Another Big Win For Putin!!!

[Tommy Knocks]

I guess you can go off-topic?


My trust in the media is pretty limited.

good, then I wouldnt trust what they say about china. you may want to come out here and see it for yourself. its not like they dont post their annual economics yearly by province. its a communist country.

they are in dire need of russian oil and gas. which russia stalled on in the past but with the EU acting like some hoes, china is looking like its getting some exclusive deals as well as a gas pipeline directly into china from russia.

whats funny is I know a russian girl working as a translator for the engineering firm. shes making crazy bucks. they have a grip of these russian engineers staying at the shangri la hotel

ive never seen these sort of building projects and changes of cities in my entire life. and thats 25 years in america.

 

[88m3]

Choking Russia's Banks Would Be the Ultimate Sanction

By Carol Matlack September 01, 2014

Photograph by Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Belarus on Aug. 27

The European Union is poised to hit Russia with a fresh round of sanctions, amid mounting evidence of direct Russian military intervention in southeastern Ukraine. EU leaders said on Aug. 31 after a weekend summit meeting in Brussels that they’ll decide within a week on possible new penalties against Moscow. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are meeting with Pro-Russia separatists in Minsk on Monday for preliminary peace talks.

So far, the sanctions imposed on Russia don’t seem to have caused major disruption to its $2 trillion economy. Now, some are urging the EU to wield what may be the most powerful sanctions weapon at its disposal, the same one it used against Iran in 2012: Locking Russia out of the SWIFT interbank payments system.

Belgium-based SWIFT is a secure messaging system used by more than 10,500 banks for international money transfers. Without it, Russian banks and their customers couldn’t readily send or receive money across the country’s borders, wreaking havoc with trade, investment, and millions of routine financial transactions. SWIFT has to comply with EU decisions because the organization is incorporated under Belgian law.

STORY: Could McDonald's Be the Latest Victim of Russian Retaliation?
When sanctions imposed in 2012 blocked Iran’s banks from using SWIFT, the economic impact was “profound,” says Mark Dubowitz of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense, which has lobbied the U.S. government to take a hard line against Iran. “We know it has been painful,” Dubowitz says, because in talks with the West, “Iranian negotiators have systematically demanded that this is one of the sanctions that should be relieved first.”

The EU, though, seems reluctant to take such a step. Although Britain has been pressing for it, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Aug. 31 that there was no discussion of a SWIFT ban during the weekend summit. Merkel and other leaders said they were considering possible measures targeting Russia’s energy and finance sectors.

Even if Russia were locked out of SWIFT, it could still find ways to move money across borders. Russian banks could set up direct transfer arrangements with foreign financial institutions. Russia might even try to create its own payments system as an alternative to SWIFT, which is a private, non-profit cooperative of member banks. Deputy Finance Ministry Alexey Moiseev said on Aug. 27 that the Russian government has already drafted legislation to set up a new bank-transfer system.

STORY: Russia's Biggest Bank Is Lending Cats
Most big banks outside Russia, however, “would be very reluctant” to help Russia bypass SWIFT, Dubowitz says. They could face reprisals from the U.S. and EU, or might even be expelled from SWIFT, since the cooperative’s bylaws forbid members from participating in activities that could harm it.

One major reason for Europe’s hesitation could be the risk of reprisals by Moscow, says Chris Weafer of Moscow-based consulting firm Macro Advisory. “Blocking Russia from the SWIFT system would be a very serious escalation in sanctions against Russia and would most certainly result in equally tough retaliatory actions.”


http://www.businessweek.com/article...om-the-swift-payment-system-would-really-hurt


@Futuristic Eskimo @Domingo Halliburton

 

[88m3]

Khodorkovsky Challenges Putin as Opposition Marches
By Ilya Khrennikov and Henry Meyer Sep 22, 2014 10:40 AM ET
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Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg’s Henry Meyer reports on former oil tyc00n Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s challenge of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership as the head of Russia’s opposition. He speaks in today’s “Global Outlook” on “The Pulse.”
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tyc00n who spent a decade in PresidentVladimir Putin’s prisons, staked a claim to the leadership of Russia’s opposition as it staged its biggest demonstration in years.

Khodorkovsky, 51, living in exile in Switzerland since his release in December, called on supporters to help influence the nation’s 2016 parliamentary elections as he restarted his Open Russia movement. In interviews with European media including France’s Le Monde, Spain’s El Pais and Germany’s Der Spiegel, he made the case that Putin may hasten his own departure.

Russia’s opposition yesterday staged its biggest event since 2012, when Putin returned to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister. His popularity has rebounded since then as the conflict in neighboring Ukraine intensified. Even so, the government has been making errors that cost Russia, and people will eventually realize that, Khodorkovsky told El Pais.

Related:

• Khodorkovsky Redux Concern Falling Short in Russia Market
• Ukraine Blowback Adds to Russian Bank Consumer-Loan Woes

“Khodorkovsky has changed his mind about politics, deciding that the situation turned more favorable for him after the Kremlin had allegedly made mistakes over Ukraine,” said Igor Bunin, head of Center for Political Technologies. “Still, a serious political crisis is needed for him to unite the opposition and bring his adherents to power.”


Photographer: Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images
The “peace march” in Moscow drew about 26,000 people yesterday, according to Dmitry...Read More

‘Bigger March’
The “peace march” in Moscow drew about 26,000 people yesterday, according to Dmitry Nesterov, a coordinator for the Union of Observers for Russia. Assessments of the crowd size range between 5,000, as estimated by police, and as much as 100,000 according to Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man with a fortune of $15 billion, was freed by a presidential pardon in December. Imprisoned after convictions for tax evasion, money-laundering and oil embezzlement, Khodorkovsky maintained his innocence, saying the cases against him were retribution for financing opposition parties. The Kremlin has denied that.

The former tyc00n said he’s ready to lead Russia in a crisis situation, according to France’s Le Monde newspaper, which published a video interview with the former main owner of Yukos Oil Co.

Putin’s regime may last 20 more years or end in as few as two if he makes more mistakes, Khodorkovsky told El Pais.

Russia, hit by U.S. and European sanctions over Putin’s intervention in Ukraine, is heading into recession and will post zero or negative growth for the next two to three years, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last week.


Photographer: Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg
Former Oil Tyc00n Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky, 51, living in exile in... Read More

Capital Flight
Capital flight, running at the highest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, is set to accelerate after billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov was placed under house arrest Sept. 16 and charged with money laundering, Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said two days later.

Financial War

Evtushenkov’s real crime is most likely refusing to sell his oil company, OAO Bashneft, to state-run OAO Rosneft under terms dictated by its chief executive officer, long-time Putin ally Igor Sechin, according to Khodorkovsky. The exiled businessman lost the bulk of Yukos to Rosneft in a series of forced auctions. Rosneft, the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer by output, has denied an interest in acquiring Bashneft.

The longer Putin stays in power, the higher the probability of Russia disintegrating in bloodshed, Khodorkovsky told Der Spiegel. The U.S. and its allies encouraged the Russian leader’s aggression by putting business before political principles, he said.

Support Candidates
Russia’s disintegration “won’t be as peaceful as the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the Cold War,” he said, according to the German newspaper. Khodorkovsky said that he values Russia’s territorial integrity and that the country needs to be strong, Der Spiegel reported.

“The main goal of resistance is elections of all levels,” he said on his website, singling out the 2016 elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. The opposition needs infrastructure “to support any candidate in elections of any level who adheres in practice to the European choice and who is prepared to fight the cancerous tumor that has consumed Russia.”

Khodorkovsky said he’s got enough money to finance support for opposition to Putin without setting up a political party, estimating his costs at millions of dollars, according to an interview published today in Vedomosti.

‘Weak Point’
“Practically the only weak point of the regime in a political sense is its legitimization,” Khodorkovsky said. “The authorities can’t allow people to believe the elections are a pure fiction, so the opposition has a chance.”

Putin’s approval rating was at 84 percent in an Aug. 22-25 survey by the polling company Levada Center. That compares with 65 percent in January and a peak of 88 percent in 2008, Levada said Aug. 27. The poll of 1,600 people in 46 regions had a margin of error of no more than 3.4 percentage points.

The ruling United Russia party won countrywide regional elections held Sept. 15, in a ballot showing that the opposition has been fragmented and incapable of co-operation, according to Bunin at the Center for Political Technologies.

Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, an opposition figure, said Khodorkovsky’s involvement would bolster Putin’s opponents.

“I welcome the decision of Mikhail Khodorkovsky to get involved in politics,” Kasyanov, who served as premier under Putin in 2000-2004, said by phone today. “There are not many of us and that will be additional support for our democratic movement to fight with the current regime in Russia.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-22/khodorkovsky-challenges-putin-as-opposition-marches.html

 

[88m3]

22 September 2014 Last updated at 08:11 ET
Russia plans state controls in case of internet crisis

Internet cafe in Yekaterinburg: Russians rely on many foreign servers and website hosts
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories

• 'Draconian' Russian net law enacted
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Russia is making plans to ensure state control over the country's internet traffic in a national emergency, Russian media report.

War or an Arab Spring-style uprising would class as such an emergency.

Plans for boosting cyber security are reported to be under discussion in Russia's Security Council. They include a back-up in case Russia is cut off from the internet, Vedomosti news says.

Russia currently relies heavily on foreign hosting of websites.

When asked about the special meeting a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said US and European actions recently "have been marked by a fair degree of unpredictability, and we have to be ready for anything".

Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict now target many senior Russian officials, as well as Russia's oil industry, arms manufacturers and state banks.

Western leaders accuse Russia of destabilising Ukraine by supplying soldiers and heavy weapons to separatist forces there.

Russia's Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said that "recently Russia has come up against the one-sided language of sanctions.

"In these conditions we are working on scenarios in which our respected partners suddenly decide to cut us off from the internet."

In January 2011 the Egyptian state blocked internet traffic inside the country after opposition groups organised protests through social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter.

Infrastructure changes
Experts interviewed by Vedomosti said a Russian federal body such as Rossvyaz, in charge of communications, could take over as administrator of internet domains.

Rossvyaz would then have direct control over the country's domains such as those ending in .ru or .rf and service providers in Russia's regions would be subordinate to it.

It is not clear how tighter state control over the web infrastructure in Russia would affect relations with US-based Icann, the organisation that governs internet domains internationally.

Mr Nikiforov said his ministry had held exercises with the defence ministry and FSB intelligence service to prepare for a scenario in which Russia was deprived of internet connections.

Keir Giles, a London-based expert on Russian cyber security, says the FSB has been given new internet surveillance powers since American whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the scale of secret US monitoring of internet traffic.

According to the news website Gazeta.ru, the Russian authorities are also considering bundling the country's internet connections into big nodes which can be monitored more easily.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29310545

 

[Futuristic Eskimo]

Russia Risks Recession as Oil Drop Seen Squeezing Budget
By Andre Tartar and Anna Andrianova Sep 26, 2014 6:39 AM ET
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Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
An attendant refuels a customer's automobile at the fuel pumps in an OAO Rosneft gas... Read More

The easing of tensions in Ukraine will offer little respite to Russia as the lowest oil prices in more than two years threaten to tilt the $2 trillion economy toward recession, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Russia needs Urals, its main export crude blend, to trade at $100 per barrel or higher to avoid a recession, according to 58 percent of respondents in a survey of 19 economists. Given the level of U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine, at least 19 percent of analysts said the current price is sufficiently low to put Russia’s financial stability at risk.

The decline in oil prices is exacting a toll on the world’s biggest energy exporter, which gets about half of its budget revenue from oil and natural gas taxes. That’s limiting Russia’s ability to withstand sanctions by exhausting public finances as the non-oil deficit, the shortfall excluding revenue from the energy industry, exceeds 10 percent of economic output.

Waging Financial War

“Even if the oil price should recover to low three-digit prices again, Moscow’s hands are rather tied -- the budget is already ailing and the potential funding needs of the banking system could quickly eat up all free resources,” Wolf-Fabian Hungerland, an economist at Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, said by e-mail. “And its rainy day fund is just too small to be a game changer.”


Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
Snow rests on fuel pumps at a gas station operated by OAO Bashneft in Ufa, Russia.

Three years ago, the Economy Ministry estimated that only a plunge of oil prices to $60 would halt Russia’s expansion.

Demand Slumps
Futures of Brent crude, used to price about half of the world’s oil including Urals, declined about 16 percent from this year’s high in June to a two-year low on Sept. 15. The contract for November settlement was little changed at $96.97 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange at 11:16 a.m. London time, heading for its third weekly loss this month.

Global oil-demand growth is the slowest since 2011, while the U.S. shale boom means oil production outside OPEC is rising by the most since the 1980s, according to the International Energy Agency.

Urals prices fell below $100 a barrel on Aug. 18 and averaged $98.28 from Aug. 15 to Sept. 14, according to Russian Finance Ministry adviser Alexander Sakovich. This was the first time the average price for such a four-week period was below $100 a barrel since June 2012, according to the ministry.

‘Persistently High’
“The non-oil deficit is likely to remain persistently high -- above 10 percent of GDP,” the World Bank said in a Sept. 24 report. “Given the commitment of large parts of Russia’s fiscal buffers to growth-stimulation and other measures, Russia’s fiscal position is becoming even more tightly linked to oil revenues and global oil price trends.”

The budget for next year is based on a price of $96 per barrel, Maxim Oreshkin, head of strategic planning department at the Finance Ministry, said Sept. 16.

The government predicts the budget will run a deficit of 0.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2015.

A $1 drop in the price of oil deprives the budget of about 80 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) in revenue, according to Oreshkin, while a 1 ruble increase in the dollar’s exchange rate boosts income by about 200 billion rubles.

Sharp Rise
Russia’s dependence on oil grew “sharply” in 2013, First Deputy Finance Minister Tatiana Nesterenko said Sept. 12 on Facebook. The non-oil deficit grew to 10.3 percent of GDP in 2013, the highest since 2010, showing “Russia is dependent on external factors” she said.

The budget squeeze threatens to exacerbate the economy’s worst performance since a 2009 recession. GDP will expand 1 percent in 2015, according to the median estimate of 36 economists in a separate Bloomberg survey, down from 1.3 percent predicted last month.

The probability of a recession within the next year decreased to 60 percent from 65 percent last month, according to the median estimate of 27 economists.

The standoff over Ukraine has also spurred capital flight, undercut the ruble and choked access to credit abroad. The ruble has lost more than 14 percent against the dollar this year, the second-worst performer among 24 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

“Russia can go into recession even with Urals at $110 a barrel if Russian borrowers remain cut off from world capital markets for a long time,” said Tatiana Orlova, economist at Royal Bank of Scotland in London.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andre Tartar in London at atartar@bloomberg.net; Anna Andrianova in Moscow at aandrianova@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net Paul Abelsky, Torrey Clark

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...ession-as-oil-drop-seen-squeezing-budget.html

Who could have predicted this?

 

[88m3]

Who could have predicted this?

was laughing with my old lady about this last night...


Anyways

 

[88m3]

Khodorkovsky Sees 1917-Like Crisis Nearing Under Putin
By Boris Korby and Halia Pavliva Oct 3, 2014 4:29 AM ET
214 Comments Email Print
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Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- On “Charlie Rose,” a conversation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was once the richest man in Russia and the chairman of Yukos Oil. He spent more than a decade in a Siberian prison after being convicted of tax evasion, embezzlement and money laundering in a series of show trials. He was pardoned last winter, and he now devotes his efforts to reform in Russia. "Charlie Rose" airs weeknights on Bloomberg Television at 8p & 10p ET.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tyc00n who spent a decade in President Vladimir Putin’s prisons, said Russia is nearing an economic crisis that could fuel an uprising similar to the country’s 1917 revolution.

“I fear that Putin is going to bring the country to a crisis much more quickly than many would like,” Khodorkovsky, 51, said in an interview with Charlie Rose in New York. Russia could end up seeing “a repeat of 1917 when a person brings the country to an economic crisis, and we are certainly moving right in that direction.”

Deteriorating economic conditions may spark the sort of discontent that helped put an end to Russia’s Czarist autocracy a century ago, he said, referring to the turmoil that swept the Bolsheviks into power under Vladimir Lenin and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Russia’s economy is teetering on the brink of recession as international sanctions linked to the conflict in Ukraine stunt growth.

Standoff in Ukraine

Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man with a fortune of $15 billion, funded opposition parties before his arrest and campaigned from prison for Russia to develop a civil society. He was freed after receiving a presidential pardon in December. Khodorkovsky maintained his innocence after being convicted for tax evasion, money-laundering and oil embezzlement, saying the cases against him were retribution for financing political parties that opposed Putin. The Kremlin has denied that.


Photographer: Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg
Former oil tyc00n Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

“All authoritarian regimes, especially ones like this that aren’t based on an ideology but on an individual person, are highly unstable,” Khodorkovsky said. “In order to retain power, such authoritarian leaders are forced to burn the field all around themselves, which is what Putin is doing.”

European Ties
Closer integration with Europe is essential for Russia’s development, he said.

“We are part of Europe,” Khodorkovsky said in the interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. “All of our culture is European. All of our traditions are European.”

Putin’s annexation of Crimea in March and subsequent fighting between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces has prompted investors to pull money out of the country. Russia has denied involvement in the conflict.

The ruble has lost 14 percent against the dollar over the past three months alone, more than any other currency tracked by Bloomberg. Net outflows from Russian assets totaled $75 billion in the first half of 2014, compared with $61 billion in all of last year, data from the country’s central bank show. The ruble fell 0.4 percent to 39.7310 as of 11:33 a.m. in Moscow.

Russia’s economy will expand 0.5 percent next year, the International Monetary Fund said this week, cutting its previous growth forecast in half amid fallout from the conflict in Ukraine and the weaker currency.

Swiss Exile
Khodorkovsky, who has been living in exile in Switzerland since his release, said last month’s house arrest of Russian billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov is the result of shifting political influence within the Kremlin.

Yukos Oil Co., Khodorkovsky’s company, was dismantled and sold at auction, mostly to state-run OAO Rosneft, to cover $27 billion in back taxes after his imprisonment. Yukos’s market value peaked at $35.7 billion in October 2003. Khodorkovsky had a fortune of $15 billion in 2004, according to Forbes magazine.

Putin, who served eight years as president before becoming prime minister, is likely to be re-elected in a ballot planned for 2017, Khodorkovsky said.

“The method by which he will get this victory will depend on how events develop,” he said. “He could get the victory relatively honestly, because right now, this national chauvinism is supporting his popularity rating.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-03/khodorkovsky-sees-1917-like-crisis-nearing-under-putin.html
25 minute interview in link

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Damn...Putin is really sticking it to the world

 

[Mowgli]

Damn Obama crushed putin too?

This dude is a war chief

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Just victory laps @88m3








Russia Spends Up to $1.75 Billion in Two Days to Buoy Ruble
By Vladimir Kuznetsov October 07, 2014


President Vladimir Putin is suffering the consequences for shaking up the post-Cold War order in eastern Europe as the U.S. and European Union impose sanctions on his economy and investors pull money out of the country. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

Russia’s central bank spent as much as $1.75 billion to prop up the ruble over the last two trading days, its biggest market intervention since President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine in March.

Russia’s central bank spent the equivalent of $980 million to shore up the ruble on Oct. 3, the latest data on the authority’s website showed today. The bank also said it shifted the upper boundary of the currency’s trading band by 10 kopeks yesterday, a move that may have involved spending between $420 million and $769 million that day. The exchange rate weakened 0.3 percent to 44.6234 versus the basket by 5:12 p.m. in Moscow, set for a record low for the fourth time this month.

Putin is suffering the consequences for shaking up the post-Cold War order in eastern Europe as the U.S. and European Union impose sanctions on his economy and investors pull money out of the country. Demand for dollars and euros is growing among Russian companies locked out of western debt markets as they contend with $54.7 billion of debt repayments in the next three months, according to central bank data.

STORY: Here's Who's Getting Hammered By Russia's Falling Ruble
The ruble is under “permanent pressure” from lingering demand for foreign currency for debt payments, Vladimir Evstifeev, a Moscow-based analyst at OAO Bank Zenit, said in an e-mailed note. The “collapsing truce” in Ukraine is also leveling pressure on the exchange rate, he said.

Fighting continued today in eastern Ukraine amid moves to establish a buffer zone to help cement a cease-fire that went into effect a little more than a month ago between government forces and pro-Russian separatists.

STORY: Is Russia Desperate Enough to Block Investors From Leaving?
New Boundary
The Bank of Russia ended a five-month pause of selling foreign currency after the ruble’s world-beating slide in the past three months sent it through the upper boundary of the authority’s target dollar-ruble basket. The central bank set the ruble’s upper band limit at 44.60 against the basket.

When the currency crosses the upper trading band, the central bank sells $350 million before shifting the boundary by 5 kopeks, according to official guidelines. Russia spent $40 billion in the currency market this year through May, excluding the latest interventions.

STORY: Why Sanctions Won't Stop U.S. Oil Drilling in Russia
The resumption is putting additional pressure on Russia’s international reserves, which have fallen for six straight weeks to $456.8 billion on Sept. 26, marking an 11 percent decline since the end of 2013. Revenue for the world’s largest energy exporter is taking a hit as Brent crude slides to the weakest level in more than two years, reaching as low as $92.01 per barrel in London today.

‘Further Weakness’
The central bank’s latest action “does not mean that further weakness is ruled out,” Vladimir Osakovskiy, a Moscow-based economist at Bank of America Corp., said in e-mailed comments today.

The ruble weakened 0.5 percent to 39.9155 per dollar today, bringing its retreat in the past three months to 14 percent. Russian bonds due in February 2027 fell for a third day, sending the yield one basis point higher to 9.57 percent, as the government announced it will offer 10 billion rubles ($251 million) at a bond auction tomorrow. The yield is up 1.21 percentage points since Putin’s incursion into Ukraine.

STORY: Adidas Struggles in America: Too Much Fussball, Not Enough Football?
The rate on a three-year ruble-dollar basis swap reached 290 basis points today, the least since at least 2006, when Bloomberg began compiling the data. Negative rates signal traders will pay a premium to obtain dollars and the central bank said last week it will start offering foreign-currency swaps to ease the pressure in “several weeks.”

“We expect the central bank to keep close watch, being wary of a potential spike in retail foreign-exchange purchases,” Sberbank CIB analysts said in an e-mailed note.

(This story was earlier corrected to show cumulative size of interventions is as much as $1.75 billion)

STORY: How Putin Lowered the Price of Europe's Apples
To contact the reporter on this story: Vladimir Kuznetsov in Moscow at vkuznetsov2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wojciech Moskwa at wmoskwa@bloomberg.net Alex Nicholson

 

[88m3]

@Napoleon

Yeah he's on a roll.

 

[88m3]

6 October 2014 Last updated at 06:47 ET
Russian dissident Vladimir Ashurkov seeks UK asylum

Vladimir Ashurkov says the Russian state has targeted him on political grounds
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories

• Profile: Alexei Navalny
• Russia brain drain after Putin crackdown
• The fates of Putin's enemies

A key ally of Russian anti-Kremlin campaigner Alexei Navalny - Vladimir Ashurkov - has asked for political asylum in the UK.

Mr Ashurkov, 42, now wanted by Russian police, managed campaign funding for Navalny last year in the Moscow mayoral election. Navalny - currently under house arrest - failed to get elected.

Mr Ashurkov is accused of embezzlement.

In a tweet he said he wanted asylum because of "political persecution by the Russian authorities".

Mr Ashurkov, a former banker, is executive director of Navalny's anti-corruption fund.

In July the Russian Investigative Committee - a state body modelled on the American FBI - issued an arrest warrant for Mr Ashurkov. At the timeNavalny dismissed allegations that Mr Ashurkov had stolen campaign contributions.

Navalny, 38, also dismissed the committee's allegations against another of his aides, Konstantin Yankauskas, who is under house arrest.

The Russian daily Izvestia reports that Mr Ashurkov requested asylum after flying to the UK with his partner in May. It says they are in the UK now with their newborn son and his partner's daughter.

Navalny is famous for using social media to mock the establishment loyal to President Vladimir Putin. He is seen as a thorn in the side of Mr Putin, whom he accuses of fostering widespread corruption.

During Mr Putin's crackdown on political opponents in Russia a number of prominent dissidents have been given asylum in the UK. Among them were former intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko and former Putin ally Boris Berezovsky, both now dead.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29504098

 

[88m3]

5 October 2014 Last updated at 16:45 ET
Five killed in suicide bombing in Chechen capital

There has been no information about any civilian casualties
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories

• Chechnya profile

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Chechen capital Grozny, also killing five police officers and wounding at least 12 other people.

The attack took place outside a hall where a concert marking Grozny's City Day was about to take place.

An interior ministry statement said police were searching a "suspicious" young man when he detonated a device.

Grozny was ravaged by two wars between Russia and Chechen separatists but has been relatively calm in recent years.

The Russian statement said that police officers on duty at the event "noticed a suspicious young man near metal detectors set up at the concert hall".

"When the police decided to search him and establish his identity, the man blew himself up," it said.

The bomber was identified as 19-year-old Opti Mudarov, a resident of Grozny.

The ministry said he had disappeared two months ago and had had no contact with his family since then.

There has been no information about any civilian casualties.

Analysis: Sarah Rainsford, BBC Moscow correspondent

This was a high-profile and symbolic target.

This year, Grozny City Day celebrations coincide with the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

He recently asserted that extremist Islamic insurgents - who carried out major bomb attacks in Russia in the run-up to the Winter Olympics - were no longer a threat in Chechnya, and no longer recruiting.

Mr Kadyrov claimed there were just "five to 12 bandits" left in the mountains.

The southern Russian republic of Chechnya saw two, brutal separatist wars in the 1990s that gradually morphed into a fight for an Islamic state in the region which is led by a group calling itself the "Caucasus Emirate".

This is the first major attack since the insurgents' long-time leader, Doku Umarov, was killed last year.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said the bomber "wanted to ruin people's joy... but he has not succeeded"
Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said he would decorate the police officers involved for preventing what it described as a major terrorist act.

"They gave their lives to save thousands of people who had come to the concert," Itar-Tass news agency quoted the ministry as saying.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said the bomber "wanted to ruin people's joy on their day of celebration, but he has not succeeded".

The authoritarian leader also pledged to find and punish the perpetrators.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29498909

 

[Leasy]

Can we all admit brehs........ Putin lost

 

[88m3]

Sanctions and the War in Ukraine are Crippling Russia's Economy

By Samuel Oakford

October 7, 2014 | 9:37 pm
As the conflict in Eastern Ukraine drags on, Western sanctions and the deepening flight of foreign capital are hitting Russia's currency hard — and leaving the country's citizens high and dry.

Since January, the ruble has fallen about 20 percent against the dollar — and 14 percent in the last three months alone. This week, in an attempt to buoy the currency, the Russian Central Bank purchased an estimated $1.75 billion worth of rubles, only to see the currency further depreciate. The ruble is hovering at its lowest point since Russia defaulted on roughly $40 billion worth of debt in 1998. Only the Argentine peso and the Ukrainian hryvnia have seen more drastic swings this year.

On Tuesday, the IMF downgraded their forecast for GDP growth in Russia from 3 percent to near zero in 2014.

After Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in March, the US, along with many European countries, levied sanctions on Russian individuals and companies — and ratcheted them up as the fighting in Eastern Ukraine showed few signs of abating.

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"In a matter of months, unless the sanctions are removed or eased, they will really start biting Russian consumers," Padma Desai, a professor of comparative economic systems at Columbia University and expert on Russia, told VICE News.

Russian inflation stands at 8 percent — well higher than the 4-5 percent the Kremlin aims for — meaning goods are increasingly expensive for the average consumer. Since last September, food prices have risen 11.4 percent across the board. The price of meat and produce climbed the most — more than 16 percent during the same period. A Russian ban on many agricultural and meat imports from the West has meant pricey foodstuffs are even more limited.

The ruble's descent has left foreign manufacturers, particularly car companies, struggling to turn a profit. Assuming the price in rubles stays the same, firms based abroad but who manufacture and sell vehicles in Russia are seeing 20 percent fewer dollars for cars sold domestically. Because new cars are one of the first things consumers shy away from in an economic downturn, Russia's automotive industry faces the double threat of falling demand and lack of production capacity.

However, a weaker currency should theoretically allow domestically owned firms to produce cheaper items for sale abroad than foreign competitors. A sizeable depreciation of the yen over the past two years has seen profit margins increase among Japanese exporters like Toyota. But domestic companies can only ramp up production with sufficient investment. In Russia, capital flight is expected to total at least $100 billion in 2014.

With fewer investors buying rubles to maintain plants or purchase local stocks, the price the currency fetches falls.

"It's simple, the demand for the ruble only comes if foreigners want to invest in Russia, or if foreigners want to buy Russian goods," Desai said. "But the prospects for the Russian economy have dimmed so much due to the sanctions that foreign investment has practically come to a standstill."

'The prospects for the Russian economy have dimmed so much due to the sanctions that foreign investment has practically come to a standstill.'
Some of those outflows reflect wealthy individuals attempting to convert their money into dollar or euro denominated assets such as real estate and investments abroad. But much of the shift results from domestic companies losing access to credit.

In the past, firms were able to roll over bonds — a continuation of credit that companies around the world rely on — but many foreign lenders that provided a significant share of debt in Russia have simply pulled their money out of the country. Russian banks and private firms face $54.7 billion in debt repayments before the end of 2014 — all due in foreign currency.

To that end, US sanctions against Russia's financial sector have been particularly damaging.

"International institutions understood that they must not provide any money for Russia,'" Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and former economic advisor to Russia, told VICE News. "Russia is now starved for financing on all fronts — not even the Chinese are giving the Russians loans."

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Russia is highly exposed, said Aslund, due to its reliance on foreign investors to finance its economy.

The more a company diverts to paying debt, the less it has to invest in its operations and the economy as a whole. The cycle can worsen a nascent downturn. "They are going to enter a recession," Aslund predicts.

At the start of October, Russian foreign currency reserves were already down nearly 15 percent from the same time last year — also the result of attempts to prop up the ruble in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea.

Compounding maters, the price of oil has also fallen by twenty percent this year, leaving Russia with less foreign currency income. The Kremlin has already predicted 2016 revenues from energy giants Gazprom and Rosneftegaz will likely fall short by $18 billion.

Though state-owned companies (and some members of President Vladimir Putin's inner circle) can rely on the government to fill financing gaps, the same isn't true of small businesses that rely on traditional credit lines, Desai said.

The Russian central bank has maintained it will continue to allow the ruble to "float" on the market. Officials have gone out of their way to promise that despite rumors, there will be no limits on capital outflows. Such fears are believed to have contributed to some of pullout in recent weeks.

However, the bank is expected to further raise interest rates from their current peg of 8 percent. Increasing the country's key lending rate would ensure deposits earn more than what is lost to inflation, and to re-attract foreign capital.

With over $400 billion remaining its foreign reserves, Russia can afford to continue its gambit in Eastern Ukraine, and support the ruble for longer — but not indefinitely.

"Putin's goal is to keep Ukraine in a sort of more or less turmoil," Desai said. "I think the Russian public is still in favor of his geopolitical battles."

https://news.vice.com/article/sanct...ippling-russias-economy?utm_source=vicenewsfb


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