Last night I attended an event in Washington where I had two conversations relating to Ukraine: one with the principal of a consulting firm, and the other with an employee of the CIA.
Having no ‘Defeat Day’ in its calendar – an oversight the Kremlin would do well to rectify – the Kremlin is already rehearsing for its annual Victory Day parade on May 9.
Monetary climate change (to borrow a phrase from author and columnist Ron Stoeferle) is happening far faster than environmental climate change. And there are some big changes in the works.
Dushanbe is dependent on Russia and indebted to China. Will the IMF come to the rescue?
At the start of this week, it was reported that the Russian Ministry of Energy had stopped publishing monthly data on oil production. Getting hard information on what is going inside Russia is getting harder and that could be a problem.
Ukraine’s economy expanded by 3.4% in 2021 as easing COVID restrictions supported domestic demand and a bumper harvest. This recovery was upended by the onset of war in February 2022, which will see the economy contract by a third.
Russia’s economy expanded by 4.7% in 2021 as easing COVID restrictions supported domestic demand. This recovery was upended by the onset of war in February 2022, which will see the economy contract by roughly 11%.
If Volodymyr Zelenskiy hoped to see a change of government across the Carpathians in Hungary, he’ll have to wait another four years – all the while enduring Viktor Orbán’s small, but near constant, jabs.
The Institute of International Finance estimates that emerging market securities suffered a net outflow of $9.8bn in March 2022, the first outflow month since March 2021, as the global investment community goes “risk on” due to the war in Ukraine.
The atrocities in Bucha, just outside Kyiv, will make the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine more difficult to conclude. The two sides had made headway but several difficult issues remain on the agenda, and progress seems to have stalled.
The recent sanctions against Russia catalysed a sudden fall of the ruble from RUB81 to the dollar to RUB150. But between March 7 and April 3, 2022, the ruble miraculously recovered to RUB85 to the dollar. What happened?