The United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, Kelly T. Clements and an accompanying delegation met with Afghanistan’s acting Deputy Foreign Minister, Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, in Kabul where they discussed the return of refugees and resettlement of IDPs.
Дмитрий Дризе — о новых сценариях развития ситуации на Украине
Встреча президентов России и Украины Владимира Путина и Владимира Зеленского не отвергается, заявил помощник российского лидера Юрий Ушаков. Однако, по его словам, подобное мероприятие требует тщательной подготовки. Комментируя тему переговоров с Киевом, Ушаков отметил, что российские предложения от 15 апреля остались без ответа и подвижек никаких нет. Между тем 15 июня на авиабазе Рамштайн в Германии открывается международная встреча по поставкам оружия Украине. А днем позже, по данным СМИ, в Киеве ждут лидеров Германии, Франции и Италии. Политический обозреватель “Ъ FM” Дмитрий Дризе считает, что в мире нет единого мнения относительно Украины.
Henry Kissinger nu a criticat nici modul în care Războiul din Ucraina este dus, nici lipsa de progrese pe câmpul de luptă. Ce a criticat Kissinger a fost chiar strategia, adică planul pentru care a fost declanșată pălălaia. A aruncat o căldare cu apă rece în capul celor care au avut această idee stupidă, spunându-le în față că „s-au înșelat”.
The study of economic growth is mandatory for those who pay attention to the economy, and that is precisely what we at ANBOUND are doing. As early as 2013, we conducted a study on China’s economic growth through information analysis methods. The conclusion is that China’s economic growth cannot continue to grow at a high speed, but will decline in stages. In an ideal scenario, roughly every 10 years, the average level of economic growth will drop by one percentage point. After three decades, its growth will reach 5%, thus forming a consumption-oriented society. The final result is a pyramid-shaped growth trend, therefore this conclusion is christened the “pyramid model”.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in an exclusive interview with Mir Interstate Television and Radio Company on May 1, 2020, that is, a little over a year after he had assumed the presidency of his country, recounted – not without some pride at the results achieved – how Kazakhstan was managing to keep balance between the East and West. Put another way, in this case the republic’s second president and hand-picked successor of Nursultan Nazarbayev, expressed his readiness to continue to pursue a foreign policy of good relations both with the US and the EU, and with major neighboring powers. Yet this proved not to be destined to last for long. At the beginning of this year, it became already clear that Kazakhstan, according to Forbes.ru columnist Alexander Baunov, started losing its balanced position between the East and West. Why has all that changed so quickly? So let’s try to figure it out.
The 2004 Orange Revolution, a wave of street protests that fueled the rise of a pro-Western government in Kiev, will likely be remembered by future historians as the very first modern episode in the drama that would eventually lead to the current Ukraine War. This turning point was enthusiastically supported by the West as a meaningful ideological victory for liberal democracy and ‒ above all ‒ as a geopolitical milestone in the Eastward march of both NATO and the EU. Needless to say, the shockwaves were powerfully felt in the Kremlin. Until then, Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, had been seeking some sort of accommodation with the West. Moscow offered flirtatious overtures to NATO, unilateral diplomatic concessions, and even support for the American military intervention in Afghanistan. Such gestures were seen in Washington and Brussels as a sign of weakness. After all, conventional wisdom dictated that, in the post-Cold War era, Russia was rapidly fading into irrelevance so disregarding what it had to say or what it wanted was an affordable luxury. Considering that Russia was a mere shadow of the impressive power once held by the Soviet Union, Moscow was not being taken seriously anymore.
The occurrence of stagflation is associated with a situation of general strengthening in the momentum of prices while at the same time the pace of economic activity is declining. A famous stagflation episode occurred during the 1974û75 period, as year-on-year industrial production fell by nearly 13 percent in March 1975 while the yearly growth rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped to around 12 percent. Likewise, a large fall in economic activity and galloping price inflation was observed during 1979. By December of that year, the yearly growth rate of industrial production stood close to nil while the yearly growth rate of the CPI closed at over 13 percent.
The May report is mostly bad news. The jump in energy and food prices were expected, nonetheless it will hit consumers hard. It seems likely that the rise in interest rates and slower growth will reverse price increases in more areas soon, notably cars, but it has not happened yet. Soaring energy and food prices, largely due to the Ukraine war, will continue to be huge problems. A cease fire could make a big difference.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth month, Ukrainian officials are increasingly worried the West could soon suffer “war fatigue.”
They fear Russia could take advantage of that to pressure Ukraine into compromise, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resisted, saying Ukraine would pursue its own terms for peace.
Moscow grossly underestimated the economic costs of launching its war in Ukraine. Lulled by the limited sanctions that greeted its invasions of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and a false sense of security provided by its hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves, President Vladimir Putin appears to have believed that he could ride out any sanctions that a divided West could muster. He seems not to have understood the shock wave that a full invasion of a European state would produce in the West and the massive unity of the European Union’s economic response. He did not anticipate Germany’s about-face in its relations with Russia or the sudden attractiveness of NATO membership to Finland and Sweden. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be a catastrophic blunder by Putin, one that puts Russia and his regime in great peril.