Latest news with #UkraineInvasion
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ukraine says Russia's financial reserves may dry up in 2026
Russia has spent over half of its National Wealth Fund (NWF) during the three years of its invasion of Ukraine, says Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service. Source: Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Details: If the current restrictions and additional measures imposed by the West are maintained, including increasing control over the circumvention of oil sanctions, the Russian Federation risks losing the last remnants of its national welfare fund as early as 2026. The report notes that the NWF's liquid assets had reached US$145 billion as of the beginning of July 2022. A year later, in July 2023, this figure had dropped to US$78 billion. On 1 May 2025, the reserves were down to only US$39 billion. Since the start of the full-scale war, the fund has reduced almost fourfold. "The average price of Brent oil is projected to be US$64 for a barrel in 2025 and US$60 in 2026. For Russia, whose budget is replenished with oil and gas revenues, such a dynamic creates critical fiscal risks," the report said. It is also pointed out that state corporation Rosatom's 2025 projects are still 80% underfunded, Russian railways is experiencing a drop in traffic, production in the mining, metallurgical, and construction sectors are falling and Russian corporations are suspending dividend payments in large numbers. "Despite this, Moscow continues to publicly demonstrate confidence in the stability of the economy. However, state-controlled propaganda that conceals the real extent of the economic downturn does not change the facts: the resource-based model of the Russian economy is losing efficiency," the Foreign Intelligence Service said. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Under US pressure, Liechtenstein seeks fix for stranded Russian wealth
By John O'Donnell and Oliver Hirt VADUZ, Liechtenstein (Reuters) -Liechtenstein is examining tightening control of scores of Russian-linked trusts abandoned by their managers under pressure from Washington, according to several people familiar with the matter. The country, one of the world's smallest and richest, is home to thousands of low-tax trusts, hundreds of which have links to Russians, two of the people with direct knowledge of the matter said, putting it in the crosshairs of Western efforts to sanction Moscow. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned several individuals and trusts in Liechtenstein it said were linked to Russian oligarchs, including Vladimir Potanin, and a long-time ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Gennady Timchenko. The U.S. Treasury had no immediate comment. Potanin's Interros holding company did not respond to a request for comment, while Timchenko could not be reached. That sanctioning has prompted other directors fearing such punishment to quit hundreds of Russian-linked trusts, according to several people familiar with the matter, exposing a far wider problem with Russian money in the tiny country with a population of about 40,000. The episode, in a sleepy Alpine enclave ruled by a billionaire royal family, also shows how deep and opaque Russia's business ties to Europe remain more than three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is a setback for the microstate that had long sought to shed its image as a safe haven for foreign wealth. The mass resignations have put scores of trusts in limbo, essentially freezing swathes of Russian wealth. The trusts are the linchpin for fortunes, including yachts or property, that are scattered around the globe. Their suspension puts that property beyond reach, a further potential lever over Russia, amid attempts by U.S. President Donald Trump to strike a peace deal. Reuters has spoken to several people with direct knowledge of these events, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. They outlined how a push by Washington had led scores of directors to quit trusts with links to Russia and how the government was scrambling to resolve the crisis. Liechtenstein's newly elected government is seeking to fix the issue, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring the continued pressure from Washington over Russia sanctions, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's earlier suggestions he could ease them. Liechtenstein also sees its handling of sanctions enforcement as something that could influence its government's efforts to lower newly imposed U.S. tariffs on exports, said one person with direct knowledge of the discussions. A Liechtenstein government official said 475 trusts were affected by the defections, although added that not all were linked to Russians or sanctioned individuals. That official said Liechtenstein's justice department was seeking to install new managers to 350 trusts, while 40 were being liquidated and unsuccessful attempts had been made to appoint a liquidator to further 85 trusts. This episode strikes at the trust industry, a critical pillar of Liechtenstein's roughly 770 billion franc ($930 billion) financial centre that underpins the country's economy. Local banks, the government official said, were also affected, without elaborating. Banks are particularly vulnerable because the United States has the power to throttle them by cutting off their access to the dollar, threatening a wider crisis. The episode has confronted the country with its biggest crisis since 2008, when leaked customer data at LGT Bank, owned by the country's princely family, exposed widespread tax evasion. The government is now examining options to centralise the management of the deserted trusts under its watch and tightening supervision of trusts. The Liechtenstein official also said the country's authorities were in contact with their international counterparts and that no trust assets would be released to sanctioned individuals. Liechtenstein, sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, is dominated by its royal family, whose castle towers over the parliament. It is tied closely to Switzerland, using its franc currency, but also enjoys freedom to do business in the European Union's single market. The country, criticised for hiding the fortunes of the wealthy in the past, had reformed and joined the International Monetary Fund. Once home to roughly 80,000 tax trusts, it now hosts about 20,000, said two people familiar with the matter - equivalent to roughly one trust for two residents. Pressure on Liechtenstein follows a similar push against neighbouring Austria and Switzerland. ($1 = 0.8273 Swiss francs) (Additional reporting by Reuters Moscow bureau, editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Tomasz Janowski)
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad by Donnacha Ó Beacháin; and Putin's Sledgehammer by Candace Rondeaux
Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad Author : Donnacha Ó Beacháin ISBN-13 : 978-1788218016 Publisher : Agenda Publishing Guideline Price : £24.99 Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos Author : Candace Rondeaux ISBN-13 : 978-1541703063 Publisher : Public Affairs Guideline Price : £28 The ruthlessness of Russia 's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its disregard for the lives of Ukrainian civilians and the appalling slaughter of innocents in towns such as Irpin and Bucha have led many to believe in the inherent evil of Russia, Russians and all things Russian. Donnacha Ó Beacháin, professor of politics at Dublin City University , pursues this view relentlessly in Unfinished Empire. He puts forward indisputable material to support his views and goes back through Russian history to make this case but eschews references that may exonerate some Russians from guilt. In Putin's Sledgehammer the journalist and academic Prof Candace Rondeaux of Arizona State University concentrates on the odious exploits of Russia's private military companies, especially Wagner and its rival Redut, in Ukraine and elsewhere. Her story is more nuanced than Ó Beacháin's Manichaean version and tells us of non-Russian as well as ethnic-Russian involvement in atrocities. In one excerpt Rondeaux points out an Irish connection when the military supplies of Redut were paid for by the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, owner of the Aughinish Aluminum plant in Co Limerick; a stark reminder of the international tentacles of Vladimir Putin 's allies. After the Tsarist empire came to its bloody end, most of its territory was inherited by the Bolsheviks who fought their way to victory in the even bloodier Russian civil war and established the Soviet Union in 1922. In Unfinished Empire, Ó Beacháin leads us from there through the territorial ambitions of Stalin, his heirs and successors, with a brief pause for the hectic and corrupt reign of Boris Yeltsin, followed by Putin's current Ukrainian bloodbath. READ MORE The conclusion he comes to, and it is shared by many of Russia's neighbours, is that Moscow is determined to reconstitute the Soviet Union in territory, if not in ideology, through force of arms in the Baltics and Poland, in the Caucasus and even in the steppes of central Asia. But there are strong reasons to believe that Russia does not now, and may never, have the military capacity to fulfil these ambitions. Most Russians may support the so-called special military operation in Ukraine. Some may support the reconquest of former colonies but most simply have rallied to the flag on being insistently told by a craven media that their country is under threat not only from Ukrainians but from 'the West'. Others should know better and I know two of them. Dmitry Trenin's defection from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the pro-war ranks came as a shock, though when we last met over lunch in Dublin he spoke of his annoyance at a growing Russophobia in the West. Volodya Alexandrov, a charming man who was the Moscow office manager of a leading western newspaper , has to my great surprise taken to posting his support for the war on social media. [ The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine by Alexander Vindman – An unsparing critique of US 'crisis management' policy Opens in new window ] On the other hand I know many Russians who oppose the conflict in particular and Putin's policies in general. Some of them have fled to the West. One was killed when reporting the earlier Ukrainian conflict and another, my friend and colleague Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin, died a horrible death from poisoning at the hands of the Russian State. Had Ó Beacháin taken the time to mention the many decent Russians who have risked their lives in opposition to state power through the centuries and had he pointed out that many of his Russian imperialists were not Russians, his book might have given the impression of balanced research rather than polemic. He correctly describes the racism of many Russians towards the 'lesser breeds' of their former empire and towards foreigners in general. I have witnessed the continuous harassment of central Asian and Caucasian workers in Moscow by the police who immediately pounce on those with a darker-than-Russian complexion. One of my neighbours was a frequent victim but shocked the cops when he showed his passport; Michael Slackman, then of Newsday, is now the international editor of the New York Times. As for the non-Russian Russian imperialists, Catherine the Great, born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, was 100 per cent German and Stalin, born Iosif Djugashvili, was 100 per cent Georgian. Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu, accused of war crimes as Putin's defence minister, is from the Turkic Tuvan community in Siberia. In many cases those non-Russian leaders of the Soviet Union favoured those from their home regions. Stalin, the Georgian, looked to the Caucasus for associates including Sergo Ordzhonikidze, a friend from Georgian revolutionary days; the great Soviet survivor Anastas Mikoyan from Armenia; and, most evil of all, the merciless killer and torturer Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria from Abkhazia. As for Ukraine, Mikhail Zygar, in his book All the Kremlin's Men, writes: 'The 'Ukrainian Clans' inside the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were traditionally the most powerful. They can be said to have ruled the Soviet Union for decades.' Their main rivals were the clans from St Petersburg, whose successors are now in charge. Zygar's views are partially backed by Harvard's Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, who has ranked the Ukrainian clans as the second most powerful Soviet political force. In a rare reference to events in which Russians were the victims, Ó Beacháin touches on a matter in which I have a personal interest, when he deals with the series of apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1992 which cost 300 lives. I took the opportunity to ask Putin directly about what happened. I could see him tense up immediately. His face reddened with anger as he blamed Chechen rebels for the killings. It was when investigating these bombings as well as business corruption by former KGB officers that my colleague Yuri Shchekochikhin met his death by poisoning. He is buried near Boris Pasternak in the writers' cemetery at Peredelkino. I went to his grave with another friend, Andrei Mironov, who survived torture by the KGB and confinement in a Gulag prison. He had been arrested so often in the Putin era that most Moscow policemen knew him by name. Andrei supported Ukrainian independence, was an unquestioned admirer of the Maidan demonstrations but ironically lost his life when decapitated by a Ukrainian shell in 2014 near the eastern town of Sloviansk. Ó Beacháin's conflation of Russia and the Soviet Union is particularly evident in dealing with the mass rape by Red Army soldiers of perhaps millions of women and girls. The historian Antony Beevor's vivid description of the barbaric fate of these women is quoted. But the Red Army included Ukrainians, Belarusans, central Asians and soldiers from the Caucasus as well as Russians. Beevor's view that the frontline Soviet soldiers in Berlin, unlike those who came behind, often behaved with great kindness to German civilians is not deemed worthy of mention. All in all, if one ignores the exceptions mentioned above, Ó Beacháin gives fair warning of the dangers posed by Putin and the possibly even greater dangers from some of his likely successors. In Putin's Sledgehammer, Rondeaux concentrates on the abhorrent behaviour of Russia's mercenary forces in Ukraine and carefully distinguishes between these contract soldiers and the raw, barely-trained conscripts who found themselves in the front lines. She goes on to deal with the rise and dramatic fall of the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin from petty criminal to celebrity chef who wined and dined George W Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel at the G8 summit in St Petersburg, his move from cookery, and cooking the books, to the sphere of private armies, his short-lived rebellion against the Kremlin and his death in a not-so-mysterious air crash. [ Yevgeny Prigozhin obituary: From 'Putin's chef' to thorn in his side Opens in new window ] Rondeaux's academic research and old-fashioned journalistic doorstepping, delving into Wagner's involvement in the massacres of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and Irpin, is a key section of the book. 'One telling sign,' she writes, 'that the Russian soldiers who stormed into Bucha that spring were no ordinary soldiers was a corpse, booby-trapped with explosives that was discovered after Ukrainian forces seized the town.' This was a vile Wagner trademark from its earlier campaigns in Libya, where Wagner, now sinisterly rebranded as Russia's 'Afrika Corps', supports rebel leader Khalifa Haftar . Rondeaux's evidence in this case has been supported by German military intelligence, which intercepted radio communications in Bucha and came to the conclusion that Wagner 'played the leading role' in the massacres. In Irpin, the town's deputy mayor Angela Makeevka spoke to Rondeaux of the raw conscripts being replaced by a different type of soldier: 'There were Buryatis, Kadyrovtsi, Wagnerovtsi [ethnic Buryats from Siberia, Chechen troops loyal to the pro-Putin dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner mercenaries]. You could tell them apart because of the insignia they wore on their shoulders. They had better uniforms. They had better weapons and they had night-vision goggles. They carried themselves with more confidence.' They also carried themselves with the utmost brutality and have continued to do so. Rondeaux combines vivid journalistic clarity and unbiased academic reflection in Putin's Sledgehammer. Her work is a welcome addition to the growing library on Putin's Russia. Further reading In Putin: His Life and Times (The Bodley Head, 2022) Philip Short details the rise of a mid-ranking KGB officer to the controller of Russia's vast nuclear arsenal. He also details the changing political and personal stances of a man once regarded as a much-needed agent of stability in the chaotic Russia of the 1990s. It is a daunting read of 854 pages but a necessary one for those determined to avoid superficial judgments. Prof Serhii Plokhy of Harvard in The Gates of Europe (Penguin, 2015) provides a sympathetic and detailed history of his native land. He is, all the same, critical of hasty and declamatory statements from Ukrainian politicians in the excitement of the Maidan days that gave Russia and its supporters in the Donbas the excuse to break away from the rest of the country. All the Kremlin's Men by Mikhail Zygar (Public Affairs, 2016) is a Who's Who, often in their own words, of those who have served Vladimir Putin. It's a must-read in order to understand the mentality of those who have brought themselves into Kremlin's darkest recesses. Zygar, founder of the now defunct anti-regime TV Dozhd, has paid the price for his work. He lives in exile in Germany and has been sentenced to prison in his absence.
NHK
23-05-2025
- Politics
- NHK
Lessons from Ukraine invasion for Beijing and Taiwan
China and Taiwan have each learned from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. NHK World's Sekiya Satoshi spoke with two defense experts about how Beijing and Taipei have adjusted their strategies.
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘Settler terrorism is a daily thing': a Jewish Russian activist who emigrated to Israel
When we meet at a cafe in Tel Aviv, Andrey Khrzhanovsky (26) has an injured shoulder from when he was hit by the barrel of an M-16 rifle a few weeks earlier. The Jewish Russian activist and journalist says he was attacked, along with two Palestinians, by a settler in Al-Farsiya in the occupied West Bank – 'what is being missed in the media is that settler terrorism is a daily thing', he says. From St Petersburg, Khrzhanovsky was visiting his grandparents, who had emigrated to Israel years earlier, in February 2022 when he woke up to the news that Russia had started bombing Ukraine – 'I made an immediate decision that I can't go back there.' Along with tens of thousands of Ukranians, Belarusians and other Russians with at least one Jewish grandparent , he applied for Israeli citizenship. In total, about 220,000 people of Jewish ancestry have emigrated to Israel from former Soviet states since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 1.3 million Russian-speakers account for about 15 per cent of Israeli citizens, the majority of whom arrived after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent economic turmoil in Russia. READ MORE The post-Soviet wave of migration significantly enlarged Israel's right-wing voting bloc , which has dominated recent Israeli elections. In contrast, the mostly young, educated Russians who have emigrated since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 tend to identify as left-wing or centrist, according to polling on Russian wartime migration by Outrush , a research project on Russian emigration. The polling found that 75 per cent of the post-2022 immigrants viewed themselves as political and civil activists. Andrey X is an independent Russian Israeli journalist and activist working in the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy When he became an Israeli citizen in 2022, Khrzhanovsky says he had only a 'surface level' understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Russian language media in Israel is skewed heavily to the right and widely read via social media, with right-wing Russian-speaking influencers playing an outsize role in shaping the views of Russians and Ukrainians in Israel. Khrzhanovsky's activism in the West Bank began after a first-hand encounter that year with a settler attack in the South Hebron Hills . He subsequently launched a project to bring newly arrived Russian-speaking immigrants to the West Bank to educate them on the Israeli occupation, and at the end of 2023, along with some fellow Russian-Israelis, launched Kompass Media to provide Russian-language reporting on Israel's occupation of the West Bank and war in Gaza . Relatively small numbers of newly arrived Russian and Ukrainian immigrants have moved to settlements in the occupied West Bank such as Ariel. Khrzhanovsky says that, in general, Russian and Ukrainian immigrants living in settlements are driven more by the availability of cheaper housing in the West Bank, rather than ideological or religious reasons, although the attack led by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, has hardened views towards Palestinians. Residents of Khirbet Zanuta in the West Bank who were forced to leave at the end of October 2023 due to settler violence. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Data from before October 7th from the Viterbi Family Center, an Israeli research and polling institute, indicates that only 4 per cent of the post-2022 immigrants to Israel believe Jewish citizens should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens, compared with 43 per cent of Jewish Israelis in general. Some 53 per cent of new immigrants believed that Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated against, compared with only 31 per cent of Jewish Israelis who thought the same. Having amassed a large online following under the name Andrey X , Khrzhanovsky's time is now spent producing a documentary about Ras al-A'uja , a Palestinian hamlet in the West Bank under threat from settlers attacking their water supply and livestock. 'I started essentially as a protective presence activist and filmed everything because when settlers or soldiers are being filmed they're much less aggressive,' he says. However, 'Sometimes they're being filmed and they will still attack you,' he adds. Khrzhanovsky says he is motivated by 'a deep belief that knowledge and education and freedom of information is the foundation of change'. He believes that the Israeli occupation in the West Bank will not end without international pressure and sanctions that reduce funding for the Israeli government – 'and that can only happen if the international public is informed'. Like many independent journalists, Khrzhanovsky's work is supported by online subscribers via his Patreon account, which has allowed him to maintain an apartment in Israel, as well as hire a film crew and security while they are working in the West Bank. In December 2022, Khrzhanovsky was arrested for several days after posting a video placing a 'Free Palestine' sticker on a memorial to an Israeli soldier in Sderot, near the Gaza border. He says he was beaten and denied food and water before eventually being released on bail – 'if I was a Palestinian I would be in jail now'. More recently, Shimon Atia, a settler in the West Bank, has sued Khrzhanovsky for more than €40,000, alleging defamation. Khrzhanovsky says he faces 13 lawsuits, with Israel's minister of housing and construction, Yitzhak Goldknopf saying that his actions 'constitute a blatant violation of the law and public order in the State of Israel'. 'All of the cases will be heard in Israeli courts, since I'm an Israeli citizen,' says Khrzhanovsky, 'as opposed to Palestinians, who would be tried in military courts, even when we do the exact same stuff and live in the exact same place.' Khrzhanovsky says he supports a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine without special privileges for Jewish people. When questioned on how that aligns with his own personal benefit of Israeli citizenship he says: 'I benefit from a lot of things. I benefit from the patriarchy, for instance, but I don't think that that's a good reason to defend it.'
