Last September, I had argued why “a war of arms and a peace of commerce cannot co-exist”. This is a follow up to that and events of the last 2 years sadly reinforce the point. With Russia’s GDP (troublingly) growing by 3.6% in 2023, Putin is overseeing the fastest-growing G7 economy with unemployment at an...
Banned broadcaster RT has ramped up its presence in the UAE and other countries neutral over Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine in a propaganda push to rehabilitate Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin-controlled news channel, formerly known as Russia Today, was banned in the UK and EU, and blocked in the US, after the February 2022 invasion. It...
Its government seems eager to exacerbate problems, only then to present itself as a reasonable arbiter. It is a fireman-arsonist. Who in their right mind would support Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the camel-trading Sudanese general who rose through the ranks during the genocide in Darfur? What kind of government would provide arms to his Rapid Support...
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia last week in a bid to expand relations with the two oil-rich states and show that he isn’t as isolated as he has been portrayed by the West. The Russian dictator’s visit to the two Gulf states was only the second time he...
His presence presented a symbolic split screen: Global climate talks in one frame, Putin’s oil negotiations in the other. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — While everyone else was trying to rescue the world from climate catastrophe, Vladimir Putin was negotiating Russia’s oil exports down the road. As the COP28 climate talks in Dubai reached their...
Oil production cuts agreed by the OPEC+ group will take time to kick in, the Kremlin said on Tuesday as it confirmed that President Vladimir Putin would visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Putin will also host Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow the following day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said....
“Things can only get better” felt like the anthem for the 1990s. Released in 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the song was the perfect soundtrack for a decade in which apartheid ended, democracy came to eastern Europe, peace came to Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords promised an end to...
The Dangerous Loophole in Western Sanctions on Russia. Putin’s weaponry runs on advanced electronic components obtained from a hidden international market. Through a rare, hydra-headed blend of government sanctions and the historic stampede of 1,100 multinational firms out of the country, the economic blockade of Russia has proved highly effective. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war campaign struggles onward,...
Wagner Group’s Engagements in West Asia and North Africa. Wagner Group’s mutiny against the Russian military establishment and its sudden withdrawal in June 2023 have created chaos in Russia. This leaves analysts of Russian politics with several questions regarding the future of Wagner and the country’s internal dynamics. Such questions have also been raised in...
Belgium (Brussels Morning Newspaper) Until Yevgeny Prigozhin blinked and ordered his Wagner Group forces to turn back within 200 miles from Moscow, it looked as though Putin’s Russia had created a monster it could not control. But whatever fate awaits its hardman founder, the organisation Prigozhin built is too useful to be dispensed with entirely. Wagner’s...