Ukrainians cheered from their balconies while their air defences blasted Russian missiles and drones out of the sky in the first hours of 2023, as Moscow saw in the new year by attacking civilian targets across Ukraine. Ukraine’s Air Force command said it had destroyed 45 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight —32 of them on Sunday … Read more
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday there will be “consequences” for Saudi Arabia as the Riyadh-led OPEC+ alliance moves to cut oil production and Democratic lawmakers call for a freeze on cooperation with the Saudis. Biden suggested he would soon take action as aides announced that the administration is reevaluating its relationship with the kingdom … Read more
India is right to be “deeply disturbed” about the worsening Ukrainian crisis. How and when it will end is unclear. With the Nord Stream pipelines sabotaged, Europe’s energy crisis aggravated, the EU intransigent, Russia’s implicit nuclear warnings, US announcing additional billions of dollars of arms aid to Ukraine and more sanctions on Russia, the outlook … Read more
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Russia before the Ukraine invasion. A prospectus for the fund revealed investments in Russia’s infrastructure, manufacturing, logistics and retail sectors, the Wall Street Journal said. The Public Investment Fund, which is run by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, oversees $600 billion in assets. Something is … Read more
Top investment banks expected Russia to suffer severe economic damage after it invaded Ukraine in February. But Russia’s economy has held up better than expected, causing them to revise those predictions. Here are three charts that show the Russian economy’s resilience in the six months since war started. When President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine … Read more
Just as Russian forces continued to fight for control of Sievierodonetsk, an eastern Ukrainian city that is key to Moscow’s goal of completing the capture of the industrial Donbas region, a theater in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv reopened for the first time since war began, and tickets sold out for Sunday’s performance. The theater on Podil … Read more
Key reasons for this dilemma and my take on them. Checkout if it makes sense to you.
What does Finland’s entry into NATO mean for Russia and the European Union? Will the move escalate the security crisis? “ The Lord’s our shepherd”, says the Psalm But just in case, we better get a bomb!’ -Tom Lehrer, Who’s next? The story so far: The strategic geopolitical ambiguity of Finland has finally come to … Read more
As much as 70–80% of the payments for goods that were shipped to Russia before the Ukraine war have been coming in, a government official privy to the matter told Mint, comforting exporters. Exporters had claimed that about $500 million in payments were stuck after the war began in February. Stuck dues had become a … Read more