russian economy is really reeling from the sanctions that we put in place,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, adding that the ruble’s value has been artificially inflated by central bank intervention.

If and how Russia wins the economic war will come down to whether the Kremlin can drive division in the West, causing the sanctions to become patchy and less effective. At the same time, Russia will have time to develop alternatives for goods it can no longer access, a concept known as import substitution.

Looking back at the 2014 sanctions, the Congressional Research Service said in January that the impact on Russia was modest only because the U.S. effectively acted alone. This time, there are multiple international actors.

But Alexeev, the University of Indiana professor, sees one glaring gap.

“As long as Russia can continue to sell oil and gas, they will muddle through this,” he said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/sanctions-hit-russian-economy-
although-putin-says-otherwise/ar-AAWvvkN?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=bec7fd8cfcc34e8da160c530fca65131

tick tock

T

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 11:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia doubles fossil fuel revenues since invasion of Ukraine began

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced.

Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

For the EU, imports were about €44bn for the past two months, compared with about €140bn for the whole of last year, or roughly €12bn a month.

The findings demonstrate how Russia has continued to benefit from its stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply, even while governments have frantically sought to prevent Vladimir Putin using oil and gas as an economic weapon.

Even though exports from Russia have been reduced by the war and sanctions, the country’s dominance as a source of gas has meant cutting off supplies has only increased prices, which were already high because of tight supply as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Crude oil shipments from Russia to foreign ports fell by 30% in the first three weeks of April, compared with rates in January and February, before the invasion, according to the CREA data.

But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst for CREA, said the cash propped up Putin’s war effort, and the only way to disable his war machine was to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. “Fossil fuel exports are a key enabler of Putin’s regime, and many other rogue states,” he said. “Continued energy imports are the major gaps in the sanctions imposed on Russia. Everyone who buys these fossil fuels is complicit in the horrendous violations of international law carried out by the Russian military.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/russia-doubles-fossil-fu
el-revenues-since-invasion-of-ukraine-began

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 11:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Two months after Putin invaded Ukraine, Germany is still funding the Russian war chest to the tune of €4.5bn a month. Berlin is the largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels. The world is looking to Germany to demonstrate strength and determination towards Russia, but instead they’re bankrolling the war and blocking a European embargo on Russian oil.

Germany was the biggest importer in the last two months, despite repeated avowals by the government that halting dependence on Russian oil was a priority. The country paid about €9bn for imports during the period.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/russia-doubles-fossil-fu
el-revenues-since-invasion-of-ukraine-began

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:18 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Russian Fossil Fuel Revenues Double ~~Despite~~

Because of

Quote:
Western Sanctions

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-fossil-fuel-revenues-do
uble-despite-western-sanctions

Meanwhile, the ruble, which took a steep dive when the Russian Central Bank was attacked by the west, is now the strongest it's been in 20 years.
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/RUBUSD/

Just imagine buying rubles a month ago. What an opportunity!

--------------------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:20 PM

Germany doesn't want to follow the Biden* administration down the poverty hole.

Good for Germany.

Fuck Ukraine. Fuck Russia. Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:53 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Russian Fossil Fuel Revenues Double ~~Despite~~
Because of
Quote:
Western Sanctions

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-fossil-fuel-revenues-do
uble-despite-western-sanctions

Meanwhile, the ruble, which took a steep dive when the Russian Central Bank was attacked by the west, is now the strongest it's been in 20 years.
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/RUBUSD/

Just imagine buying rubles a month ago. What an opportunity!

Winston Churchill went to total war and the resentful voters, who couldn't vote Hitler out, responded by kicking Churchill out at the first opportunity. The British voters and companies would have been happy to sell fuel to Hitler because they are about that stupid. Ever since, politicians have been well aware that if war gets too uncomfortable for the average voter, it is the politicians who will be punished. Voters don't think clearly ahead (but they will have a vague uneasiness) to what will happen to them if Hitler or Putin win. Bombs have to be falling on the voters before they really understand what could happen to voters if Hitler or Putin win. Once Hitler couldn't bomb Britain, the British voters started seeing Churchill, not Hitler, as the real enemy they had to do something about.

Until Putin bombs Britain, the USA, and Germany, a majority of voters will only see how much a problem their own government is, and not see Putin as a problem except to Ukrainians. As 6ix likes to say, over and over, nobody cares about Ukraine (until Putin bombs 6ix).

When a winner becomes a loser: Winston Churchill was kicked out of office in the British election of 1945
https://theconversation.com/when-a-winner-becomes-a-loser-winston-chur
chill-was-kicked-out-of-office-in-the-british-election-of-1945-129746

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:57 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So, Putin = Hitler?

A compilation of your biggest hits just from this thread alone would be a hoot!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 1:04 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So, Putin = Hitler?

A compilation of your biggest hits just from this thread alone would be a hoot!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

There is the part about Putin destroying cities, raping women and generalized war crimes, approximately what Hitler did. But Signym and Putin and Hitler have said none of those things happened. Who to believe? Belief is so difficult a question when you disbelieve MSM.

Completely unsurprising that Putin calls West an 'Empire of Lies' after sanctions imposed. Hint: It is Putin who is lying.
https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-calls-west-an-empire-lies-after-sa
nctions-imposed-2022-02-28/

(History says Hitler was lying to his voters. Surprise! Surprise! The German voters didn't believe Hitler was lying until after he was dead, which was far too late to make a difference.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 2:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

So, Putin = Hitler?

Yes yes, you've got it.

T

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 2:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

So, Putin = Hitler?

Yes yes, you've got it.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 3:00 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Biden asks Congress for additional $33 billion in Ukraine aid

U.S. lawmakers have indicated they’re ready to approve additional money, as there is bipartisan backing for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

New money would be on top of the $13.6 billion U.S. lawmakers authorized last month.

Aid to Ukraine includes
$20.4 billion in military and other security assistance,
$8.5 billion in economic assistance and
$3 billion in humanitarian assistance and food-security funding.

Biden on Thursday weighed in on recent Russian rhetoric on the use of nuclear weapons.

“No one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons. It’s irresponsible.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20220428184953/https://www.marketwatch.com
/story/biden-asks-congress-for-additional-33-billion-in-ukraine-aid-11651156208

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 5:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Biden asks Congress for additional $33 billion in Ukraine aid

U.S. lawmakers have indicated they’re ready to approve additional money, as there is bipartisan backing for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

New money would be on top of the $13.6 billion U.S. lawmakers authorized last month.

Aid to Ukraine includes
$20.4 billion in military and other security assistance,
$8.5 billion in economic assistance and
$3 billion in humanitarian assistance and food-security funding.

Biden on Thursday weighed in on recent Russian rhetoric on the use of nuclear weapons.

“No one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons. It’s irresponsible.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20220428184953/https://www.marketwatch.com
/story/biden-asks-congress-for-additional-33-billion-in-ukraine-aid-11651156208

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Just add that to the ever-evolving list of reasons I will never earn enough money to pay Federal taxes again in my life.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 8:52 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Just add that to the ever-evolving list of reasons I will never earn enough money to pay Federal taxes again in my life.

Why not take shallow breathes and only one small, low-calorie meal per day because you wish to conserve the Earth's precious resources? You might want to also stop taking showers more than once per week because bathing wastes energy to heat the water. Think of all the money you will save by cutting back on food, fuel and water. You will be a virtuous example to the World. Maybe there could be a TV show about you called Shameless Poor White Trash.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 8:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the idea that it might lose seemed far-fetched. Vladimir Putin appeared to have a powerful, modernized army, supported by a defense budget a dozen times larger than Ukraine’s. You didn’t have to buy into Ted Cruz-style fantasies about the prowess of a military that wasn’t “woke” and “emasculated” to expect a quick Russian battlefield victory.

And even after Ukraine’s miraculous defeat of Russia’s initial attack, one had to wonder about the longer-term prospects. Before the war, Russia’s economy was about eight times bigger than Ukraine’s; despite the toll that sanctions are taking on Russian production, the destruction in Ukraine wrought by the invasion probably means that the gap is even bigger now. So you might have expected Russia to eventually win a battle of attrition through sheer weight of resources.

But that isn’t what seems to be happening. Nobody can be sure about the extent to which Putin himself understands how the war is going; are his terrified officials willing to tell him the truth? But the way Russia is lashing out, with dire but vague threats against the West and self-destructive tantrums like Wednesday’s cutoff of natural gas flows to Poland and Bulgaria, suggests that at least somebody in Moscow is worried that time is not on Russia’s side. And U.S. officials are beginning to talk optimistically, not just about holding Russia off, but about outright Ukrainian victory.

How can this be possible? The answer is that America, while not directly engaged in combat, is once again doing what it did in the year before Pearl Harbor: We, with help from our allies, are serving as the “arsenal of democracy,” giving the defenders of freedom the material means to keep fighting.

For those who aren’t familiar with this history: Britain in 1940, like Ukraine in 2022, had unexpected success against a seemingly unstoppable enemy, as the Royal Air Force defeated the Luftwaffe’s attempt to achieve air superiority, a necessary precondition for invasion. Nonetheless, by late 1940 the British were in dire straits: Their war effort required huge imports, including both military hardware and essentials like food and oil, and they were running out of money.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded with the Lend-Lease Act, which made it possible to transfer large quantities of arms and food to the beleaguered British. This aid wasn’t enough to turn the tide, but it gave Winston Churchill the resources he needed to hang on, which eventually set the stage for Allied victory.

Now Lend-Lease has been revived, and large-scale military aid is flowing to Ukraine, not just from the United States but also from many of our allies.

Thanks to this aid, the arithmetic of attrition is actually working strongly against Putin. Russia’s economy may be much bigger than Ukraine’s, but it’s small compared with the American economy, let alone the combined economies of the Western allies. And with its limited economic base, Russia doesn’t appear to have the capacity to replace its battlefield losses; Western experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Ukraine so far has cost Russia two years’ worth of tank production.

Ukraine’s army, by contrast, is getting better equipped, with ever more heavy weapons, by the day. Assuming Congress agrees to President Biden’s request for an additional $33 billion in aid — a sum we can easily afford — cumulative Western support for Ukraine will soon come close to Russia’s annual military spending.

In other words, as I said, time appears to be on Ukraine’s side. Unless the Russians can pull off the kind of dramatic battlefield success that has eluded them so far — such as a blitzkrieg-style assault that encircles a large part of Ukraine’s forces — and do it very soon, the balance of power seems set to keep shifting in Ukraine’s favor.

And let’s be clear about two things.

First, if Ukraine really does win, it will be a triumph for the forces of freedom everywhere. Would-be aggressors and war criminals will be given pause. Western enemies of democracy, many of whom were huge Putin fanboys just the other day, will have been given an object lesson in the difference between macho posturing and true strength.

Second, while credit for this victory, if it materializes, will, of course, go above all to the Ukrainians themselves, this wouldn’t have been possible without brave, effective leadership in some (if, alas, not all) Western nations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220428233006/https://www.nytimes.com/202
2/04/28/opinion/russia-ukraine-biden-aid.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Just add that to the ever-evolving list of reasons I will never earn enough money to pay Federal taxes again in my life.

Why not take shallow breathes and only one small, low-calorie meal per day because you wish to conserve the Earth's precious resources? You might want to also stop taking showers more than once per week because bathing wastes energy to heat the water.

Why the fuck would I do any of that? You must be mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit about the environment. My carbon footprint is small because I don't have a bunch of fuck trophies and I live a minimalist lifestyle. It has nothing to do with hugging trees.

My point was, I'm not making enough money to pay Federal taxes ever again because I in no way approve how they spend ANY of it. And I certainly don't remember anybody ever asking me if we should keep sending billions to Ukraine. The answer is NO and my Senator will get a vote against him in November because he's all-fucking-in on Ukraine he can go fuck himself.

Quote:
Think of all the money you will save by cutting back on food, fuel and water.

I live off about $125 per week right now. I don't think there's much more that could be cut out of the budget.

Quote:
You will be a virtuous example to the World.

And what ever would give you the idea that I'm the virtue-signalling type?

Quote:
Maybe there could be a TV show about you called Shameless Poor White Trash.

Sure. Try to shame the guy who figured out long before he needed to how to live FAR below his means. Yanno. The guy who answers to no one and hasn't had a rent or mortgage payment since 2010, or a car payment since 2001. lol. Good luck!

That's the world we live in now. Can't shame fat people for being fat fucks or shame stupid people for piling on so much debt that they need to work thankless jobs to make somebody else rich for the rest of their lives. Boy! That $6,500 per month of obligatory bills and the bullshit bling you bought with it is SURE impressive. I'm especially SUPER envious of the 50% of your net income that goes to paying interest on shit you like to pretend that you own too. Wow.

Maybe they SHOULD make a show about me. I could teach all of those rich virtue-signalling white dildos how to live below their means and they'd just naturally reduce their carbon footprint down to next-to-nothing and stop fucking up nature if they in a million years could ever actually give up all of those things that you and I know that they'd never give up.

Meanwhile...

Have fun at work tomorrow, bitch.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, April 29, 2022 7:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see. Ukraine is working to keep Russian wrongness from spreading beyond Russia’s borders. There is an entire physics book on the science behind correcting wrongness:

David Deutsch
The Beginning of Infinity
Explanations that Transform the World

From the introduction:

Progress that is both rapid enough to be noticed and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved only once in the history of our species. It began at approximately the time of the scientific revolution, and is still under way. It has included improvements not only in scientific understanding, but also in technology, political institutions, moral values, art, and every aspect of human welfare.

Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better. There is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also between wrong and right, ugly and beautiful, suffering and its alleviation – and thus between stagnation and progress in the fullest sense.

In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal, cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.

Must progress come to an end – either in catastrophe or in some sort of completion – or is it unbounded? The answer is the latter. That unboundedness is the ‘infinity’ referred to in the title of this book. Explaining it, and the conditions under which progress can and cannot happen, entails a journey through virtually every fundamental field of science and philosophy. From each such field we learn that, although progress has no necessary end, it does have a necessary beginning: a cause, or an event with which it starts, or a necessary condition for it to take off and to thrive. Each of these beginnings is ‘the beginning of infinity’ as viewed from the perspective of that field. Many seem, superficially, to be unconnected. But they are all facets of a single attribute of reality, which I call the beginning of infinity.

Download the book for free at https://libgen.unblockit.llc/search.php?req=David+Deutsch+Beginning

Russia ought to read the book. It is country that needs good explanations, but it is not getting them from Putin or his government apparatus.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 29, 2022 8:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see. Ukraine is working to keep Russian wrongness from spreading beyond Russia’s borders.

It's not a question of understanding.

I don't believe your sources, or any of their sources. They've never given us a single reason to believe anything they say. And the fact that fucking WAR is the only goddamned thing that Democrats and most Republicans seem to agree on anymore in the 2020's should send up some pretty big fucking red flags for you too.

We've got more than enough problems to deal with right here in this country, and we're not doing a goddamned thing to address any one of them.

Don't worry about ME not voting Democrat in November. You already knew that was never going to happen.

Worry about everybody else who would have, had life not started to turn to shit for all of them in the last 2 years. You're already going to see a majority of Latinos vote against Democrats in 2022. It won't be long until a majority of blacks vote against Democrats too. I'd also be surprised if it weren't a 50/50 split with non-professional unions as well.

All that will be left voting for Democrats soon are rich people. And as you like to point out, there aren't a lot of rich people.

The rest of us don't give a single shit about Russia or Ukraine.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, April 29, 2022 10:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see.

SECOND, you are describing to Jack the qualities he looks for when he decides who to vote for. You should know this better than anyone.

T

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Friday, April 29, 2022 11:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see.

SECOND, you are describing to Jack the qualities he looks for when he decides who to vote for. You should know this better than anyone.

T

Hey Ted. 90% of the shit that you've been spouting in here for the last two years has been debunked after the fact and it's been proven that Social Media and the Legacy Media have been lying about it.

Oh... and you voted for Hillary in 2016 and she couldn't stop talking about how she'd nuke Russia.

You and Second ain't the good guys here.

And now you're finally losing.

The mail-in fraud election will be one of the best things that happened to our country in the long term.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, April 29, 2022 1:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia grossly mis-assessed the level of support a Russian invasion would receive from the Ukrainian population. Their assumptions were not supported by contemporary social science research, which has found that Ukrainians strongly supported their homeland before the Russian-backed war in Donbas, which started in 2014, and did so even more after 2014. Russia’s current invasion has only further strengthened Ukrainian national cohesion and sense of identity.

Ukrainian citizens’ strong rejection of the Russian occupation spotlights how Russia’s war in Ukraine is one of attempted imperial expansion and certainly not one of national reunification. And, while imperial powers can adopt different techniques to rule their conquered territories, Russia’s current rhetoric and actions suggest that any Ukrainians in territory conquered by Russia will be subject to Russian attempts to extirpate their Ukrainian identity. In this regard, the Russian occupiers are likely to go even further than they did in Donbas, where the teaching of Ukrainian language has almost been wiped out. Indeed, the banning of symbols of Ukrainian identity, outlawing of Ukrainian language instruction in schools, and the covering historical narratives in the media and in education that fit Putin’s distorted version of the facts are likely to compose key elements of Russian occupation.

This kind of authoritarian rule is exactly the type of scenario Timur Kuran envisioned when he developed the idea of preference falsification. Given the possibility of harsh repression or even death under Putin’s regime, Ukrainians who currently share their opinions freely with the world will likely be forced to falsify their preferences under Russian occupation if Putin is able to consolidate his rule.

More at https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/roots-of-the-resistance-understandin
g-national-identity-in-ukraine/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 29, 2022 2:41 PM

Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

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Friday, April 29, 2022 3:15 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A full European ban on Russian oil is coming

After weeks of reluctance over banning Russian oil imports, German officials today (Apr. 29) reversed course, agreeing to a gradual, EU-wide embargo. Other European countries have recently grown more amenable to such a ban as well, as Russia’s war on Ukraine has persisted.

The EU’s 27 member states have to agree unanimously for a ban to come into effect. But Germany had been the major opponent to this measure, because it purchases so much Russian oil and gas. Last year, Germany bought 27 billion tons of Russian crude, a third of its overall oil consumption. “It was a mistake that Germany became so heavily dependent on energy imports from Russia,” Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister, told the New York Times earlier this month.

But like other European states, Germany has been scrambling to find alternative sources of fuel—to the extent that Russian oil now accounts for only 12% of domestic consumption. In all, the EU buys 3 million barrels of oil from Russia everyday. Countries like Germany can diversify their sourcing by buying instead from the US, Iran, Norway, and Canada, wrote Maciej Miniszewski, a climate and energy analyst at the Polish Economic Institute.

The two other big European customers of Russian oil, Poland, and the Netherlands, have both pledged to cut off all imports by the end of the year. Germany, too, wants time for a phased transition—a slow process, but still a significant shift from its earlier stance, in which German officials insisted that a ban on Russian oil would be too ruinous to European economies to be feasible.

Depriving Russia of oil revenues will ramp up the financial difficulties it already faces from a slew of Western sanctions. The EU will announce a sixth package of sanctions soon, possibly including proposals for the transition away from Russian oil.

Stopping imports of Russian gas, on the other hand, is still a more distant ambition. When Russia stopped supplies of gas to Poland and Bulgaria this week, other European countries stepped in to fill part of their needs. But last year, the EU imported 40% of its gas from Russia, and Brussels plans only to try to slash that by two-thirds by the end of this year.

https://qz.com/2160717/a-total-european-ban-on-russian-oil-is-coming/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 9:15 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nobody cares.

Moscow depends on foreign middlemen to ferry its most strategic and lucrative export around the world: oil. Now the most-important middleman, Trafigura Group, is joining several competitors in cutting off Russian giant Rosneft Oil Co. from global oil markets.

In a high-stakes move that goes farther than official Western sanctions, the Swiss commodities trader plans to stop exporting Rosneft’s crude altogether. It will cut its business with the Russian oil producer to a sliver of prewar levels, supplying only some refined products such as diesel into Europe, according to a spokeswoman.

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2022/04/29/oil-middlemen-fueled-putin
s-war-machine-but-now-theyre-getting-out/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 9:32 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Oil Middlemen Fueled Putin’s War Machine. Now They’re Getting Out.

Joe Wallace and Eliot Brown

Russia built a self-proclaimed fortress around its economy in the run-up to war—but there was a crack. Moscow depended on foreign middlemen to ferry its most strategic and lucrative export around the world: oil.

Now the most-important middleman, Trafigura Group, is joining several competitors in cutting off Russian giant Rosneft Oil Co. from global oil markets. In a high-stakes move that goes farther than official Western sanctions, the Swiss commodities trader plans to stop exporting Rosneft’s crude altogether. It will cut its business with the state producer to a sliver of prewar levels, supplying only some refined products such as diesel into Europe, according to a spokeswoman.

Trafigura and other traders were already poised to lose a big chunk of their Russian business on May 15, when sanctions go into effect that bar them from selling Rosneft oil to countries outside the European Union and Switzerland. In also deciding to cut exports to Europe, long the biggest buyer of Russian oil, they are getting ahead of EU countries that are discussing a full ban.

Vitol, Trafigura’s biggest competitor in oil, also plans to retreat from the Russian market, according to people familiar with the decision. Glencore PLC, a mining and trading giant with a long history in Russia, suspended its contract to export Rosneft oil in March, people familiar with the decision said.

It marks a shift for the traders, which have long done business where few other Western companies would dare, given that many of the world’s valuable commodities are found in places that have struggled with corruption, instability and war.

While the traders continued to ship Russian oil after war broke out, they faced mounting pressures from Western governments, financial institutions and Ukrainian officials. A huge drop in European demand, given the stigma of sending petrodollars to Moscow, made the decision easier.

“The world has changed,” said Jean-François Lambert, a consultant to the commodities industry and former head of commodities trade finance at HSBC. “We are not in a twilight situation. We are in a black-and-white situation.”

Their disengagement is forcing Russia to hastily rework its commodity-export business, the foundation of the country’s economic wealth and the feedstock for Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Rosneft accounts for about a third of Russia’s total oil production and about a fifth of the government’s revenues.

The retreat will also likely mean substantial losses on investments the traders made in the country as they sought to deepen their roots, such as a giant drilling project in the Arctic Circle partly owned by Trafigura and Vitol. On the core business of trading, the merchants face risks as they pull out, as a messy unwinding from Russia could stick them with millions of barrels of unsalable oil if they aren’t adroit.

Trafigura, like many traders, is privately held and offers less disclosure about its operations and financial results than public companies. Owned by its 1,000-odd partners, it competes with the likes of Vitol and Geneva-based Gunvor Group as well as the trading arms of oil producers including BP PLC and Shell PLC.

Headed by Australian Chief Executive Jeremy Weir, the firm is legally based in Singapore, though its top executives operate out of a bland seven-story office building in Geneva with a pharmacy on the ground level.

The company generates almost twice as much revenue as Facebook owner Meta Platforms. It churned out a profit of $3.1 billion in the year through last September.

Last month, Trafigura announced it had doubled the size of a credit facility with banks to more than $2 billion to weather extreme price moves sparked by the war in Ukraine. A set of Trafigura bonds issued late last year have fallen nearly 10% since just before the start of the war. Bonds of other commodity traders fell in price, too.

Trafigura dates back to a bust-up in 1993 at Marc Rich & Co., run by trader and fugitive from U.S. justice Marc Rich. Trafigura—a name plucked from a selection of registered Dutch companies—struck out as a breakaway and expanded under founder Claude Dauphin.

Post-Soviet Russia was a highly sought-after prize. The country emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union as a commodities superstore. It is the world’s biggest exporter of oil and a huge producer of natural gas, wheat, nickel, gold and more besides.

Together Trafigura and its competitors have channeled billions of dollars to Rosneft from Western lenders and invested in oil fields and port terminals in Russia—to endear themselves to producers in the country and gain access to their oil, current and former industry executives say.

Trafigura was late to the game in Russia, lagging Vitol, Glencore and others. It got its break in 2013 when it struck a $1.5 billion deal with Rosneft that followed a $10 billion deal between the Russian producer and those rivals.

The money helped fund Rosneft’s purchase of TNK-BP, a bumper deal that turned the state-aligned company into the world’s biggest listed oil producer. Mr. Dauphin hired away TNK’s top traders, gaining access to Russian business circles that Trafigura had previously lacked. Israeli-Canadian trader Jonathan Kollek —who had spent more than two decades working in Russian oil, starting at Marc Rich & Co., according to former colleagues—led Trafigura’s new outfit in Moscow.

Trafigura didn’t make Mr. Kollek available for an interview.

The relationship between Rosneft and Trafigura grew stronger after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Rosneft was in a pinch. It faced a wall of debt and sanctions imposed after the annexation banned Western banks from making loans that lasted longer than 30 days.

Trafigura, armed with a giant balance sheet and with ready access to financing from Western banks and the global bond market, swooped in. It agreed to buy oil in huge quantities and pay 25 days up front, easing the cash crunch at Rosneft. Trafigura catapulted above Vitol and Glencore to become the biggest Western exporter of Russian crude in 2015.

“There’s no sanctions on oil trading in Russia, and therefore it’s business as usual,” said Mr. Weir at the time.

Trafigura went on to deepen its ties with Russia, striking deals beyond trading. It bought an Indian oil refinery with Rosneft. And it plowed the equivalent of $8.4 billion into Rosneft’s vast Vostok Arctic oil field in return for more barrels and a 10% stake in the project, largely funded by a Russian bank.

Rosneft—which counts a Russian state-owned company as its largest shareholder—is run by CEO Igor Sechin, a close ally of President Putin. Mr. Sechin’s strategy was to grant barrels of oil in return for funding and investments, all the while playing Trafigura, Vitol and Glencore off against each other, said Mr. Lambert, the former banker. “If the price is you invest one billion here, one billion there and you can afford it, you do it,” he said.

Physical commodity markets are opaque. But data tracking shipments from Russian ports and calculations by rival companies suggest Trafigura grew to be by far the biggest exporter of Rosneft oil. Last year, it shipped about 519,000 barrels a day, according to oil-tracking firm Petro-Logistics, more than twice as much as second-place Gunvor. Including oil from private Russian energy companies, Trafigura was the second-biggest exporter of Russian oil behind Litasco, the trading arm of Moscow-based producer Lukoil, the data show.

A Trafigura spokeswoman called the data “materially incomplete and inaccurate” but declined to provide the company’s own figures.

When Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Trafigura’s big Russian bet began to boomerang.

Details of agreements between Trafigura and Rosneft aren’t disclosed. But people familiar with their terms say Trafigura, and its rivals, agree to long-term contracts to buy millions of barrels of Russian oil with prices set according to formulas based on recent prices of oil benchmarks.

Russia locks in a steady buyer of its oil, and Trafigura makes a profit by selling the oil at a slightly higher price to refiners and traders in Europe and Asia.

That recipe came undone when Russia invaded Ukraine. Global markets for Russia’s flagship Urals crude tanked, selling at roughly a $30 a barrel discount compared with Brent, the international benchmark. It usually sells for around the same amount.

Trafigura and the other middlemen struggled to find companies to sell to, particularly in the West. “Not many,” Mr. Weir said at a conference in late March when asked how many buyers there were for Russian oil.

They found takers farther afield. Cargoes that once headed to Europe instead traveled to markets such as India, which has avoided denouncing the war and scooped up Russian oil on the cheap.

Unlike oil giant BP, which rapidly declared its intent to quit Russia in the days after the invasion, Trafigura and some other traders were more circumspect. Trafigura froze its investment in Vostok without detailing what that entailed, and industry executives expect the company to absorb a large loss on the project.

After a dialogue with European government officials and external lawyers about EU and Swiss sanctions targeting Rosneft, Trafigura decided to stop selling oil from the state company elsewhere in the world beyond May 15, even though it theoretically could have skirted the sanctions by operating through offshore units.

Even sales in Europe turned dicey, as numerous refiners and government officials on the continent balked at the thought of buying Russian oil.

With few takers, Trafigura could have been stuck buying oil from Russia based on its contract with Rosneft with nowhere to sell it.

France and other countries are urging a more sweeping ban on Russian oil that would halt sales in the EU, too. Meanwhile, staff at some ports are unwilling to unload shipments.

With the walls closing in on the traders, Moscow will have to turn elsewhere if it is to keep selling its oil. One option is to sell directly to select customers in Asia. Another is to build new pipelines to transport oil directly to China. A third is to replace Trafigura and others with smaller traders in the Middle East.

Smaller companies might be able to dance around the sanctions, for example by dealing out of non-European subsidiaries. But the big players likely can’t risk undermining their relationships with banks by flouting the spirit of the rules, lawyers and traders say.

Rosneft is dashing to sell oil while it still can, and struggling. In recent days, the state producer failed to find buyers for tens of millions of barrels of crude it put up for sale after the traders began to leave Russia.

—Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-oil-sanctions-europe-middlemen-fue
led-putins-war-machine-now-theyre-getting-out-trafigura-11651166288?mod=djemalertNEWS

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 10:17 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

A full European ban on Russian oil is coming

After weeks of reluctance over banning Russian oil imports, German officials today (Apr. 29) reversed course, agreeing to a gradual, EU-wide embargo. Other European countries have recently grown more amenable to such a ban as well, as Russia’s war on Ukraine has persisted.

Yes, and the goal is to weaken Russia for generations. Many of these sanctions and boycotts are designed to hurt Russia long term. Weaning off Russian fossil fuels is designed to be permanent, and it is happening faster than could have been predicted. This time next year it will be a dramatically changed Europe. A change for the better for sure.

tick tock, thanks Putin

T

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 10:38 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
A change for the better for sure.

Get back to me when their already expensive petrol prices jump even higher.

Then watch what happens here in November.

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 1:59 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
A change for the better for sure.

Get back to me when their already expensive petrol prices jump even higher.

Then watch what happens here in November.

Same as in 1972, when the poor white trash voted for the Republican Party, followed by the oil crisis. It was an excellent transfer of poor white trash money to the wealthy Texas oil men. The old men at the Petroleum Club of Houston still reminisce about how it was a great time to get richer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 30, 2022 3:33 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Back on-topic

Quote:
What Can Be better Than Stealing?

More stealing! LOL, Germany wants to expropriate Russia-owned refineries in Germany. Now, Poland wants the piece of the action too.

As Poland desperately attempts to restore the flow of Russian gas to the country, its government has ordered Russian Novatek to hand over pipeline infrastructure or face legal action amounting to infrastructure expropriation. On Friday, a Polish government spokesman told the Associated Press that Russian Novatek Green Energy had been ordered to make its pipelines available to Polish companies and that failure to comply would mean legal action. Invoking crisis management laws, AP cited government spokesperson Piotr Mueller as saying that the fate of Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, “depends on whether this Russian firm, linked to Russia, will cooperate in the proper way …. whether the employees, acting on some instructions, will not be trying to block this process in some way”.

But, wait a minute, it was Poland, if my memory doesn't fail me, who wanted spot-pricing initially, which drove prices through the stratosphere, and then Poland underscored at every opportunity her independence from Russian totalitarian gas. And now she is desperate. Oh my, such a Polish thing to do. Sure, let Poland cease [seize- SIGNY] the pipe-line, see what happens. Polish political top brass should recall a fundamental principle of any war, bet that hot, cold or merely economic. It reads like that: war is a very democratic affair--the enemy also has a say.

Understanding this fundamental principle seems to escape the minds of EU "elites" and as the result each time they get slapped in the face by Russia they get hysterical and forget, in addition to other forgotten things, that normal governance, same as normal war-fighting, is done based on contingency planning. Russians do contingency planning 24/7 and the results are showing in the last 8 years.

MORE AT
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/04/what-can-be-better-than-steal
ing.html

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Sunday, May 1, 2022 6:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Back on-topic

Quote:
What Can Be better Than Stealing?

More stealing! LOL, Germany wants to expropriate Russia-owned refineries in Germany. Now, Poland wants the piece of the action too.

Vladimir Putin threatens to seize assets of Western businesses that have left Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded Thursday by saying that if foreign companies shut down production in Russia, he favored a plan to “bring in outside management and then transfer these companies to those who want to work.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2022/03/13/russia-putin-
threatens-to-seize-assets-of-departing-western-companies/7026192001/

Putin Allows Russian Airlines To Steal Foreign Aircraft

Putin’s new law lets airlines register foreign planes in Russia

https://onemileatatime.com/news/putin-russian-airlines-steal-foreign-a
ircraft/

I've been reading about Putin doing this long before your post comrade. I guess other countries decided if Putin's going to do this so should they.

T

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Sunday, May 1, 2022 7:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How to slash Putin’s oil revenue, avert a price shock for the West and fund Ukraine reparations

(Craig Kennedy is an energy professional. He is writing a book on the history of Russian oil and civil society.)

The West today is by far Russia’s largest customer, absorbing some 6 million barrels a day of Russian oil — over half Russia’s total output. By contrast, Russia’s export infrastructure to Asia is relatively modest. The first and only pipeline to China and the Pacific wasn’t completed until 2019 and carries less than 15 percent of Russia’s total output.

So, what would happen to those 6 million barrels a day if the West stopped buying? Russian officials have threatened to send it “elsewhere,” while the media have focused on stories of stepped-up sales to China and India. But this threat of a redirection to Asia is a paper tiger.

To begin with, Russia’s pipeline capacity to Asia is already full. This means the redirected oil would need to travel by sea from terminals on the Black Sea and the Baltic. To move that much oil over such a long distance would require some 230 supertankers — 30 percent of the global fleet — operating day in and day out. Such a massive seaborne flotilla (if it could even be chartered in the first place) would require a small army of third-party enablers: marine insurers, bankers, commodities traders, vessel owners, etc. Some of these third parties have already been avoiding the Russia oil trade, fearful of current sanctions. If the West imposes a full, coordinated embargo on Russian exports, including sanctions on third parties enabling the trade, most ships in the flotilla would never set sail. The sanctions risk would be too great. Instead, the volumes previously flowing West would end up “stranded” on Russian shores.

Which begs the question: What would Russia do with all that stranded oil? The answer highlights Russian oil’s second strategic vulnerability. Russia lacks large-scale storage capacity, so the only option would be to leave all this oil in the ground — that is, not to produce it in the first place. Known as “shutting in production,” this scenario would be severely damaging to Moscow for several reasons, some self-evident others less so.

Most obvious would be the loss of vital export revenues. Less evident, however, is the extensive damage a prolonged, large-scale shut-in could do to Russia’s upstream production capacity. Russia is not like Saudi Arabia, where advantageous geology and advanced infrastructure create immense swing capacity — the ability to vary production levels quickly and efficiently. Most Russian oil wells have meager flow rates and poor economics. A prolonged, large-scale shut-in would mean laboriously closing tens of thousands of these marginal wells, many of which could never return to profit. It could also compromise complex pressure maintenance programs critical to field profitability.

Restoring lost production capacity at marginal fields after a long shut-in would be a very slow and costly process — if it is possible at all. When Russia suffered a major drop in production in the early 1990s, it took over a decade, along with large amounts of Western capital and technology, to restore production to its previous levels.

Beyond operational consequences, there would be still other negative consequences of a shut-in. It would weaken support for Putin in Russia’s important oil producing regions. It would erode Russia’s standing in the OPEC+ cartel, and it would put Russia’s export market share at risk. Finally, it would deprive Putin of the key source of economic rents used to maintain his authoritarian rule.

With diversion to Asia a chimera and shutting-in a catastrophic risk, Russia turns out to be far more reliant on the West to absorb its oil than many Western policymakers may realize. And this dependency gives the West the leverage needed to impose smart oil sanctions that can achieve Western objectives while minimizing self-harm.

How would such sanctions work? Western governments would start by announcing a full embargo on all Russian oil exports. This should include secondary sanctions on third parties, thus stranding large amounts of export oil in Russia. But the embargo would include provisions that allow Russia to resume exporting its stranded oil, provided it sells through a special Western-administered sanctions regime that severely limits the proceeds sent back to the Kremlin.

Under this regime, Russian producers would sell their exported oil at normal market prices. But they wouldn’t receive the full market price for the sale. Instead, the sanctions administrator would pay them a reduced price only sufficient to cover their production costs, excluding any amounts for Russian taxes. In Russia, average production costs run around $20 a barrel, before taxes. The difference between this $20 of “cost-only” proceeds and the actual market price would go into a special fund for Ukraine reparations.

For example, if oil is selling at $80 a barrel, the Russian seller would get a “cost-only” payment of $20, while the remaining $60 would go to fund Ukraine reparations. Compare that to what currently happens: The Russian seller gets the full $80 a barrel, $55 of which gets passed on to the Russian government as taxes. In effect, the cost Russia must pay to avoid a painful shut-in is to surrender all its oil profits (including taxes) to rebuild Ukraine.

Kremlin revenues slashed, a supply shock averted and a half-billion dollars a day for Ukraine reparations — there must be a catch. The catch is that Russia can’t be forced to export its stranded oil. Selling would clearly be in Russia’s economic self-interest: It receives just enough to keep its most strategic industry afloat while avoiding a crippling shut-in. But it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Russia opted — at least initially — to shut in production in hopes of roiling global markets and breaking Western resolve. The Kremlin could also pursue sanctions of its own; in fact, the EU is already hard at work trying to prepare for the possibility of restricted gas exports to Europe.

But the longer Russia chose to shut in its oil, the more severe the consequences, both economically and geologically. Putin has already lost one flagship in this war. He may think twice before scuttling his most strategic industry.

More at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/26/sanction-russian-oil
-without-hurting-west-00027478

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, May 1, 2022 9:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How to slash Putin’s oil revenue, avert a price shock for the West and fund Ukraine reparations

Democrats don't get to tell you any of that.

Gas prices were already well over a dollar more per gallon than they were a year prior, before you were able to point out Ukraine on a map.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Sunday, May 1, 2022 10:11 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How to slash Putin’s oil revenue, avert a price shock for the West and fund Ukraine reparations

Democrats don't get to tell you any of that.

Gas prices were already well over a dollar more per gallon than they were a year prior, before you were able to point out Ukraine on a map.

I have been in the meetings where the price of fuel is decided. Politicians have no way of changing those prices, except in countries like Venezuela, Libya, Iran. By the way, those 3 countries are selling a gallon of gasoline for less than 20 cents. US Refineries could sell it that low, but why would they? The US government will have to nationalize the refineries and oil fields before that happens. It has happened before, during WWII prices were set by the Federal government, but not since. I am not worried or sorry that Americans can't understand how fuel prices are set, but that is your problem. I set prices, so tough luck for poor white trash who are buying fuel.

Venezuela Gasoline prices, US Gallon, 25-Apr-2022
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Venezuela/gasoline_prices/

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OJU5

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, May 1, 2022 11:19 AM

Two, send me money buddy. Lots of it. We're friends, right?

T

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Monday, May 2, 2022 6:59 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Two, send me money buddy. Lots of it. We're friends, right?

T

Did you ever hear of John D Rockefeller? He didn't become a philanthropist until after he retired. I'm not retired.

Rockefeller and associates controlled almost all oil production, processing, marketing, and transportation in the United States. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act broke up Mr. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company and Trust in 1911, but by the 1970's it was obvious to me that all those former parts of Rockefeller's Trust had reassembled themselves to take the maximum amount of money away from Americans. That is why the price of gasoline goes up and down in synchronization at all gas stations. They are adjusting prices to take the maximum possible money from fuel buyers. Between the cracks separating those big oil companies there was room for little people like me, all thanks to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Fortunately for people who sell fuel, there was no 20th Century version of Senator John Sherman to draft a new and more effective version of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to handle this obvious collusion (a word incorrectly used about Trump/Russia but actually describes what oil companies are still doing in the 21st Century).

It is possible to draft legislation to control not just American gasoline prices, but also the price Putin gets for his oil. That article explains how Putin could be bullied into lowering his prices because of the geology of Russian oil fields: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/26/sanction-russian-oil
-without-hurting-west-00027478

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Standard-Oil

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/sherman-anti-trust-act

The world’s largest oil companies are churning out massive profits in the first few months of the year even as they face uncertainties created by Russia’s war with Ukraine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220430185559/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/home/article/Oil-majors-Exxon-and-Chevron-yield-hefty-profits-17137826.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Mobile)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, May 2, 2022 8:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How to slash Putin’s oil revenue, avert a price shock for the West and fund Ukraine reparations

Democrats don't get to tell you any of that.

Gas prices were already well over a dollar more per gallon than they were a year prior, before you were able to point out Ukraine on a map.
I have been in the meetings where the price of fuel is decided. Politicians have no way of changing those prices, except in countries like Venezuela, Libya, Iran. By the way, those 3 countries are selling a gallon of gasoline for less than 20 cents. US Refineries could sell it that low, but why would they? The US government will have to nationalize the refineries and oil fields before that happens. It has happened before, during WWII prices were set by the Federal government, but not since. I am not worried or sorry that Americans can't understand how fuel prices are set, but that is your problem. I set prices, so tough luck for poor white trash who are buying fuel.

Venezuela Gasoline prices, US Gallon, 25-Apr-2022
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Venezuela/gasoline_prices/

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OJU5

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

I've paid about $150 for gas so far this year. I'm not worried about me, honey.

So why was gas only $2.20 here almost the entire time Trump was President?

Oil companies were just being nice between 2016 and 2020, huh?

Don't break your back shilling so hard.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Monday, May 2, 2022 8:47 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I've paid about $150 for gas so far this year. I'm not worried about me, honey.

So why was gas only $2.20 here almost the entire time Trump was President?

Oil companies were just being nice between 2016 and 2020, huh?

Don't break your back shilling so hard.

To get into the natural gas business, I explained to my Republican voting relatives how fuel prices are set. The relatives told me I was wrong-wrong-wrong because the President of the United States sets the prices indirectly. My relatives didn't know, and haven't learned since then, how fuel prices are set. I don't think they will ever understand, but because they didn't loan me money to start my business, they didn't get any of the profits. They think it is unfair, but I tell them if they are so smart about how the fuel business works (they still insist the President indirectly sets prices) why aren't they rich?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, May 2, 2022 8:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Two, send me money buddy. Lots of it. We're friends, right?

T

Did you ever hear of John D Rockefeller? He didn't become a philanthropist until after he retired. I'm not retired.

Too funny two, too funny.

T

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Monday, May 2, 2022 8:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Too funny two, to funny.

T

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Monday, May 2, 2022 9:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
To get into the natural gas business, I explained to my Republican voting relatives how fuel prices are set. The relatives told me I was wrong-wrong-wrong because the President of the United States sets the prices indirectly. My relatives didn't know, and haven't learned since then, how fuel prices are set. I don't think they will ever understand, but because they didn't loan me money to start my business, they didn't get any of the profits. They think it is unfair, but I tell them if they are so smart about how the fuel business works (they still insist the President indirectly sets prices) why aren't they rich?

The internet is full of people who lie about how rich they are.

There's not one single person here who believes any stories about you being rich except for Ted. And that's only because Ted is a simple minded fool and you happen to say things that he agrees with.

You would literally die if your circumstances changed and had to live my life overnight, while I flourish.

It's taken years of discipline and living far below my means even when income was great to do what I've done and continue to do today.

I was even able to afford to and weather a 5 year near-zero-income binge drinking session without losing it all in between and subsequently build myself back up to where I was before that while also making great improvements on my house and land at the same time.

You are talking to the wrong guy about financial stability, Second. I'm a rock.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Monday, May 2, 2022 9:07 AM

Wow. Ted fixed his "typo" after the fact.

First time I ever saw him do that before. He usually sticks with stupid after I point it out.

Good job, buddy.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Monday, May 2, 2022 1:18 PM

Bam!

T

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Monday, May 2, 2022 1:20 PM

PUTIN PARADE MOSCOW

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 7:18 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Until Ukraine, Russia Lobbyists Successfully Blunted U.S. Sanctions After Foreign Adventurism

After unpopular assaults on Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russia and Kremlin-associated interests spent millions on lobbying in Washington.

The invasion of Ukraine is not the first time in recent memory that Russian foreign policy has given rise to harsh criticisms in Washington. But it does mark the first time that the Kremlin has been hobbled in its ability to respond through normal D.C. channels — namely, through high-powered K Street lobbyists.

Before its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin poured hefty sums of money into lobbying in Washington, D.C. The Kremlin itself, state-run companies, and other firms linked to Russia’s leadership frequently used K Street lobbyists in the 21st century to soften the fallout from Russia’s foreign misadventures — often to spare Russian entities from the worst punishments. Now sanctions on the Russian government and Kremlin-linked firms have meant that kind of spending isn’t possible.

Many Russian interests have shifted their lobbying goals to just trying to manage the breakup of the U.S.-Russia relationship.

“With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it became clear that we don’t need lobbyists, we need really good divorce lawyers,” said Julie Newton, a research fellow at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre at St. Antony’s College. “Lobbying today is a dialogue of the deaf.”

That wasn’t always the case. The Russian government and Kremlin-connected firms successfully garnered considerable influence in the U.S. prior to the recent invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s high-dollar lobbying approach kicked off in August 2008, when it tried to pacify U.S. responses to Russian aggression following the country’s invasion of Georgia. Washington placed blame for the five-day war squarely on Russia, particularly given the Kremlin’s recognition of independence for the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the expulsion of Georgian forces from the two territories. Led by the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., many Washington power brokers called for punishing Russian aggression.

With punitive actions on the table, Russia nearly doubled its spending on lobbyists. In total, the amount of money reported by firms receiving from Russian interests soared from just over $5 million in 2007, prior to the invasion, to more than $9 million in 2009, an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act records shows.

Ketchum, a public relations firm representing the Russian Federation, went into overdrive to flip the narrative and blame Georgia for the conflict. Ketchum facilitated interviews for the New York Times with Russian military officials, distributed briefing notes on the war to the Washington Post, and arranged a CNN interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. Ketchum also helped place an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on August 20, 2008, which said that Russia “remains committed to a peaceful resolution in the Caucasus.” In early 2009, the Russian government hired another firm, Alston & Bird, amid a multimillion-dollar surge in lobbying spending by Russian interests.

This Russian rehabilitation campaign largely worked, and the Kremlin successfully weathered the storm wrought by its invasion of Georgia. The George W. Bush administration did little to punish Putin’s aggression in 2008, and Russia was an afterthought in the Obama administration — or, sometimes, literally a punchline.

Russia would again face down consequences from Washington following its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. With President Barack Obama joining in on the criticisms, Washington was less forgiving than after the war in Georgia. Though Obama was clear to rule out any military conflict with Russia, the U.S. announced a visa ban, canceled military consultations with Russia, expanded military flights over former Soviet states, sanctioned several Russian firms, and expanded security assistance to Ukraine.

In response to its newfound pariah status in D.C., the Russian government called a halt to its public relations campaign. The Kremlin severed its ties with Ketchum. “We decided not to renew the contract because of the anti-Russian hysteria, the information war that is going on,” Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained at the time.

Though the Russian government decided not to directly lobby in Washington, Kremlin-connected firms and government interests facing punitive measures would begin spending millions to win influence.

The Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014, a bill that offered a host of punishments for the invasion of Crimea, including seizing the assets of major Russian firms, named in particular Gazprombank, a bank founded by the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. The bank hired Squire Patton Boggs and paid the firm $1.5 million between 2014 and 2017 to “lobby on issues related to banking laws and regulations including applicable sanctions,” according to public filings.

Gas company Novatek, whose ownership includes Putin allies like Gennady Timchenko and Leonid Mikhelson, was also listed in the sanctions law. In response, the company paid the public relations firm Qorvis Communications $740,000 between 2014 and 2015 to advocate against its passage, among other things. Between Qorvis and Squire Patton Boggs, several top former government officials worked to shore up interests of Kremlin-connected firms: two Republican former U.S. senators, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Louisiana’s John Breaux, as well a former acting general counsel of the Treasury Department. The bill threatening their Russian clients never became law.

Lobbyists for these Russian firms weren’t always so successful. Qorvis worked to overturn a White House executive order that authorized the seizure of some Russian oligarchs’ assets in the U.S., but the sanctions remained in place, costing Timchenko and Mikhelson an estimated $16.5 billion combined.

Following the Crimea invasion, the Russian Direct Investment Fund also came under scrutiny from the U.S. The Russian sovereign wealth fund hired two lobbying firms to work on the threat of sanctions, signing contracts with Capitol Counsel and Goldin Solutions worth $45,000 and $30,000 per month, respectively. Capitol Counsel submitted a letter to David Cohen, a Treasury Department undersecretary, making the case against sanctioning the RDIF. The Treasury Department ultimately did issue sanctions on the RDIF, but not for more than a year after the invasion of Crimea and long after both Capitol Counsel and Goldin Solutions stopped working for the fund.

After shuttering its legal influence operation, in 2015 the Russian government itself began a multiyear illicit influence operation. Eventually, that campaign would result in the now-notorious cases of Russian interference in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were indicted for their roles in meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.

From 2016 to 2021, while Russia’s illicit influence operation was making headlines, the legal Russian influence operation was quietly humming along. As the fallout from the 2014 invasion of Ukraine lingered, more than a dozen former members of Congress, congressional staff, and high-ranking sanctions officials registered to lobby on behalf of banks tied to the Kremlin, Russian oligarchs, and the company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a recent analysis by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found. This included former Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and former Rep. Toby Moffett, D-Conn., who both represented the now-sanctioned Russian bank Sovcombank in a $90,000-a-month contract signed with Mercury Public Affairs just before the recent invasion.

Despite most Americans holding an unfavorable opinion of Putin’s Russia, this cadre of former government officials helped ensure that their clients largely dodged the brunt of U.S. retaliation for Putin’s meddling in America and elsewhere. The Biden administration lifted sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in May 2021, and construction of the pipeline that would greatly enhance Russian energy flows to Europe was completed last September.

The sanctions on Russian oligarchs were arguably ineffective, and in some cases they were even lifted. For example, sanctions on Russian energy and metals giant En+ Group, linked to oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, were lifted after Vitter lobbied against them.

When Putin made the disastrous decision to invade Ukraine earlier this year, all of this came crashing down. Most D.C. lobbying and public relations firms severed ties with their Russian clients. Many of the sanctions these lobbyists had long acted as a bulwark against were suddenly put into force, including those that have affected Russia’s financial sector, members of the Russian elite, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Previous attempts from Russian entities such as Sovcombank, VTB Bank, and the RDIF to evade punitive action were unraveled as they too were either sanctioned or restricted in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

If history is any indication, however, Russia’s influence operation will likely attempt to reform itself. With sanctions limiting its legal lobbying operation, it’s possible that Russia will expand its illicit influence operations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220507230443/https://theintercept.com/20
22/05/07/russia-lobbying-sanctions-ukraine/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 8:11 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The U$D is rising against other major currencies, but the Russian ruble is now rising against the U$D, at 69 rubles per dollar - more valuable than it was BEFORE the Ukraine invasion.

You're boring. All you do is spout propaganda/ wishful thinking that is SO at variance from reality there is no way to even have a pointed discussion with you, much less expect any sort of actual analysis.

Sanctions will hurt Russia. But they will also hurt the EU probably even more. The question is, who is going to be hurt faster and reach a political collapse first?

You can't fight reality.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 8:36 PM