Admonitions, restrictions and bans of various sorts continued to pile up against Russia Tuesday, as satellite images appeared to show a large convoy of military vehicles headed towards Kyiv.
“Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we’re blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately,” Google said. “It’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action.”
The Swiss National Bank said it’s pondering selling Russia-related securities from its pile of “reserves” amassed over years of fighting against currency appreciation. “The SNB is currently examining in compliance with the sanctions whether these securities will be held or sold,” the bank said, in a statement to the media. Russia’s Ukraine operation compelled Switzerland to at least partially abandon its neutrality stance. As The New York Times noted Monday, Russian companies and individuals had some $11 billion in Swiss banks as of 2020. That’s frozen now. “As a hub for the global commodities trade, Switzerland also hosts numerous companies that trade Russian oil and other commodities,” the Times added. Swiss airspace is now closed to Russian aircraft.
The SNB’s apparent decision to offload securities follows Norway’s move to begin the process of unwinding Russian assets in its massive sovereign wealth fund.
South Korea on Tuesday banned transactions with major Russian banks and asked domestic financial institutions to halt trading of Russian sovereign debt issued after March 2. Seoul said it would “move with the US and EU” as it relates to sanctions on Russia. The Bank of Japan froze the assets of Russia’s central bank. Around 6% of Moscow’s reserves were held in yen as of last year. Putin can forget about those. Russia’s yen-denominated assets held by the BoJ can’t be repatriated, nor can they be sent to other financial institutions. In short, they belong to Haruhiko Kuroda now. (That’s an oversimplification, but you get the idea).
Mario Draghi accused Putin of “extreme blackmail” with veiled threats of nuclear war. Those actions require a “swift, firm and united reaction,” Draghi said. “Whatever it takes,” I suppose. Only hopefully not, in this case.
Draghi continued. “Tolerating a war of aggression against a European sovereign state would mean putting at risk, perhaps irreversibly, peace and security in Europe,” he said Tuesday. “We can’t let this happen.”
As for the energy debate, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said the bloc’s gas imports from Russia are still necessary because some EU member states are simply “too dependent” on them. There’s no risk, Vestager told Der Spiegel, that any collateral damage to Europe from Russia’s military incursion in Ukraine will outweigh the downside for Putin at the end of the day. The Kremlin’s actions have accelerated the pace of Europe’s energy shift, which will exert long-term “pressure on Moscow.”
Meanwhile, ICE raised margin requirements for front-month Dutch natural gas futures by 18%. In a circular, margin parameters were updated for ICE Europe gas and coal contracts, ICE Endex power and gas and ICE Futures US gas.
The debate on index inclusion continued. MSCI wants feedback as it ponders the removal of Russia from its stock and bond indexes, while ICE is removing all sanctioned debt from its fixed-income benchmarks at the end of this month.
Leaders from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia asked Europe to grant Ukraine’s request from “immediate” EU membership. Hungary also supports the idea. Ursula von der Leyen will be pressed on the issue. Needless to say, sacking and plundering the capital of an EU member state would be a flagrant affront.
The Russian Defense Ministry vowed to press ahead with the invasion (they’re still calling it an “operation”). “While a large Russian convoy — stretching 60 km — is getting closer to Kyiv and fierce battles are taking place in several other cities, the Ukrainians continue to fight for their country,” Rabobank’s Philip Marey wrote Tuesday. “The Russians are reported to have deployed about 75% of the 160,000 troops they had amassed around Ukraine. This could be the start of a protracted siege of Kyiv.”
And yet, “Nato’s chief Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to end the war in Ukraine and withdraw all its forces, adding the alliance would not send troops or combat jets to support Kyiv as it does not want to become part of the conflict.”
This is why Nato has zero respect. Even despite Russia using vacuum bombs to target civilians, it just doesn’t want to become part of the conflict. Shrug emoji.
I’ve got in-laws in Ukraine and I support NATO position.
I agree to heap all kinds of sanctions on Russia, I’m willing to wear 2 jumpers so we can suspend energy purchases from Russia, I’m willing to pay more for my food/eat less if fertilizer is too expensive for our farmers.
I’m not willing for NATO to fight Russia directly and make this the start of WWIII.
So you’re not concerned about the risk of your in-laws being annihilated by the 40 miles of incoming heavy artillery? Or are they not in Kiev?
A no-fly zone would put the United States/NATO into direct conflict with Russia, something we spent the entirety of the Cold War preventing from happening. Direct conflict between the United States and Russia ends with nuclear holocaust. That’s why we can’t impose a no-fly zone. At the same time, thousands of shoulder-launched stinger missiles are being sent to Ukraine, free of charge. That creates a no-fly zone of its own. Finally, imposing a no-fly zone would do nothing to stop “40 miles of incoming heavy artillery.” Suggesting someone somehow isn’t concerned about their in-laws because they don’t want to start World War 3 is as crass as it gets.
anything that would help prevent the ongoing slaughter of innocents must be employed imho…it’s as simple as that at this point…Putin on some level likely knows it’s game over but he continues to escalate, …reminds me of Hitler’s late, unnecessary, and unwinnable surge when he and Germany were clearly defeated…
Your argument precludes the notion that preventing World War 3 is impossible. If Putin is dead set on returning Russia to its empire of the late 1800’s then no amount of hope or sitting on the sidelines is going to get in his way. In the meantime, innocent civilians are being slaughtered and are about to be annihilated by the 40 miles of incoming heavy artillery. How will all of us feel if we decide to get involved in the conflict after hundreds of thousands or millions of Ukrainians are killed? My comments were not intended to be crass, they were intended to drive home the point that Ukraine will be unable to stop the sea of Russian infantry that is flowing unceasingly into their country right now. We can give them all the weapons in the world but without bodies to use those weapons they won’t make any difference.
My brother in law and his family have moved from Kyiv to a datcha about 40 minutes away (but close-ish – about 15/20 minutes – to an airbase that was attacked). They’re not physically in danger (yet) but who knows what will happen…
My wife’s cousins and extended family are all over (including in Russia, actually, as is the case for quite a few Ukrainian families).
But I consider their deaths a lesser evil than a nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. Indeed, I cannot possibly see how you would think otherwise.
I truly do hope your family remains safe. I also think that protecting innocent lives from a tyrant should be the mission of any free and democratic nation. Putin is rattling the nuclear saber, and we are bowing to his will. How far will we let him go before enough is enough? And will we regret not having acted sooner when we finally do reach that point? In no uncertain terms, the use of nuclear arms is a mutually assured destruction for all parties involved. If Putin was ever a threat to use his weapons then why did we spend decades abiding him and watching him grow his power and war chest? Regardless, I can’t abide what he’s doing and I think we should seriously consider why any of us are able to as we sit in our safe and comfortable homes watching Ukrainians die needlessly.
I thank you for your concerns for my in-laws and for Ukrainians in general.
Regardless of discussions around military responses (and anything else), I know that Ukrainians feel emboldened and grateful with every act of support and charity (for the civilians who fled/are fleeing). Whatever we do, however little it may seems, help sustain their resolve in fighting for their homeland and their right to decide their own future.
EU and the US may get sucked in anyway. If Putin gets cornered he may take a shot at someone else- Finland? or perhaps to his detriment the Baltic states. Right now he is likely going to get taken out either by his own people or via assassination from a hit team from a spy agency somewhere. Rattling his sabre about nuclear weapons was a grave error on his part. The cost/benefit of removing him forcibly keeps changing and that sure did not help in his calculation.
Putin’s fear of assassination is clear in that photo of him meeting over the weekend with military advisors at a long table, with Putin sitting at one end of the table and his advisors 40 feet away at the other. Think of it as the Stauffenberg Effect — no brief cases with bombs anywhere near me, thank you very much. For obvious reasons, Putin no longer trusts anyone who isn’t a member of his inner circle. Meanwhille, the courageous Volodymyr Zelensky is doing what he can to rally the Ukrainian people from the streets of a Kviv slowly being encircled.
The EU announced this morning that it was blocking Russian propaganda outlet RT from the Internet and its satellites. Europeans interested in such propaganda will now have to rely on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox properties.
As the world watches the siege, shelling, fire-bombing, starvation, and slow murder of millions in Kyiv, it will become harder for other countries to avoid getting militarily involved. Calls for establishing a “no-fly zone” over part of Ukraine will grow.
Very sobering interview with Fiona Hill in Politico.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340
As a highly trained professional Fiona Hill would not think out loud that of those old maps in the basement, the one he hung on the ceiling over his bed is the Russian empire inclusive of Alaska.
God
Glory
Greed
Good excuses for war. He covered the god part with a book he wrote last year.
Unimpeded he thinks he could do it in his lifetime.
Thank you for the link. A useful quote from there:
It was only a few years ago that Trump and the GOP withheld Ukraine aid, turned a blind eye to Putin’s aggressiveness and actively pushed for Russia to be reinstated into the Group of Seven. Putin the pariah needs to be isolated and pressured and stripped of options versus being nurtured and enabled.