Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online November 14
The Bell continues to conduct online, dedicated to the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, which began on February 24.
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20:56 Amazon will begin mass layoffs this week, the company plans to lay off about 10 thousand people, writes The New York Times, citing sources. The reductions will affect mainly developers, for example, those working on the Alexa voice assistant, as well as employees of the retail division and the human resources department.
10,000 is about 3% of Amazon's full-time employees and about 1% of the company's workforce of more than 1.5 million, mostly hourly workers. This is the largest reduction in the history of the company. The fact that Amazon is planning to cut ahead of the busy season of pre-holiday shopping (when it usually recruited additional staff) clearly shows the rapid deterioration of the macroeconomic situation, the NYT notes.
18:26 Peskov confirmed that Russian-American negotiations are taking place in Ankara on Monday, but did not disclose the details. According to him, the meeting was initiated by the United States.
17:03 The founder of the Anderson cafe network, Anastasia Tatulova, reported on large-scale checks in her network and called it an operation to “finally expel” from the country. In a column for The Bell, Tatulova wrote that there was a denunciation of her establishments to the prosecutor's office for celebrating Halloween.
16:21 The meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden lasted more than three hours instead of the planned two hours. As a result, there will be a joint press conference.
14:47 Neither the direct line nor the big press conference of Vladimir Putin may take place before the end of the year, preparations for these events are not underway, writes RBC. The president usually holds a press conference in December, a direct line - in the spring or summer (thus it has already been postponed for half a year). One of the sources says that the decision depends on the situation in Ukraine.
There is no clarity on the date of the message to the Federal Assembly - unlike both formats of communication with the people, it is a constitutional function of the president and is announced annually. There was no message in 2022 (the last one was in April 2021), but Dmitry Peskov said that preparations for it had begun.
14:21 The joint statement of the G20 summit for the first time in the history of the G20 may not be signed by all participating countries, as Russia (and possibly China) will not agree with a sharp condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This raises serious questions about the unity of the G20 and the general applicability of this design now.
Possible options are a split statement by country group, option 19+1 (Russia and all others), and finally a post-mortem statement from the host country, Indonesia. Russia, in particular, favors the wording "special military operation" instead of "war." The option of a compromise wording (where conflicts in the world are condemned without specifics) is in principle possible, but in this case, several countries are ready to boycott the statement.
13:35 Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met today for the first time before the opening of the G20 summit in Bali as their heads of state. This is a symbolic renewal of relations after Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, notes Bloomberg . It is expected that the meeting of the leaders will be formal - as part of delegations - and will last at least two hours. Before the meeting, the parties stated that the current state of relations does not satisfy both countries, and that the whole world expects from them a responsible development of relations.
There is no doubt that the negotiations will touch upon all three main issues - Taiwan, China's relations with Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine, and the US blockade of modern semiconductor supplies to China. Biden said the day before that the United States had “no fundamental misunderstanding” with China, but that they needed to clearly delineate red lines and priorities for the next two years.
12:58 "It's none of our business." Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the video of the brutal execution of a former prisoner who served in the Wagner PMC and surrendered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
12:48 The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, unexpectedly flew to Turkey for talks with the American delegation, writes Kommersant . The negotiations were not announced, who is on them from the American side, it is not reported.
12:11 Sergey Lavrov sent to the hospital shortly after arriving at the G20 summit in Bali - Bloomberg . Presumably, the cause of hospitalization is heart problems.
Maria Zakharova said that this was a fake: “Sergey Viktorovich and I are reading a tape in Indonesia and we can’t believe our eyes: it turns out that he is hospitalized. This is, of course, the aerobatics of fakes. Zakharova then posted a video of Lavrov in a T-shirt working with documents. He advised foreign journalists to be honest and write the truth.
Bali's governor confirmed to Reuters that Lavrov was in the hospital for a check-up but had already left in good health.
12:02 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali , said that "the entire toolkit [of the Russian oil price ceiling] is ready," and is aimed not only at depleting the funds that Russia can spend on war, but also at ensuring acceptable price level for developing countries. She did not name this level, although the EU oil embargo comes into force on December 5, and with it the price ceiling.
11:35 EU foreign and defense ministers this week will discuss sanctions against Iran for the supply of drones and ballistic missiles to Russia, writes Bloomberg.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- A week after the US midterm elections , the final distribution of votes in Congress has not yet been officially named . Over the weekend, it became clear that the Senate will continue to be controlled by the Democratic Party, and the majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives will be very modest. The main lesson of the defeat for the Republican Party is that Trump's legacy hinders it, and putting him in a new presidential election is hardly reasonable.
- US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in early November called on the Ukrainian leadership not only to indicate readiness for negotiations with Russia, but also to think about more realistic requirements in future negotiations, writes The Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper's sources in European diplomatic circles, it was also about revising the position on Crimea.
- The echo of the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange (more about it here ) is spreading throughout the crypto market: the withdrawal of funds was stopped by the notable AAX crypto exchange. Management says that the situation will be resolved in a few days, and the asset pool is safe.
- Sportswear retailer Helly Hansen left Russia under a scheme to sell the business to management, probably for a nominal sum. The remaining inventory will be sold out in two to three months, and multi-brand stores under the Move brand will appear in place of some Helly Hansen outlets.
- For the time being, Russia will continue to use Urals oil quotes compiled by the London-based Argus Media provider to calculate taxes on oil workers. But the Ministry of Finance will discuss an alternative .
- Europe is almost guaranteed a winter no harsher than the average long-term. And the chances of a significantly warmer winter have risen over the past month to 50-60% for the UK and Central and Southern Europe, said atmospheric monitoring service Copernicus . This means that the gas stored by countries and third-party supplies will be enough for the season even if imports from Russia are stopped.
- A suspect in the November 13 attack in Istanbul has been detained in Turkey. Turkish authorities said he was linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara considers terrorist. An explosion in the busy tourist area of Beyoglu killed six people and injured more than 80.