Now, we learn that British Petroleum just sold off a 20% stake in Russia’s ROSNEFT for $25,000,000,000. BP owns 1/5 of the oil giant and it accounts for half of the oil reserves BP has in the ground.
Corporate ‘rats’ are jumpin ship, ‘Pooty’. Whatcha gonna do now, punk?
Please share widely!
Russia’s central bank just doubled their interest rate to 20%. My home mortgage interest rate is 3.5 %.
All G7 nations now support SWIFT sanctions against Russia.
For the first time, Germany will spend 2% of their GDP on defense.
Russian stock market is down 40% so it didn’t open today.
Ukrainians are using Tik Tok to post videos of how to operate abandoned Russian tanks.
I’m a bit more willing today than previously to exercise “strategic patience”. The way things are going for Russia militarily it seems we are in when-your-enemy-is-floundering-stay-out-of-the-way territory.
Agreed. At the same time, I hope you’re also paying attention to Mr. Putin’s escalating rhetoric and actions about Russia’s nuclear capability.
This is a dangerously precarious situation. I am, frankly, hoping that cooler heads within the Russian military will help walk this situation back from its current precipice.
Of course, if he acts on his nuclear sabre-rattling we can no longer exercise strategic patience either. My bet is still that he won’t – way too obviously dangerous for all concerned.
If he acts on this, then I doubt any of us will be around long enough to react.
Once triggered, the doomsday mechanisms move very quickly and are difficult or impossible to stop.
I would be quite upset if we got through this bleeping pandemic only to die in a bleeping nuclear war. One IR blogger I follow was a little ominous that the guardrails stopping Nixon and Trump are just not there in Putin’s case. Both sides also have the cyber capability to disable early warning detectors. I’m hoping Putin goes back to being rational and cuts his losses.
The nuclear weapons themselves are the guardrails, just as they were in the Cold War. The consequences are just too horrible to behold.
Looks like Putin has two options. One is a humiliating defeat – a failure in the eyes of the world, the other is a “great leader of Russia” who rid the world of Nazis – in the eyes of Russian peasants living in remote areas of the nation. The latter will require a horrific campaign of destruction of Ukraine.
Are there Oligarchs in the USA? (Asking for friend)
There’s a Russian oligarch living at Mar-a-lago.
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Albert Einstein