1. Oil and gas proceeds fund more than one-third of the entire Russian federal budget.
Russia produces 12% of the world’s oil. Its economy is strongly dependent on its publicly owned oil and gas sector — which employs about 2.5 million people, and generates an average of $191 million in revenue every day for the Kremlin.
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Goods and services around the country are becoming increasingly more expensive, but farmers may be among the hardest hit as inflation, supply chain issues, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are expected to send food prices soaring even higher.
That impact is being felt by farmers around the country.
“The cost of fertilizer is up as much as 500% in some areas,” said Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron. “It would be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen it for myself as I priced fertilizer for our farm in southern Indiana. Fertilizer is a global commodity and can be influenced by multiple market factors, including the situation in Ukraine, and all of these are helping to drive up costs.”
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Russian prosecutors asked a court to classify Facebook parent company Meta as “extremist” Friday, escalating tensions between Russia and the tech giant after Facebook was blocked in the country.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office asked a court to declare the tech giant an “extremist organization,” saying the company engaged in spreading “propaganda” and incited violence against the Russian people, Interfax reported. The move would effectively criminalize all of Meta’s operations in Russia, according to Reuters.
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Sen. Jim Risch (R-Id.) charged during a press conference on Wednesday that not only is the Biden regime allowing Russia to work with Iran on a nuclear deal, it is allowing our two adversaries to negotiate together behind closed doors with no American negotiators present.
“It is absolutely stunning that this deal is being negotiated by two of our worst enemies on the planet,” Risch said. “You’ve got the Iranians and the Russians. They won’t even let the Americans in the room!”
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Six years ago, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country, the Ukrainians bet that a Hillary Clinton presidency would offer better protection from Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though he had invaded Crimea during the Obama-Biden administration, whose Russian policies Clinton vowed to continue.
Working with both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign, Ukrainian government officials intervened in the 2016 race to help Clinton and hurt Trump in a sweeping and systematic foreign influence operation that’s been largely ignored by the press. The improper, if not illegal, operation was run chiefly out of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, where officials worked hand-in-glove with a Ukrainian-American activist and Clinton campaign operative to attack the Trump campaign. The Obama White House was also deeply involved in an effort to groom their own favored leader in Ukraine and then work with his government to dig up dirt on – and even investigate — their political rival.
Ukrainian and Democratic operatives also huddled with American journalists to spread damaging information on Trump and his advisers – including allegations of illicit Russian-tied payments that, though later proved false, forced the resignation of his campaign manager Paul Manafort. The embassy actually weighed a plan to get Congress to investigate Manafort and Trump and stage hearings in the run-up to the election.
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The United States is at war with Russia. Without a vote in Congress, a specific announcement by the president, or even meaningful awareness on the part of the bulk of the populace, the United States has stumbled into conflict with another nuclear power.
True enough, American “boots on the ground” are not yet (openly) engaged in combat in Ukraine. But the devastating sanctions put in place unilaterally by Joe Biden on Russian property constitute an act of war nonetheless. On Tuesday morning, Biden announced he was unilaterally banning the importation of Russian fuel and oil products into the United States. This decision is a direct attack on the Russian economy. It is designed to dictate a certain political outcome to the Russian government.
Such a dramatic act, therefore, constitutes participation in armed conflict against the Russian regime. It is an act of war.
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The most important duty of government is to provide for the security of its citizens. Providing that security is a complex enterprise. Its most obvious feature is military power: providing the surface naval, air, and space forces necessary to protect national interests. Of course, military power depends on economic power. In today’s security environment, that means maintaining the capability to provide for both the prosperity of American citizens as well the high tech weaponry necessary for modern warfare.
While the world’s attention is focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we need to keep in mind that the People’s Republic of China is America’s foremost adversary. While the United States dominated the “third industrial revolution” based on computation and communications, China seeks to lead the “fourth industrial revolution” based on metadata and artificial intelligence. China’s grand strategy is focused on achieving that goal. For example, Beijing has employed its Belt and Road Initiative in combination with digital technology in order to integrate billions of people into China’s economic sphere.
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Just one year after refusing to negotiate with Venezuelan “dictator” Nicolas Maduro, President Biden appears to have changed course.
Democrats and Republicans have put pressure on Biden to cut off Russian oil imports over Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s escalating invasion of Ukraine. Russia and Venezuela are partners in several areas including oil. Putin and Maduro recently discussed increasing a “strategic partnership,” according to Reuters.
Reports of the negotiations preceded an expected announcement Tuesday morning by President Biden that the U.S. will ban oil imports from Russia.
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More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded the country, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency released Monday.
The agency said as many as four million people might leave Ukraine as a result of the crisis, with more than one million fleeing in the first week of the attack.
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The White House has repeatedly suggested the private sector can boost oil supply amid surging gas prices, but industry groups have countered that the administration has placed hurdles for new drilling.
“There are 9,000 unused, approved drilling permits,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. “So I would suggest you ask the oil companies why they’re not using those if there’s a desire to drill more.”
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The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in January as the import-export gap widened to a record high, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The trade deficit reached $89.7 billion in January, up $7.7 billion from December 2021’s $82 billion figure, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday. Economists surveyed by the WSJ predicted a January trade deficit figure of just $87.2 billion.
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Joe Biden is set to sign an executive order that will begin the process of regulating the trading of cryptocurrency, as crypto becomes a viable alternative for Russians seeking to avoid the impact of economic sanctions.
According to ABC News, at least two anonymous Biden Administration officials said that the order will be issued this week, and has allegedly been in the planning stage since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. The order will outline the various steps that government agencies, including the Treasury Department, are to take to begin the process of imposing regulations on the buying and selling of digital currencies.
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The stock market dropped during early trading Monday after the U.S. benchmark oil index briefly touched its highest level since the Great Recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index measuring 30 major U.S. corporations, dropped 0.94% as of early Monday. The S&P index, which measures 500 of the largest publicly-traded companies, fell more than 0.93% while the NASDAQ, an index largely comprised of technology firms, declined 0.98%.
Late Sunday, the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures hit more than $130 per barrel for the first time since July 2008. The index remained high on Monday, hovering above $118 per barrel, up more than 3%.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that NATO member countries have a “green light” to send fighter jets as military aid to Ukraine.
The United States is reportedly in talks with Poland to send U.S. planes to replace any Soviet-era fighter jets that Warsaw sends to Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Sending planes to Ukraine “gets a green light,” Blinken told CBS News on Sunday.
“In fact, we’re talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs, if, in fact, they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians,” he said. “What can we do? How can we help to make sure that they get something to backfill the planes that they’re handing over to the Ukrainians? We’re in very active discussions with them about that.”
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A Russian prisoner of war claimed Moscow lied to soldiers before sending them to invade Ukraine.
Lieutenant Colonel Astakhov Dmitry Mikhailovich said soldiers were told Ukraine was “dominated by a fascist regime” and that “nationalists and Nazis had seized power,” according to a translation by the New York Post. He made the accusations during a media conference Thursday alongside two other captured Russian soldiers.
He explained that when he entered Ukraine and saw his favorite boxers, Ukrainians Oleksandr Usyk and Vasiliy Lomachenko, join the resistance, his doubts about the reasons for the invasion were amplified, the NYP reported.
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The best way to understand the current extraordinarily dangerous tragedy in Ukraine is to imagine a fight between a bear, a lion, and a bunny rabbit.
The bear of course is Russia, as President Ronald Reagan brilliantly evoked in his 1984 re-election commercial “The Bear.” As the narrator said:
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In light of the West’s united front against Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine, China will likely be forced to reexamine its plans for making Taiwan a part of the communist country, experts on the region told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“I think that the military planners in Beijing, as well as politicians in Beijing, have to be very concerned at a deeper level about their assumptions and plans regarding Taiwan,” David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the DCNF. “The democratic world has really come together behind this and … the narrative would be very similar with a Chinese attack.”
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The warning signs are everywhere. We are stumbling toward an energy crisis that is likely to be far more severe and long-lasting than the upheavals of the 1970s. And no, this isn’t about Russia or Ukraine. This is about the perilous state of the U.S. electricity grid.
If action isn’t taken soon to address the unraveling reliability of the grid, the United States will face the specter of rolling blackouts, factory shutdowns, loss of jobs and soaring electricity bills. Our organization CASE recently released a policy brief highlighting just how dire the situation is.
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President Joe Biden’s approval rating received a significant bump after his State of the Union address and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll released Friday.
The poll, conducted March 1-2, showed Biden’s approval rating increase to 47%, an eight point jump compared to the last poll released in February. The change is mostly due to gains among Democrats and independents, rising to 90% and 39% approval, respectively.
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U.S. Big Oil corporation ExxonMobil joined multiple other multinational energy firms in announcing that it would distance itself from Russian business ventures Tuesday.
The American energy giant announced that it would begin the process of exiting the Sakhalin-1 drilling project, a major oil and gas development located off the far east coast of Russia. The Houston-based corporation currently owns a 30% stake in the offshore oil drilling project, Barron’s reported.
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According to the criteria for their respective medals, the Iraq War that began in 2003 lasted more than eight years; yet the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which commenced just weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has lasted more than 20 years. And despite the U.S. withdrawal, the destruction of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, and the loss of so much equipment to the Taliban, that war still has, at this writing, no official end date.
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The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced that Ukrainians will be granted temporary refuge in the United States.
“Russia’s premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries,” Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said.
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A Big Tech watchdog group is speaking out about the way Silicon Valley’s titans of industry have handled the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“Apparently these Big Tech monopolists find everyday conservative Americans more objectionable than murderous foreign dictators,” Mike Davis, Founder and President of the Internet Accountability Project (IAP) told The Tennessee Star Thursday. “They’re willing to silence and censor political voices with which they disagree while welcoming war criminals like Putin with open arms. That alone should be enough to recognize these Big Tech monopolists are not our friends.”
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The United Nations’ refugee agency said Thursday that 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded a week ago.
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A corn and soybean farmer from Iowa said on Wednesday that Americans can expect to see grocery bills increase $1,000 a month due to a massive increase in the price of fertilizer .
Ben Riensche, who runs the Blue Diamond Farming Company, predicted on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that the Russian sanctions, the Green New Deal, and other factors will cause a massive spike in food prices later this year, spurring more economic hardship for Americans.
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Apple announced Tuesday it would pause the sale of all products in Russia, citing the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence,” Apple said in a statement. “We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region.”
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The price of crude oil touched its highest level in nearly 11 years on Wednesday amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis which has roiled energy markets.
The WTI index, the U.S. benchmark index, surged to $112.09 per barrel, its highest level since May 2011, early Wednesday before receding near $108 per barrel, marketplace data showed. The global Brent crude benchmark approached $114 per barrel then dropped below $111 a barrel.
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Over 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia first invaded the country on Feb. 25, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Wednesday, CNN reported.
“More than 2,000 Ukrainians died, not counting our defenders,” the service said in a statement, CNN reported. “Children, women and our defense forces are losing their lives every hour.”
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Russia’s financial markets remain closed Wednesday for the third day in a row as the country’s economy continues to take massive hits caused by Ukraine-related sanctions from Western countries.
The closure of the Russian exchanges is the longest since since 1998, according to Bloomberg News.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will announce Wednesday that the central bank will begin raising interest rates this month – in an attempt to curb rising inflation expected to further increase as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In prepared testimony to a congressional committee, Powell says the Fed will “need to be nimble” in responding to unexpected changes resulting from the invasion and the resulting sanctions, according to the Associated Press.
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President Joe Biden will join other Western nations in releasing a total of 60 million barrels of crude oil amid the Ukraine crisis, the coalition announced Tuesday.
Overall, 31 member nations of the International Energy Agency (IEA), including the U.S., agreed to coordinate the release, according to the Paris-based group. The decision was made in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent effects on global energy security.
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The infamous hacking group Anonymous appeared to declare an all-out digital war against Russia late this week, indicating the opening of a hacking front against Russian president Vladimir Putin amid his country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Anonymous is a loosely federated collective of hackers who regularly carry out digital sabotage of targets they claim deserve to be hacked. On Friday, a Twitter account purporting to represent some members of Anonymous issued a broad call for hackers to target the Russian government.
“Hackers all around the world: target Russia in the name of #Anonymous,” the account posted. “Let them know we do not forgive, we do not forget. Anonymous owns fascists, always.”
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Democrats and environmental groups were silent when asked about the importance of U.S. energy independence in light of the energy market volatility caused by the Ukraine crisis.
Several Democratic leaders in the House and Senate who hold leadership roles on committees or subcommittees tasked with overseeing energy policy ignored requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday about the importance of promoting U.S. energy independence. In addition, five major environmental groups chose not to address the issue or stayed silent when asked about the issue.
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The Virginia ABC is removing seven Russian-sourced vodka brands from its shelves, although Stolichnaya and Smirnoff, which aren’t produced in Russia, will remain on shelves. That’s a response to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Saturday directive to the Department of General Services to review Virginia’s procurement of goods and services involving Russian companies.
“The invasion of Ukraine by Soviet dictator Vladimir Putin cannot stand, and the people of the Commonwealth are ready to rally in opposition to this senseless attack on a sovereign nation and Western ideals,” Youngkin said in a press release. “Today, we are acting to show our solidarity with the Ukrainian people as they defend their country. And while these are important steps, it is incumbent upon President Biden to take a stronger, more decisive leadership position to end this war.”
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I admit, I was surprised by Russia’s attack on Ukraine. I thought Vladimir Putin had decided, instead of invading, to recognize the separatist republics and send in “peacekeepers.” Given the binary choice of invading or losing face, Plan C seemed the most clever, something similar to the limited “hybrid” campaign in Crimea. Instead, he has launched a massive, multipronged attack on Ukraine with the goal of “demilitarizing” the country.
The best analogy is the Russian attack on Georgia in response to its attack on the separatist province of South Ossetia in 2008. There, Russia surprised the West with its swift, decisive, and effective action against the pro-Western Georgians. Russia succeeded in its aims to degrade Georgia’s military and strengthen the separatists. These actions sent a message to Georgian leaders and its neighbors that a dalliance with the West may come at a high cost if Russia perceives it as a threat.
A war of some kind has been going on for eight years in Ukraine. While the West is now hyper-focused on the Russian invasion and its costs, the people of Donetsk have been shelled nearly every day by Ukrainian forces since 2014. And the so-called Revolution of Dignity was the culmination of a months-long violent riot in Kiev.
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Over the past several months, senior Biden administration officials held six “urgent meetings” with Communist Chinese officials pleading with them to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade, according to the New York Times.
The Americans presented the CCP officials—which included the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States—intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine’s borders, U.S. officials told the Times.
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With a reconnaissance plane in tow Thursday, a small fleet of eight fighters deliberately probed disputed airspace before scrambled jets scared them away, an air-to-air episode that may be part of the larger international epoch which President Biden frequently describes as one of “democracy versus autocracy.” But these weren’t Russian fighters. They were Chinese.
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For all his caginess, dissimulation, and opportunism, Vladimir Putin is more or less predictable.
Putin’s aims? The Russian president’s two-decade dilemma has been how to reclaim the prestige and power of the former Soviet Union—but with only 75 percent of his country’s former territory and 140 million fewer people.
When does he strike?
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The worldwide price of crude oil skyrocketed to more than $100 per barrel for the first time since 2014 as Russia launched a full-scale offensive against Ukraine.
The Brent crude index, the global oil benchmark, hit $101.66 per barrel Thursday morning, surging more than 4% overnight. The U.S. WTI index skyrocketed nearly 7% to $98.69 per barrel Thursday, its highest level since 2014.
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Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has already left at least 40 Russian soldiers and “a few” Ukrainian civilians dead as of Thursday, multiple sources reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine early Thursday as air strike sirens rang in Kyiv and Russian missiles reportedly struck multiple cities across the country.
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There is always a tweet, so says the online aphorism, developed during the chaotic Trump years, that now seems to hold true across administrations and perhaps even with increased significance after a Russian strongman decided to invade an eastern European neighbor over the holiday weekend.
The Russian in question is Vladimir Putin. The country invaded, Ukraine, or more specifically the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics that Russia recently recognized diplomatically. And the tweet, well, that came from Joe Biden.
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President Joe Biden suggested that Americans may be negatively impacted at the pump as a result of a sanctions package targeting Russia he unveiled Tuesday.
“As we respond, my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the pump,” the president remarked at the White House on Tuesday. “As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well and here at home. We need to be honest about that.”
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Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) is participating in the Munich Security Conference amid a tense moment between Russia and Ukraine. On Thursday, Warner said on a call with reporters that the situation would be one of the main topics at the annual conference, which wasn’t held during the past two years due to COVID-19.
“The challenging thing is that we have seen no real de-escalation efforts by Putin and the Russian forces. There may have been some forces that have moved around a bit, but no indications of de-escalation,” said Warner, who is chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
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An increasing number of Democrats believe Hillary Clinton should be investigated by special counsel John Durham in connection with her alleged involvement in manufacturing ties between 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump and the Russia, according to a recent survey.
The survey, by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, found 75% of respondents who follow the story think Clinton and her campaign advisers should be investigated for her role in so-called Russiagate, according to several news reports.
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Filings from Special Counsel John Durham this week allege the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign was working to establish a “narrative” linking the Trump campaign to a Russian bank, in an alleged gambit one expert said was an effort to “infiltrate” Trump servers to that end.
The allegations, first reported on by Fox News on Saturday, are another layer to the densely, multifaceted Durham investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, one that has continued long after Trump left office and that continues to produce fresh controversies on a regular basis.
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One way of understanding the 2009-2014 Obama Administration policy of “reset” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is to recall two iconic incidents.
The first was the 2009 “reset.”
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The flow of natural gas through a key Russian-controlled pipeline suddenly stopped Wednesday as tensions continue to increase between Russia and the West.
The Yamal-Europe pipeline’s liquified natural gas (LNG) flows, which are operated by Russian state-run firm Gazprom and have usually been pumped westward from Russia to Germany through Poland, were halted early Wednesday, European data showed, according to Reuters. The sudden stoppage reportedly represented a setback after leaders expected the pipeline to return to its normal flow pattern.
In December 2021, Gazprom slowed the pipeline’s gas flows, which represent 10% of the region’s supply, and the company reversed the flow direction from westward to eastward. The sudden reversal sent natural gas prices, which had already spiked amid a European energy crisis, even higher.
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President Joe Biden plans to send another 3,000 troops to Europe amid continued tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Biden is sending about 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland and Germany this week. The president is also moving about 1,000 soldiers based in Germany to Romania, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing administration officials.
“They are trained and equipped for a variety of missions during this period of elevated risk,” a senior defense official told the Wall Street Journal.
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The Washington Post has recused its new national editor, Matea Gold, from the news organization’s coverage of the FBI and Justice Department over a personal conflict of interest. A month before Gold was promoted, her husband, Jonathan Lenzner, was named FBI chief of staff.
A Post spokeswoman told RealClearInvestigations that the paper’s managing editor, Steven Ginsberg, will be overseeing coverage of the Justice Department and the FBI. Kristine Coratti Kelly, the paper’s chief communications officer, said the decision does not reflect on Gold’s objectivity or credibility.
“We have every confidence in Matea’s professionalism and high standards,” Kelly said. “She has recused herself from this area of coverage to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”
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Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed.
Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.
Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.
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