The European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in October following the poison attack on opposition politician Aleksej Navalny. Russia has now reacted with sanctions of its own.

The Kremlin’s sanctions include entry bans for representatives from Germany and other EU countries. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had decided to “extend the list of representatives of EU member states who are banned from entering the Russian Federation.”

The Navalny Poisoning

Navalny was poisoned in August with a chemical nerve agent developed in Russia by the Novichok group. For this reason, the EU issued sanctions against senior members of the Russian  government in October. The sanctions included targeted restrictions against the first deputy head of the presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko, director of the domestic intelligence service Alexander Bortnikow and against two deputy defense ministers.

The EU sanctions include entry bans and asset freezes. In addition, Europeans are no longer allowed to do business with those affected.

Lavrov Hinted at Russian Counter-Sanctions in November

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov then announced potential counter-sanctions in November. At a press conference, he had said: “Because Germany was the locomotive for the EU sanctions in connection with Navalny and because the sanctions affect senior employees of the Russian presidential administration, our answer will mirror it.” He also announced sanctions for France.

Germany has repeatedly called on Russia to investigate and explain the attempt on Navalny’s life. Russia, on the other hand, has denounced the EU’s accusations against them as baseless.

Details on Russia’s Sanctions

According to the Foreign Office in Berlin, the Russian sanctions that have now been issued include “entry bans on German government agencies”. Meanwhile, the German government believes that the measures are “unjustified”.

“We continue to call on Russia to clarify the use of a chemical warfare agent on Russian territory against a Russian citizen,” the foreign office said.

It is still unknown who exactly these sanctions will hit on the German side. Likely, the persons concerned will only notice punitive measures upon entry, a common practice by Russia.

The Moscow Foreign Ministry previously invited the chargé d’affaires of the German embassy and representatives of the embassies of France and Sweden to an interview to inform them about the sanctions.

Russia’s Past Actions

Russia had already responded to sanctions by the EU and other countries following a poison attack on former double agent Sergej Skripal in Great Britain with similar counter-sanctions in 2018.

Meanwhile, the attack on Navalny continues to cause waves: Navalny said on Monday that an employee of the Russian domestic intelligence service, FSB, whom he had contacted under a false name, had admitted that he was involved in the poison attack.

The opposition leader published a recording of a phone call on December 14 in which he posed as an assistant to the head of the Russian Security Council in order to gain the man’s trust.

The FSB described the phone call as a fake and a “planned provocation” to discredit it. An investigation is reportedly being launched.

Russia Says it is the Victim of a Geopolitical Hit Job

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said that confidence in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had fallen further because it was again “hostage” to those who used them for geopolitical interests.

In October, the OPCW had detected the poisoning of Navalny with a neurotoxin from the Novitschok group, and thus confirmed the results of laboratories in Germany, France, and Sweden.

Navalny collapsed on a domestic flight in Siberia in August. In the now published phone call, the alleged FSB man said that the poison was attached to the inside of Nawalny’s underpants. The 44-year-old opposition member probably only survived because the flight did not last long enough, and paramedics quickly took care of him.

Several media outlets published research in the past week that alleged that at least eight Russian intelligence agents had attacked Navalny. Only last week, President Vladimir Putin spoke of his sharpest critic but ruled out poisoning via Russian intelligence officials. Navalny has repeatedly referred to the Kremlin chief as the mastermind behind the attempted murder.

L'articolo Russia Imposes Sanctions on Germany and Other EU Members proviene da InsideOver.

Six years after the implementation of the Ukraine-related sanctions regime it is time to recognize its failure: it didn’t achieve any of its economic and political goals; instead, it has been making Russia stronger and gave impetus to the transition to a multi-polar world order.

Russia Returned to Being an Agricultural Powerhouse

This scoop comes from the prestigious news agency and intelligence-gathering firm Bloomberg: the Russian economy is benefiting from the sanctions regime, more specifically, its agribusiness industry is thriving and is conquering the worldwide food market.

The best way to depict this phenomenon is to show what is going on in Egypt: recently the state buyer booked 530,000 tons of Russian wheat, the single-highest purchase from the country since the 2012-13 season, and overall its purchases from Russian producers now comprise up to 80% of the national supplies for this season.

Russian wheat is so competitive in terms of price and quality that Egypt “hasn’t booked wheat from countries outside Russia since early August, and offers from the European Union have been scant in recent months”. Interestingly, according to the Russian Grain Union there are indications that this “trend may continue for a while” and not only in Egypt.

Russia’s food exports are growing worldwide and the West is to credit.

Isolating Russia from the EU Market Motivated New Thinking in Moscow

Indeed, the sudden isolation from the EU food market prompted Russia not only to find fast new partners with which to replace the main sellers but also gave impetus to the rediscovery of the believed-to-be-buried centuries-old status of agricultural powerhouse.

The quest for autarchy in the time of globalization ceased to be a taboo and the state ordered the agribusiness sector to raise the output and to bring the unproductive and underused massive kilometers-long lands to productivity.

It worked.

Russia is the World’s Top Grain Exporter

Six years after the sanctions-regime Russia has achieved food self-sufficiency for several crops; it is now the world’s top grain exporter and is on the path to break new records in the export of many other products, like seafood, meat, fats and oils, as it is in the world’s top ten of agricultural exporters.

Bloomberg notes that EU countries like France are getting severely hit by Russia’s competitiveness, which is in part due to the ruble’s weakness against the euro, whereas other sources emphasize how the country in 2019 earned more from the grain exports than the arms exports.

The watershed year was 2014: that is when the West introduced the sanctions regime and the EU in particular started to decouple its economy from Russia’s. Starting from that year the agricultural output rose by more than 20% and the agribusiness got “to capture more than half of the global wheat market”, a tremendous achievement.

The partnership with China played a fundamental role in prompting the Russian agribusiness to raise the production: the country opened its billion-people market to Russian food, especially poultry and dairy products. The bilateral food trade grew by almost 30% in 2018 for a value of more than $5 billion.

It’s a very noteworthy amount considering that Russia’s overall food exports worldwide neared $26 billion that same year.

No Political Goal Achieved by Sanctions

It’s not only Russian agribusiness that has thrived, even other strategic sectors are experiencing autarchy-driven booms partly boosted by the partnership with China: from high-tech and mining to energy and defense.

The United States itself has admitted the failure of the sanctions-regime in the latest report published by the Congressional Research Service, dated January 2020: “In terms of economic impact, studies suggest that sanctions have had a negative but relatively modest impact on Russia’s growth. Changes in world oil prices have had a much greater impact on the Russian economy. After oil prices rose in 2016, Russia’s economy began to strengthen even as sanctions remained in place and, in some instances, were tightened”.

The sanctions-regime was designed with the goal of damaging the Russian economy up to the critical point to oblige the establishment to rethink its foreign policy agenda for budgetary issues and retreat from Ukraine and other countries, like Syria. It didn’t work: Crimea is still under Russian sovereignty, the Donbass is still Kremlin-remote controlled, and Russia got to circumvent the potentially-lethal isolation by returning to its long-forgotten Asian dimension.

Brzezinski’s Nightmare Come True

More importantly, Trump’s decision to keep active Obama’s anti-Russian containment and to open a new front against China worked contrariwise and it made Zbigniew Brzezinski’s nightmare true: the two countries forged a fragile-but-solid multisector strategic partnership and they even started to support Iran, although very timidly.

In short, the US exposed itself to the risk of an imperial overstretch by clumsily trying to fight two great powers at the same time without taking into account the worst case scenario: their eventual survival-driven rapprochement.

Trump’s efforts to strategically retreat from the Middle East by delegating the American agenda to Israel and the Gulf monarchies and the growing disinterestedness for influence in non-Asian theaters are a try to fix the mistakes committed in the last six years by devoting extensive resources to the Cold War 2.0.

In this race against time the goal is no longer to force Russia out of Ukraine: it is to prevent the Moscow–Bejing axis from turning into a formidable alliance. But the only way to avoid such scenario is to put an end to the sanctions and to restart a constructive dialogue with the Kremlin; the problem is that nobody with enough power seems interested in doing this.

L'articolo What Impact Have Ukraine-Related Sanctions Had on Russia? proviene da InsideOver.

In a recent interview, former German Chancellor and SPD chairman Gerhard Schröder spoke about German-Russian relations and called for the sanctions against Russia to be ceased.

According to Schröder the renewal of bilateral relations was about responsibility for all of German history, particularly World War II. Part of this responsibility was to keep the memory of the German atrocities alive and to fight for a “never again” status quo, regarding the Holocaust and the war waged by the National Socialists.

Germany must not forget, Schröder continued, that the war was also an attempt to exterminate or enslave the peoples of the former Soviet Union, “a cruel campaign of annihilation”, with the aim of “making Russia disappear from the world political stage”. In light of these facts, Germany ought to prioritize strengthening German Russia relations.

Currently, Germany was doing the opposite, Schröder states. Germany could not appreciate enough that Russia, despite this terrible past, was willing to work with the new Germany in a spirit of trust.

In turn, however, Germany ought to cease sanctions against Russia for two reasons in particular. On the one hand, sanctions in Russia manifested historical memories, and, on the other hand, they would not change Russian politics, Schröder argues. Cooperation, Schröder continuous, now, that nations were dealing with the Covid-19 impact, was all the more critical. “Senseless sanctions” should thus not be further conducted.

Not even as a result of Russia’s violations of international law, which were initiated when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, according to Schröder. The means were utterly inappropriate, as the sanctions would never force “any Russian president to return Crimea to Ukraine.” The latter was “the reality” of the story, Schröder concludes.

Russian aggression notwithstanding, there was “no alternative” to reasonable relations with Russia, according to Schröder. Any further alienation of Russia was opening the door towards China even more extensive, which neither Germany nor Europe could please.

Moreover, Russian support was needed to solve the problems of the present, while Germany also needed Russian energy and the Russian market. Especially in times of reconstruction, according to Covid-19, sanctions were, therefore, “out of date,” Schröder reiterated.

Regarding the issues that Russia is causing with its violation of international law in the east of Ukraine, which has caused antipathy and mistrust in Germany, as well as concerns about Russian aggression in the Baltic States, Schröder said that Russia was “not a military threat to the European Union.” Arguing the opposite would only serve to “awaken enemy images of the Cold War.” The latter was rhetoric primarily utilized to sweep the problems within the western defense alliance under the covers.

Nevertheless, according to Schröder, the conflict in eastern Ukraine must be resolved. It was Ukrainian territory, and it must remain that, however, both sides were equally responsible for the lack of progress. There would only be peaceful coexistence if Ukraine became a federal state in which the east was given more autonomy. Accordingly, Ukraine had obligations that it has not yet honored, Schröder argues.

Schröder’s pro-Russia stance has been well documented. The former chancellor, who works for Russian state-owned companies Gazprom and Rosneft, has also been a close personal friend of President Putin ever since both heads of states began to meet in the early 2000s dismissed any allegations of taking Russias side during the interview. Anyone, Schröder agues, who works in some capacity for Russia, was stigmatized and considered a Russian asset, a default setting, that did not impress him.

Nevertheless, Schröder, who famously called Putin in 2004, a “flawless democrat,” has consistently been criticized by German politicians, including his own former party, for his Russian connection and the lack of objectivity he has established ever since working for Russian firms. The latter went so far that Schröder once supported the Russian argument of comparing the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

No, critical words against Russia or his close friend President Putin have not been part of Schröder’s post-political legacy, whether concerning the violation of international law or the way the Russian president has been dealing his with political opponents.

Arguing in favor of ending rightfully enforced sanctions is the continuation of an anti-west, pro-Russian course that began with going back – on his word and his promise to President George W. Bush for “unconditional support” during the Iraq War in 2003. It is an affront to Ukraine and the Baltic states, who are regularly confronted by Russian aggression. To Schröder, however, Putin, who once called the breakup of the Soviet Union, the “greatest tragedy of the 20th Century,” remains indeed a flawless democrat, who conducts realpolitik, not the leader of Russian superpower fantasies.

L'articolo Germany’s Former Chancellor Schröder: Russia Sanctions Need to Stop proviene da InsideOver.

During the cold war, the Soviet Union had great interest in Africa, where it sought to build its own influence against Western countries which had already established their presence through colonization. Its strategy involved penetrating trade union movements, supporting liberation struggles, and providing aid to newly independent African states.

Its policy towards African trade organisations, which were still in their early stages, was two fold. The first was to indoctrinate budding Africans by sponsoring their studies in trade union colleges in communist countries with the aim of making them influential trade unionists on their return. Secondly, to win over African leading trade unionists by enticing them with gifts and cash, and also sponsoring their holidays and tours to socialist countries.

Most African political parties had been banned while others had restrictions imposed on them by colonial governments. This effectively made trade union organisations the only channels through which Africans could pursue their political goals. So whoever controlled trade union movements controlled the African masses.

It was also hoped that the enticement of leading trade unionists would eventually influence the transfer of African trade union organisations from the Western backed International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to the Soviet backed World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). In Kenya, for instance, the Soviet-sponsored Oginga Odinga to initiate a split in Tom Mboya’s Kenya Federation of Labour which was allied to the ICFTU. The result was the formation of Trade Union Congress of Kenya (TUCK) which immediately allied itself to the communist WFTU. However, because of the strong British influence in Kenya, the TUCK couldn’t survive long enough.

A similar strategy was adopted by the Soviet in its support for Africa’s struggle against colonialism. This involved sponsoring leading nationalists and sending upcoming politicians to colleges in socialist countries. Working through the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee (SAASC) which served as its unofficial foreign policy organ, support was mobilised for African and Asian nationalist movements under the cover of defeating racism and colonization.
Across the continent nationalists were recruited as agents and groomed as future leaders in the hope that they would protect and cater for Soviet interests in their respective countries after independence.

These preferred leaders acted as point men, coordinated Soviet aid in their respective countries, and furthered communism. They selected young Africans who were sent to institutions in the Soviet where they learned many skills including military tactics. It was expected that on their return they would help in furthering Soviet goals.

In independent African countries which were perceived as being led by Western backed leaders, the Soviet took steps to sponsor pro-East rivals to take over the government. This included funding their political campaigns and giving them huge sums of money to buy off support in parliament. And in some cases, to start revolutions to depose the existing governments. African countries which had won independence but were still under White minority rule, such as South Africa, were also given military aid.

After the cold war, however, Russia just like western countries lost its interest in Africa and limited its aid to the continent. But this changed in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. This followed the deposition of the pro-Moscow Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, who later on sought refuge in Russia. Western countries and the European Union termed Russia’s move illegal and came up with a series of sanctions to put pressure on President Vladimir Putin’s administration and its oligarch.

A range of diplomatic measures which included the exclusion of Russia from the G8 which subsequently became the G7, were introduced. The G8 summit which was supposed to be held in the Russian city of Sochi, was cancelled and instead a meeting of G7 was held in Brussels on 4-5 June 2014. The ongoing talks of Russia joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) were suspended. The same applied to all bilateral talks between Russia and EU.

Another set of sanctions were called “restrictive measures” targeting individuals and entities who were perceived as having played a great part in the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. These included visa bans and asset freezes. The EU’s third set of sanctions were called, “Restrictions for Crimea and Sevastopol”. Since the Union did not recognise the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, it imposed substantial restrictions on economic exchanges with the territory.

The US and Canadian sanctions were more open ended and could be placed in three categories. The first restricted Russia’s access to Western financial markets and services for designated Russian state-owned enterprises in the banking energy and defence sectors. The second placed an embargo on exports to Russia of designated high-technology oil exploration and production equipment. The third was an embargo on exports to Russia of designated military and dual use goods. The effects of these sanctions coupled with the fall of oil prices, rapidly depreciated the value of Russia’s currency, the Rouble. After making numerous efforts the Central Bank of Russia stopped defending the value of the Rouble and instead hiked interest rates .

With the sanction putting intense pressure on the economy, Vladimir Putin decided to turn to Africa to find new markets and partners. The efforts to penetrate Africa are currently being led by Yevgeny Progozhin, one of his close allies who has been linked with military contracts in Syria and Ukraine. Just like during the cold war, Russia hopes to increase its influence in Africa by providing military aid, grooming new leaders and signing business deals. Apart from selling arms, it hopes to make economic gain by exploiting Africa’s mineral resources such as gold and diamond.

In Central African Republic (CAR), which has been plagued by a serious civil war, Russia runs a peace keeping mission which is being carried out by a small team of its military personnel and mercenaries from Wagner Group, a private military company linked to senior officials in the Kremlin and whose main financer is Yevgeny Proghozin. Although the goal of the peace keeping mission according to Russia is to bring about stability, it is secretly being used to create a conducive environment for the exploitation of the country’s minerals.

Central Africa is rich in diamonds, gold, and uranium which are yet to be explored, and Russia, using its new influence, has already secured mining concessions which were initially given to China. It has also established its presence in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, another mineral rich country with huge deposits of gold and diamond. Recently, it sent a team of military specialists to the country to offer maintenance and repair services to military equipment.

To ease the shipment of raw materials from Africa to Russia and goods from Russia to Africa, Moscow recently entered an agreement with Eritrea to establish a logistics base in the country. Eritrea is strategically located along the Red Sea and would definitely give Russia good access to the world’s major maritime routes. The Chinese and the Americans already have their bases in the neighbouring Djibouti. The only concern amongst security experts is that Russia’s interest in Africa could lead to gross human rights violations and security challenges, as it sells weapons to despotic governments and deploys mercenaries in regions under conflict.

L'articolo Putin’s Attempts to Penetrate Africa proviene da InsideOver.