Russia’s largest bank will be excluded from the SWIFT payments messaging system, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced on Wednesday.
Sberbank is among three Russian banks to be sanctioned as part of the European Union’s sixth package of sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February.
For close to 80 years, the US dollar has reigned supreme as the world’s premier reserve currency.
It’s a state of affairs that gives the US what former french president, Valery Giscard d’Estaing famously termed its “exorbitant privilege” in world affairs.
A popular Russian state TV anchor has warned that Moscow could wipe Britain off the map with a nuclear tsunami in retaliation for supporting Ukraine.
In his Sunday evening primetime show on Channel One, one of the most-watched in Russia, Dmitry Kiselyov claimed on May 1 that a strike by the country’s Poseidon nuclear underwater drone could drown the UK under a 500-metre tidal wave of radioactive seawater.
As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) is keeping a close eye on Russia’s movements across the military, cyber, and information domains. With more than seven years of experience monitoring the situation in Ukraine, as well as Russia’s use of propaganda and disinformation to undermine the United States, NATO, and the European Union, the DFRLab’s global team presents the latest installment of the Russian War Report.
A Ukrainian officer had an encouraging message for the contingent of U.S. soldiers that left a Ukrainian military base shortly before Russia launched its full-fledged invasion of the country in February.
“That (Ukrainian) officer specifically stated that the biggest mistake that the Russians made was giving us eight years to prepare for this,” said Lt. Col. Todd Hopkins, deputy commander of the Florida National Guard’s 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
By weaponising gas exports, Putin is digging the grave of Russia’s economy.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalated the geo-economic war between his country and the West by suspending gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria, citing the two countries’ refusal to pay in Russian roubles.
European energy providers open Russian rouble accounts for gas, challenging bloc’s united front against Moscow.
As Poles and Bulgarians worry their cookers and heaters will run dry, the rest of Europe is scrambling to respond after Vladimir Putin’s latest chess move over the Ukraine conflict – cutting off the gas supply to his major customers.
After failing to capture the capital Kyiv and northern Ukraine, Russia now focuses on completing its conquest of the south.
It took several cruise missiles to destroy a bridge that linked southwestern Ukraine with Romania – and stood hundreds of kilometres away from the front lines of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Al Qaeda-linked militants overran an African Union peacekeepers’ camp in the centre of Somalia, a security source and the group said on Tuesday, in what appears to be one of the al Shabaab group’s biggest attacks this year.
Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations.