The 6th package of sanctions from the EU.
Is the energy products embargo possible
and will Europe freeze without our gas?
The diplomatic scandal between Israel and Russia is continuing.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs just made the situation worse…
What’s going on in the fronts – where is
the biggest battle everybody was predicting?
Mobilization in Russia – what do we know
and what should we prepare for?
Boris Johnson made a speech in Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
I, Anastasia Brukhanova and Ekaterina Voropay, will discuss this and other news.
We issue daily news.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our news channel and like this video.
Let’s begin.
The EU is preparing the new 6th package of sanctions
which will include restrictions for coal and oil supplies from Russia.
The next step is to reduce the volume of gas supplies
and in future to stop buying Russian gas completely.
In other words, the energy embargo from the EU is becoming more visible.
What we should understand if we want to stop being distracted
by every piece of news about the state sanctions and restrictions
from private companies – everything that could happen,
already happened on the 24th of February.
When Russia started a full-scale war in the middle of Europe,
when it started bombing the Ukrainian cities
and its tanksviolated the border – the process of Russia’s isolation
from money it spends to finance this war became a question of time.
There is a popular saying about the Russians like they are slow starters,
but they drive fast.
But honestly, it’s what we can say about the developed democracies.
Yes, they can’t compete with the dictatorship in terms of flying the unpredictable trajectory
and making opposite decisions in one week – to quarrel with Turkey this week
and being friends with it next week,
to pay a lot of money for the European gas pipe
and to hire the best lobbyists, to pay for PR campaigns and then to start a war there,
to search for someone who can be an ally while calling the Jews the Nazis.
Normal political systems don’t work this way.
They can’t fly with an air-balloon trajectory when the air is bursting out of it.
Developed democracies is an ocean liner which is very difficult to turn around.
It pays attention to what the voters say, to the interests of business,
it believes in compromises, deterrent measures, counterbalance,
and multi-level rigid bureaucracy.
But if you manage to turn this ship around,
if the decisions were made despite all the obstacles, it will last long.
It’s as difficult to cancel those decisions as to make them.
Isolation of Russia from the European energy market is a very difficult decision indeed.
It’s not easy for Europe where the dependency from Russian gas, oil
and coal is very different in different countries.
For some it’s just several percent, for others – like for Germany
and Austria – it’s a domineering dependency.
Rapid refusal to use Russian gas (in one day or in one month)
is a hard blow for the German economy.
But still this blow is not fatal.
All those talks that Germany will freeze without Russian gas remind
those fantasies about great help from China bypassing sanctions
(by the way, have you noticed that those fantasies stopped circulating lately?)
First, the damage for the households because of higher prices
for heat and electricity will not be significant,
and second, the government will easily compensate for it.
In Germany there won’t be a situation we know so well when the utility bills are doubled in one month.
In Germany and other countries dependent on Russian energy products,
production will suffer most of all.
And for a European politician it sounds like the workplaces will suffer.
It’s unemployment, not utility bills,
which is the most sensitive area for politicians in developed democracies.
Unemployed people are very nervous and vote badly even
when they get generous social benefits.
But the damage from the oil-and-gas embargo will fade away.
The most important economy in the world is not one which has a cubic meter of gas or an oil barrel.
Convertible currency is what makes the economy important.
Europe is probably the most delicious energy market in the world.
It’s when the most industrially developed economies are located in one place.
It’s hundreds of billions a year.
here will be no shortage among those between the Middle East and the US
who will want to take Russia’s place and earn hundreds of billion dollars.
There is no question that Russia will lose European consumers of oil, gas, and coal.
It definitely will!
The most dependent countries are solving another problem now – they are trying to rebuild
their energetic systems before that happens to avoid this shock from abrupt transition
and avoid depressive pictures of off-line production sites
and protesting former workers in front of plants.
Those sanctions which are already implemented are an unprecedented economic blockade.
Even on our everyday level we can see that something really bad happened.
Russian banks can’t issue or accept international payment systems cards
(who had expectations for the Chinese UnionPay?)
Russian planes made abroad are flying illegally.
And now neither its manufacturers nor the insurers can’t guarantee anything.
And in the nearest months they are going to be taken down for parts.
One by one production sites are stopping without foreign parts.
Those who were fantasizing about import replacement are starting to realize
that no isolated economy can do anything more complicated than a hammer
and that the most basic things are produced in cooperation with the whole planet.
And the fun hasn’t begun yet.
The supply chains are still alive, there are some stock leftovers.
Economic collapse doesn’t come in one day.
However, even now everybody understands that it’s not like 2014.
This time everything is serious.
When the Sberbank app is deleted from American Google,
Chinese Huawei will delete it too because Huawei wants money too.
It doesn’t want to play in the International dictators game with Putin and suffer from sanctions.
Russia will be switched off from global cooperation.
Moreover, it will be switched off in a way that we will have nowhere to go.
Indian companies might be glad to buy Russian oil
at a huge discount – India didn’t introduce any sanctions.
But Indian banks are not ready to play games
with financial structures of the US and EU – they could lose badly.
But for now, Russia has this sacred pipe to Europe.
We supply gas and oil and we get hard currency in return.
While the pipe is functioning, the Russian government has money.
The government, not citizens.
There is money to pay for two most important things – for war and for police and Rosgvardia
(force structure in Russia) which would hit those people who are unhappy with war,
poverty, and unemployment.
It doesn’t mean that the Russian economy will be alright.
It means there will be money in the budget and in reserves.
Economy and money in the government’s pocket are two different things.
It’s arranged like this in Russia that the financial streams are so centralized
that they hardly ever meet.
Not once have we seen how the economy falls, production and workplaces are dead,
but the reserves are growing – the coronavirus crisis is proof for that.
But if the pipe shuts down – it’s an irreplaceable loss.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it will crush the political system,
there will definitely be no extra money for external aggression.
The European politicians know it perfectly well.
All those articles in global media that, in a nutshell,
the EU is paying for Mariupol destruction and Bucha atrocities are not read just by us.
The European politicians and, what’s more important, their voters read them too.
Therefore, every piece of news about new sanctions,
new stage of energetic dependency from Russia is not really news.
It’s the next grade on the time scale and we know what’s in the end.
European voters will pay to help Ukraine and won’t pay for its destruction.
Yesterday we told you about a diplomatic conflict between Russia and Israel.
It started when the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov made an incorrect statement.
In an interview to an Italian TV company Mediaset he made a false historical statement
about Hitler’s Jewish ancestors. These words offended a lot of Israelites.
Afterwards, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should have done everything
to reduce the damage – to apologize,
explain that it was just a careless slip of the minister
which does not reflect the official position of Russia.
But instead, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to go for it
and quarrel completely with the only normal democracy
which had no conflicts with our country before.
Yesterday morning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a post in its official Telegram channel
where they rudely accused the government of Israel of supporting Nazism.
There is no more offending accusation for people
whose fathers and grandfathers suffered from Holocaust.
Moreover, the arguments proving the Nazist nature of the “Kyiv regime”
which Israel supports crumble after a 30-minutes fact checking.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs said there was an ultra-right antisemitic party “Svoboda”.
This party received 8% in Verkhovna Rada
in 2012 – it means during the presidency of pro-Russian Yanukovich.
Every new election after Euromaidan this party received less and less votes.
And there is just one representative of this party in current Rada.
An opposite conclusion is more obvious – that last years,
antisemitic ideas became less popular in the Ukrainian society.
Then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted the annual report of the Israelian Ministry
of Diaspora Affairs on antisemitism for 2017.
It is stated that number of antisemitic crimes in Ukraine increased in 2017 compared to 2016.
But the Russian Ministry distorted this information saying
that according to the report antisemitic violence keeps increasing after Euromaidan
when they took just a couple of random years.
If we have a look at the most recent report of 2020,
we’ll see that it compliments Zelensky’s government for the attention
to the antisemitic problem and his work against it.
In the end of the post of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs there are examples of antisemitic crimes.
The problem is that no one denies there are antisemites in Ukraine.
But for every khanukiyah befoulment in the center of Kyiv
we can remember an attempted murder of rabbi in Krasnodar.
But yet, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t think Russia is antisemitic.
Household antisemitism is a common problem for Russia, Ukraine, France, the US, Ethiopia
or other countries where the Jews have ever lived.
The question is how each country deals with it.
And now, let’s have a look at what's going on in the front.
Judging by the previous actions of the Russian army, it was planning
to surround the most dangerous parts of the Ukrainian army in Donbas.
To do it they had to close the circle by attacking from the north-east
(from the side of Izium and Kharkiv)
and the south (from the side of Kherson, Huliaipole and Kryvyi Rih).
In the Izium direction there are intensive battles for the towns of Rubezhnoye and Popasnaya.
Though the Russian army and the separatists reported they had full control
of Rubezhnoye in April, even several times, but part of the town is still under control of the Ukrainian army.
There are intensive battles for each house and each street, therefore, the advance is very slow.
Judging by the photos from that area, even if the Russian army succeeds,
it will get burnt ground instead of two towns.
In the town of Lyman which is not far away from the contact line,
and which is under the control of Ukraine, the shellfire is severe.
As a result, the bridge between the town and Slavyansk and Kramatorsk
the Russian army wants to attack was destroyed.
In the close-by Kharkiv direction the Ukrainian army is performing small counterattacks.
Yesterday the village of Moldovaya was taken back.
Before that, after two months of occupation the villages of Kutuzovkaand Momotovo were taken back by the Ukrainian army.
Meanwhile, in the south there is a rearrangement of Russian troops.
That’s why the intensity of battles decreased.
After the southern offense stopped 50 km under Kryvyi Rih,
the Russian government decided to dispatch the machinery from the stocks via railway.
Later the Russian army is planning to resume the attack of Nikolayev and Kryvyi Rih.
Now, Donbas is a place where the main battles are going on.But the scale of those battles is not like the Russian government promised.
Do you remember how propaganda predicted that Kyiv would be taken in 3 days? They wanted to take Donbas “quickly” as well.
On April 21, the Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov stated that the metallurgic plant “Azovstal”
the last pillar of the Ukrainian forces in Mariupol – will be taken today “before or after lunchtime”.
It didn’t happen.
The same story is with Donbas battles which are going on for 2 weeks and now it looks like a mutual exchange of artillery attacks without any significant advance.
The experts say that the Russian troops have low morale and don’t want to attack.
The Russian army can’t achieve any significant advantage and surround the Ukrainian army in Donbas.
After the US approved the lend-lease program, it became clear that the Ukrainian military force will grow and the Russian – decrease.
If previously Ukraine received just Javelins and Switchblades, now they get heavy machinery including mobile multiple rocket systems.
Elon Musk’s “Starlink” sky-fi systems are also provided to Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the world’s leaders by Starlink’s coverage.
The future everybody was talking about came suddenly and under such unusual circumstances.
But what the Ukrainians wait most of all is peace as every day new people die because of shootings.
On May 3, according to the head of Donetsk region Pavel Kirilenko 21 civilians died. It’s 5 people more than for the whole 2021.
The Azov regiment reported 2 women who hid in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol died because of resumed aviation and artillery strikes.
Also, on May 3 the explosions happened in Lviv and in the mountain region of Zakarpattia. Six railway stations in the center and in the west of the country were bombed.
The Ukrainian forces reported the infrastructure was seriously damaged. It seems it was done to stop weapons supplies from the west.
According to the UN there are 3,153 civilian victims in Ukraine, including 226 children. For example, during a missile strike on May 2, a 14-year-old Vyacheslav Yalyshev was killed.
His father said that the boy ran to warn elderly people about the alarm and tell them to go to the hiding but there was an explosion.
The Ukrainian media published a letter written by his father: “…my son was one of thousands of Ukrainian heroes.
He was 14. You are my hero, Ukraine’s hero. We loved, love and will love you. Rest in peace”.
Meanwhile, Russia is running out of resources to continue this war.
And the most important resource – people – is not endless either.
Whom should we throw into the heat of senseless aggression? That’s what occupies the minds of Russian military commanders and bureaucrats in conscript centers.
For the last several days there was the second statement that on May 9 Vladimir Putin might announce nation-wide mobilization.
The British Minister of Defense was the first who guessed it on April 28.
In his interview to the LBC Radio he stated that Putin might forget the term “special operation” and announce nation-wide mobilization v to lead the war against “the Nazis from the whole world”.
Similar suggestions were made by the TV channel CNN with references to the statements from the western officials
According to them, the formal announcement will help him to collect the reserve forces to replace the losses.
And according to the CNN sources the losses are at least 10,000 people.
The fact that the Russian troops suffer from the lack of people might be proved by the notifications from the conscript centers sent to the retired officers.
The edition “Important stories” heard of several such cases with retired officers who are 40–60 years old.
Will the President announce nation-wide mobilization on May 9 as the American and British sources say?
Technically, yes, he can because has the right to do it. But we should remember that for 22 years
of his rule Putin has never made any significant announcement on the Victory Day or on the New Year’s Eve.
Everything important was announced during a workday in his presidential office.
And when there was an important date, Putin muttered something senseless which his speechwriter wrote for him.
On the other hand, we shouldn’t forget that many of us didn’t believe that he would start a full-scale war with Ukraine.
The experts said that the war would kill Russia and there would be no future, but it didn’t stop Putin and people around him.
It is possible those negative consequences of mobilization – ratings’ falling down, and citizens’ protests – won’t stop him either.
That’s why just in case we need to know how to protect ourselves from war.
“Ukraine will win, Ukraine will be free”, – Reuters quotes Boris Johnson.
Yesterday, the British Minister made a speech in front of Verkhovna Rada via video call.
He became the first leader who personally addressed the Ukrainian Parliament after the war started.
Johnson promised Kyiv additional military help for 300 million pounds and noted that Ukraine “exploded the myth of Putin’s invincibility”.
Afterwards Vladimir Zelensky published a post where he thanked Boris Johnson and “the people of the United Kingdom”.
By the way, the President himself came to the Rada meeting. It was the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
The members of Parliament applauded him.
Boris Johnson is an important person in the fight against Russian aggression. He walked the streets of Kyiv together with Zelensky as soon as the Russian troops announced their retreat.
He addressed the Russian people in Russian and on February 24 he on behalf of Great Britain promised to “squeeze Russia from the global economy” because of the war Putin started.
In early February Great Britain entered a three-way alliance together with Ukraine and Poland.
Now, its goal is to resist the actions of Russia in Europe and strengthen regional security.
The whole world predictably and inevitably unites around Ukraine.
Lavrov and other Putin’s officials keep demonstrating new sides of insanity and absurdity, antagonizing the whole civilized world.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's relations with the developed global community become stronger.
But it has to pay too much for that.
We made a search on YouTube and brought the most interesting news to you.
On Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s channel, Evgeniy Chichvarkin is making parallels between how Euroset was taken from him and Tinkoff bank.
He also discusses the perspectives for other large companies. The businessman thinks that most of all FSB (Federal Security Bureau) is interested in food manufacturers.
Chichvarkin also partially justifies Oleg Tinkov’s statement some time ago that Putin had to be an emperor.
Chichvarkin says there are positive examples of modern autocracies.On Alexander Pluschev’s channel a script writer and director Roman Super
shares how things are on the state TV and how lots of people are quitting their jobs there.
According to him, propaganda has TV under total control.
The entertainment shows employees have no influence and documental departments serve to propaganda only.
Pivovarov’s “Redaction” shows an interview with Bryansk citizens. They are scared to say anything against or for the war.
They wait for explosions and wonder why there is no information about it in the official sources.
They complain that life became expensive and the production sites stopped working.
They still think the Russians and the Ukrainians are one nation.
“Nastoyaschee vremya” shows a lot of videos from the front, interviews with evacuated people and with people who stayed at home.
On Mike Naki’s channel there is a review of the events from the front with Ruslan Leviev from the Conflict Intelligence team.
They discussed the visit of the headquarters’ commander of the Armed Forces of Russia Gerasimov to the frontline.
t seems his wound wasn’t true.
They discussed the perspective of possible mobilization and the rumors about the arrest of Sergey Beseda, the FSB general.
And on the channel Navalny Live there is a review of the situation with tourism.
There are not so many planes, the trip to Turkey or Egypt costs 200,000 rubles (around $2,500)
now, and even the internal tourism is becoming more expensive for all directions – from Sochi to the Golden Ring of Russia.
“I’ve lost everything, but I haven’t lost my soul.
I can’t earn money in the country leading a war with its neighbor and killing civilians and children.
I don’t need to hear any reasons for it!”
wrote a businessman Oleg Tinkov in his Instagram account.
In his post he urged all the oligarchs to stop being silent because “we have just one life”. Oleg Tinkov also stated that he takes the brands TINKOFF and LA DATCHA
from Russia because he doesn’t want to “tarnish them with blood of Russian soldiers and people of Ukraine”. Those brands belong to his family.
Earlier Oleg Tinkov published a harsh anti-war post where he touched the government and the whole Russian system.
After that the Kremlin threatened the bank’s management to nationalize Tinkoff Bank in case Oleg wouldn’t sell his share and the bank wouldn’t change its name and its owner.
Finally, the businessman unprofitably sold his shares.
Tinkov also added that many big businessmen among his acquaintances told him they agreed with him but “all of them are frightened”.
For a long time, Oleg Tinkov wasn’t interested in politics and once he stated that “democracy can’t survive in Russia” so Vladimir Putin should become an emperor.
Probably, he was ironic but still. Then we shouldn’t waste time on “elections and other unnecessary western things”.
Despite the situation in the country getting worse, Oleg Tinkov like many other big businessmen
didn’t say anything against it but tried to survive in new conditions and save his business.
And now rich people who didn’t dare to stand up against Putin’s politics experience what they were all scared of – they lose their life’s business.
Now big businessmen have no influence on the decision-making process in the country.
And in a situation like this Oleg Tinkov was brave enough to judge the decision to start a war. Will he be the only one? We’ll see.
What are we watching today?
The Embassy of Sweden will resume its work in Ukraine. It means that western countries start thinking the territory is relatively safe.
The French and Italian diplomatic missions came back earlier. Washington promised to send its representatives back to the Ukrainian capital by the end of May.
We are still watching the situation with Azovstal. According to Mariupol’s mayor Vadim Boychenko there’re still nearly 200 civilians inside but the Russian Ministry of Defense resumed the attack.
By the way, yesterday the notorious propagandist Vladimir Soloviev arrived at the occupied Mariupol.
The Deputy Head of Verkovna Rada Alexander Kornienko said that the delegation of Parliament members from Moldova would come to Kyiv.
He also stated that probably several foreign delegations would be received in the Ukrainian capital this week.
They don’t want to say anything to the public yet for security reasons.
And before the last story I’d like to remind you that we continue publishing everyday news on a separate channel.
Please subscribe now via the link in the description.
And while you’re pressing the “like” button and subscribing, listen to the poem the Russian singer Monetochka published yesterday.
Is the author reliable enough?
Is there truly a war?
We can't know the whole truth
We can't check everything,
We can't have all the courage in the world,
Or cry all our tears out,
We can't take everyone from the battlefield,
And we can't bury everyone,
We can't listen to all the judges,
We can't see everything,
They are just people,
And this is just death.
No matter which report
They will show us
It's unlikely we'll be against it!
It's unlikely we'll be for it!
Our children are immortal
Our land is chaste
On the blue rocket
We are bringing paradise closer