Ukraine

[WeeJimmy]

why is Biden doing nothing, I always said he was a wuss and poor president, he cant even string a sentence together and is useless

at least us British are going to try and help the Ukraine's protect their skies by sending them i hope the world’s most advanced anti-aircraft missile system to kick Putin's ass in the skies, its a serous piece of kit

[Westsidex]

why is Biden doing nothing, I always said he was a wuss and poor president, he cant even string a sentence together and is useless

at least us British are going to try and help the Ukraine's protect their skies by sending them i hope the world’s most advanced anti-aircraft missile system to kick Putin's ass in the skies, its a serous piece of kit

Trying to avoid ww3 and trying to destroy Russia economically. This war will be the end of Putin. He can't win no matter what it goes.

Westside

[EscortInspector]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-h...-african-gold/

How Putin prepared for sanctions with tonnes of African gold by Tom Collins
Whistleblower claims the Kremlin is the largest foreign player in Sudan’s huge mining sector
3 March 2022

Russia has smuggled hundreds of tonnes of illicit gold from Sudan over the last few years as part of wider efforts to build “fortress Russia” and ward against anticipated Ukraine-related sanctions.

The Kremlin has more than quadrupled the amount of gold held in Russia’s central bank since 2010, creating a “war chest” through a mix of foreign imports and vast domestic gold reserves as the third largest producer of the precious metal in the world.

Russia held more gold than US dollars for the first time in June 2020 with bullion accounting for more than 23 per cent of the total reserves, which rose to $630bn as of last month.

While official statistics suggest that Sudan exports hardly any gold to Russia, an executive of one of the largest Sudanese gold companies told The Telegraph that the Kremlin is the largest foreign player in the country’s huge mining sector.

“Russia has a lot of operations in Sudanese gold and a lot of it is smuggled in small planes from military airports dotted across the country to Russia,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He believes that around 30 tonnes are flown to Russia each year from Sudan, though it is impossible to gauge the true scale of the operation.

The miner adds that Russia is allowed to do so because of its connections with Sudan’s warlord turned paramilitary leader, Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Daglo, who emerged from a military takeover last year as the country’s de facto vice president. Hemedti travelled to Moscow last week as Russian troops were pouring over the border into Ukraine, in another sign of strengthened bilateral relations between the two countries.

Experts say that the Wagner Group, a private military company run by Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, is training Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – a large paramilitary organisation that sits alongside Sudan’s regular army. The two heavily armed groups have worked together to secure important gold mines for Russian mining companies in Sudan, where security is weak in remote areas.

“One of the things that we’ve seen when Russia started to deploy its Wagner personnel to Sudan is that they were very focused on protecting the gold mining efforts,” says Sim Tack, cofounder of Force Analysis, a Belgium-based consultancy that specialises in conflict.

Russian companies such as M-Invest, which has a local subsidiary called Meroe Gold, started operations in Sudan after former dictator Omar al-Bashir met Vladmir Putin in 2017, offering him mining concessions and allowing him to build a naval base on the Red Sea.

Another Russia-linked mining firm is the Kush for Exploration and Production Company which has been active in Sudan since 2013. Tack says that although these companies are established entities, the amount of gold they export to Russia is “completely unknown”.

Despite M-Invest listing its core activities as “extraction of ores and sands of precious metals”, a CNN investigation found that the firm had led a disinformation campaign against the 2019 revolution that ousted 30-year islamist ruler al-Bashir.

In 2020, the US said M-Invest was owned by Prigozhin and served as a cover for the Wagner Group, which is currently staging an “online anti-revolution campaign” against a second wave of protests that have destabilised Sudan after the military interjected in October to remove a civilian-led administration.

During Sudan’s brief experiment with democracy, where the government tried to mend relations with the West after years of crippling sanctions, Russia largely shunned the country’s civilian leaders, working instead with Hemedti who retained power in an uneasy transitional coalition between the military and the executive.

The engagement of a mining company in cyber-warfare also mirrors Putin’s broader strategy in Africa, where Russian-affiliated entities blur the lines between private security operations and resource extraction.

Tack says that while Sudan is possibly the most important source of African gold for Russia, it is not the only country on the Kremlin’s radar.

“Minimising the effect of sanctions through gold is something that has informed Russia’s approach in Africa, because we are seeing very similar things in Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. They are going after countries that have plenty of natural resources to help them up their reserves,” he said.

[EscortInspector]

https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/th...ns-and-russia/

THE UNFREEZABLE ASSET: GOLD, SANCTIONS, AND RUSSIA by DANIEL MCDOWELL
MARCH 7, 2022

As Russian tanks roll toward Kyiv, punishing Western financial sanctions have left the Russian economy financially isolated and in crisis. The most notable move so far has been the joint decision by the United States and the European Union to “blacklist” the Central Bank of Russia. These sanctions, which have rendered the bulk of Russia’s $600 billion in foreign exchange reserves useless, precipitated a collapse in the value of the ruble earlier this week.

The sanctions targeting the Central Bank of Russia have “frozen” the country’s foreign exchange assets, most of which are held in accounts with monetary authorities and financial institutions outside of Russia. But not all of Russia’s reserve stockpile lies in foreign accounts. A sizeable portion, about $120 billion or so, sits in Russian vaults in the form of monetary gold.

Can President Vladimir Putin’s gold hoard help the Russian economy to weather biting financial sanctions? Though there are limits to the yellow metal’s usefulness, it can function as an economic lifeline for an isolated economy. Putin could exchange gold for cash in unregulated shadow markets with criminal groups or other pariah regimes. He could use gold to pay for illicit weapons or other goods or services. None of this would be easy, but it is possible, and it has been done before. Perhaps most importantly, Putin has prepared for this very moment.

The Central Bank of Russia significantly increased the pace of its gold purchases beginning in 2014. The motive, while not publicly announced, was clear: Putin was responding to fresh U.S. sanctions, imposed following the invasion of Crimea that year.

Gold is attractive as a hedge against financial sanctions. Monetary gold held within a state’s own vaults cannot be seized by foreign adversaries, short of a military invasion. Specie can be physically moved around the world, outside of digital financial networks, making it difficult to track. In extreme circumstances, governments can illicitly trade gold for foreign exchange in unregulated markets for precious metals.

To be clear, Russia is not at the point where it has no other choice but to liquidate its gold holdings. For instance, despite sanctions, Russia is still selling oil, earning foreign exchange for those exports. Russia may also draw on some unfrozen assets in its National Wealth Fund before resorting to bullion sales. Were evidence to emerge that the Central Bank of Russia was liquidating gold, this would indicate just how weak position the economy is in. However, for an almost fully isolated country, gold can offer a lifeline when other, more conventional, assets cannot.

For a blueprint, look no further than Venezuela. In 2011, the country’s president, Hugo Chavez, made the prescient decision to repatriate 160 tons of gold reserves from Europe. That move has been critical to the ability of Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, to hold on to power despite successive waves of crippling U.S. sanctions beginning in 2014.

As sanctions targeting Caracas piled up — including Washington’s decision to blacklist Banco Central de Venezuela in 2019 — the Venezuelan financial system found itself nearly completely isolated from the world economy. What did Maduro do? He reached for his gold, but in a nontraditional way.

Compared to assets like U.S. Treasury bonds, gold holdings are relatively illiquid — that is, they are difficult to turn into cash. So, one way in which central banks can employ their gold holdings is by temporarily “swapping” bullion for more liquid foreign exchange, before swapping back at a later date. Alternatively, monetary authorities can take more permanent action by selling gold in the London gold market, or others like it.

Because of the sanctions imposed on his country’s central bank, Maduro was unable to engage in these traditional gold operations. Where did he turn? Russia.

In response to unrelenting U.S. sanctions, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov pledged in early 2019 that his country would “do everything” to support the embattled Maduro regime. Russian assistance took various forms, from arms sales to Caracas to helping the South American country develop its own oil-backed cryptocurrency to evade sanctions (an effort that failed miserably). Russia also helped Venezuela to harness its gold wealth by transporting tons of monetary gold around the world to sell in unregulated markets.

Aboard Russian charter planes, physical gold bars were flown from Venezuela to various destinations including Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and other unknown locations. Here, gold was exchanged for cash euros. The euro notes were then returned to Venezuela and doled out to otherwise isolated Venezuelan banks. The cash injection ultimately facilitated import purchases. Maduro may have also used proceeds to enrich cronies in the military, maintaining their loyalty.

Besides sales in shadow markets, physical gold can also be used to pay for goods or services directly. For example, in 2020, Iran accepted gold as payment for helping Venezuela to repair its broken-down gas refineries. Russia may have also accepted gold as payment for Venezuelan debts under a 2017 rescheduling deal with Moscow.

What made these types of exchanges possible is the very property that makes gold so antiquated today: It is physical. Shadow-market gold sales do not rely on SWIFT financial messaging, or on correspondent bank accounts, which electronically wire funds from one account to another.

What does the Venezuelan example tell us about Russia today? If the conflict in Ukraine drags on and Western sanctions continue to pile up, gold may become a key lifeline for Russia. Putin could follow the Maduro playbook, surreptitiously selling bullion to raise cash. Funds could then be used to resupply Russian troops on the front lines, or to fund import purchases, weakening the costs that sanctions impose on the Russia people.

Who would buy Russian gold right now? Criminal groups are one possibility. Organized crime groups, like drug cartels, are attracted to gold as a store of wealth because it is held outside of the banking system, limiting law enforcement’s ability to seize their assets. Russian specie could be transported and sold in places like Uganda or Dubai where thriving illicit gold markets are used by criminals and kleptocrats to launder money.

The Central Bank of Russia may also find buyers in other states worried about future financial sanctions. Turkey, which has been sanctioned by the United States in the past and has also beefed up its gold reserves in recent years, was a key buyer of Venezuelan gold. Iran is another possibility. (In 2018, furthermore, U.S. courts convicted a Turkish banker of orchestrating a multibillion dollar sanctions-evading scheme moving cash and gold from Turkey to Iran, with Turkish government figures accused of taking bribes in connection with the scheme.) Yet, for several reasons, the most important potential official gold buyer in this scenario is China.

First, China has demonstrated a real interest in increasing its gold holdings. Beijing added nearly 900 tons in bullion to its reserves between 2009 and 2021, according to data from the World Gold Council. Second, given the events of the last week, Beijing may be keen on adding to those holdings, fearing it may face Russia-style sanctions in the future for its own foreign policy actions. Third, buying on the shadow market would give China leverage to demand a below-market price for the metal, which is quite expensive presently. Finally, with a 2600-mile land border between the two countries, shipping gold from Russia to China in exchange for cash, goods, or services would be relatively easy — and difficult to track.

There are limits to this strategy. Even if the Central Bank of Russia finds buyers for its bars, physically moving gold is time consuming and entails costs as well as risks. Planes and trains can only carry so much freight. Moscow has over 2000 tons of gold in its vaults. Sales, if they occur, will be incremental.

There are also limits in demand for shadow gold purchases. Despite demonstrated interest in holding more gold, China and other potential official buyers still need dollars. Their appetites for gold are not unlimited.

Russia’s gold holdings have not sanction-proofed its economy. Gold sales will not enable the Central Bank of Russia to prop up the value of the ruble, for instance, since the central bank is blocked from foreign exchange trading. Gold sales will not reconnect sanctioned Russian banks to global financial networks. But if the Russian economy is further isolated by additional measures, Putin could, like Maduro, sell gold for cash. Proceeds could be used to cover vital import purchases or to compensate sanctioned Russian oligarchs for their losses, reducing domestic resistance to his war effort.

No self-respecting central bank wants to resort to bullion sales in unregulated markets. But, given that the Central Bank of Russia has found itself between a rock and a hard place, dipping into its gold hoard may become its best option down the road. The yellow metal still has some shine to it, after all.

[Westsidex]

One thing for sure though. The western powers are not sitting back and planning nothing. Rest assured they are well and ready to defend or attack. It's all planned out by now but pointless causing ww3 when russia is digging its own grave. It's creating an Afghanistan for itself. Russia should have learned from their no 1 adversery, the US.

Westside

[WeeJimmy]

Trying to avoid ww3 and trying to destroy Russia economically. This war will be the end of Putin. He can't win no matter what it goes.

Westside

he knows it got it wrong but will to save pride carry on with the war and kill and destroy all Ukraine's, Do you sit back and watch innocent people and especially children die or do you grow a backbone and try to help, the brits are sending anti aircraft missiles, you can't stand and just watch this massacre without doing something, I feel NATO on the whole has let Ukraine down so far

[Stephanie]

he knows it got it wrong but will to save pride carry on with the war and kill and destroy all Ukraine's, Do you sit back and watch innocent people and especially children die or do you grow a backbone and try to help, the brits are sending anti aircraft missiles, you can't stand and just watch this massacre without doing something, I feel NATO on the whole has let Ukraine down so far

Dude ,


Watch that Video the Inspector put up an I quoted / replied to .

Watch the Video : all should be much clearer once you do and

you won’t be making silly statements - maybe


/ Wisconsin (?) sent a Million rounds of ammunition ;

……

The Polish govt offered up All the Mig29s in their air force - gratis ! -

for them to be delivered and made available to Ukraine 🇺🇦 .

The NATO Cannot Do that !

Their Big idea / well intended - they’d send their MiGs to US base in Germany ,

and from There they be transferred to Ukraine . : the NATO Cannot Do that without

sparking much much more serious Rus engagement !

: also - Poland sorta passing the buck :: Rus will be mad w US , not with Them



In the First place : Poland wasn’t going to hand over the planes directly ( even though

They are an Article V part of NATO ) is because They are afraid of Rus infiltration ,

agitators and incendiary provocation, and getting drawn into a face-off same as Donbas - in Poland .

Polish not dumb - this was a well meaning idea - they consulted Nobody on it ;

It is simply not tenable .

And Yes , it was Biden who categorically said NO , we will not Do that - possibly saving Europe

from Russian wrath .

[Stephanie]

he knows it got it wrong but will to save pride carry on with the war and kill and destroy all Ukraine's, Do you sit back and watch innocent people and especially children die or do you grow a backbone and try to help, the brits are sending anti aircraft missiles, you can't stand and just watch this massacre without doing something,

I feel NATO on the whole has let Ukraine down so far

NATO has done that now to Georgia in 2008 ; and now

Had done Exactly Same to Ukraine .

: encouraging those countries to try to face to the West , develop a democracy ,

dangle the Invitation to EU and NATO in front of them to embolden them

in their pursuit of free and fair elections , of having them try to shake the

chains of former ‘Big Brother’ ,

But when it comes down to it : neither of these countries are Vital Military Interests

to the West - and therefore they will be helped only so much .

It must be such a horrendous rude awakening for Zelensky ! I truly feel for him ,

his heart must be shattered with the loss of life , the brutalization of his country ,

and now the Realization that NO , the West will Not come riding in on a white horse

to Rescue his country .

Ukraine is going to be ‘Wrecked’ - that is the goal of Putin’s exercise …

[Westsidex]

he knows it got it wrong but will to save pride carry on with the war and kill and destroy all Ukraine's, Do you sit back and watch innocent people and especially children die or do you grow a backbone and try to help, the brits are sending anti aircraft missiles, you can't stand and just watch this massacre without doing something, I feel NATO on the whole has let Ukraine down so far

While I'm against Russia and Putin, there's something about that Zalenskky that I can't put a finger on. Comes across a bit of a prick.

Westside

[Westsidex]

West, that comment is totally unnecessary! And achieves nothing except rising efjits like me!

I'll make you better. Putin, Biden, Johnson are also picks.

Westside