In Ukraine, the Russians are still launching airstrikes on the capital city of Kyiv, but it appears the Russian military is less interested now in conducting ground operations there than they have been in the past and are instead now focused on an eastern area of the country known as the Donbas.
On Feb. 27, nothing less than a revolution took place in Germany. In a 30-minute speech to parliament, Chancellor Olaf Scholz overturned all the old certainties that have dominated German security policy for over 30 years. He replaced them with an ambitious agenda that had defense, a topic with which Germany normally only reluctantly engages, at its core.
At the NATO summit this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine lamented what he viewed as the failure of the United States and its allies to help establish a “no-fly zone in any way” over his nation. This follows his earlier pleas for a no-fly zone imposed by NATO or the United States soon after Russia began bombarding Ukraine. The Biden administration and NATO leadership as a whole have continued to reject proposals to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. They are right to do so.
Germany is considering buying gas from Qatar amid the war in Ukraine and the United States has been pushing the Gulf state to send more gas to Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced today that Russia will accept gas payments in rubles and not euros or dollars. Putin said the stipulation applies to an unspecified list of “unfriendly” countries, the official TASS news agency reported.
With the war in Ukraine raging, and no sign of an exit in view, a Polish peacekeeping proposal is unlikely to gather steam. But it is not too early for policymakers to start thinking about what tasks a future peace operation might undertake.
The Russian stock market opened Thursday for limited trading under heavy restrictions for the first time since Moscow invaded Ukraine, coming almost a month after prices plunged and the market was shut down as a way to insulate the economy.
Trading of a limited number of stocks, including energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft, took place under curbs meant to prevent a repeat of the massive selloff on Feb. 24 that came in anticipation of Western economic sanctions.
While the world’s attention is focused on Ukraine, Afghanistan has plunged into darkness. The Taliban are tightening their control amid growing reports of detentions, rapes, and summary executions of minorities, rights advocates, women, and people associated with the old government or the new resistance.
Barely two weeks ago, most Russians enjoyed relatively prosperous, consumerist lives, with access to goods and services familiar to anyone in the West.
But Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine has stirred up a blizzard of economic penalties in response. Amid that storm, Russians’ place in the interconnected global economy seems about to end.
How Sanctions on Russia Will Upend the Global Order
The Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022 is not just a major geopolitical event but also a geoeconomic turning point. Western sanctions are the toughest measures ever imposed against a state of Russia’s size and power. In the space of less than three weeks, the United States and its allies have cut major Russian banks off from the global financial system; blocked the export of high-tech components in unison with Asian allies; seized the overseas assets of hundreds of wealthy oligarchs; revoked trade treaties with Moscow; banned Russian airlines from North Atlantic airspace: restricted Russian oil sales to the United States and United Kingdom; blocked all foreign investment in the Russian economy from their jurisdiction; and frozen $403 billion out of the $630 billion in foreign assets of the Central Bank of Russia. The overall effect has been unprecedented, and a few weeks ago would have seemed unimaginable even to most experts: in all but its most vital products, the world’s eleventh-largest economy has now been decoupled from twenty-first-century globalization.
By now, it’s no secret: The Russian military is experiencing logistical difficulties in Ukraine—from the now-infamous stalled convoy outside Kyiv to reports of Russian soldiers looting grocery stores for food. Experts have debated whether the problem is due to corruption, poor planning, or both.