Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online December 9
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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20:24 The Ministry of Justice recognized The Bell as a foreign agent.
19:26 Annual inflation in Russia slowed to 11.98% in November, according to Rosstat data. Last month, consumer prices rose 0.37% after 0.18% in October. Since the beginning of the year, inflation has amounted to 11.07%.
17:06 Putin answered journalists' questions following his visit to Kyrgyzstan. The main of his answers:
- “You can’t trust anyone, only me,” the president said, answering a question about the complaints of the mobilized.
- The introduced oil price ceiling “is commensurate with the prices at which we sell oil, we will not have losses under any circumstances,” but if necessary, Russia will think about reducing production.
- The “special operation” “goes on as usual, everything is stable, we don’t have any questions or problems there.”
- The president is disappointed by Merkel's comments on the Minsk agreements, Russia "should have started an operation in Ukraine earlier, but expected to agree within the Minsk-2 framework."
- There is no talk of additional mobilization now.
- When asked if Yashin was sentenced too harshly, Putin first asked who Yashin was, and then said that it was inappropriate to question the court's decisions.
15:10 Ilya Yashin (recognized as a foreign agent) was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison. The court found him guilty of spreading fake news about the Russian army.
14:21 After the entry into force of the price ceiling for Russian oil at $60, the price of Urals fell from $52 to $44 per barrel, writes Bloomberg. But now this is not a consequence of the ceiling, but of the European embargo that has come into effect. Oriented to Asia, Russian ESPO oil is much more expensive - about $69.
How exactly the embargo and price ceiling will work and what Russia can do about it, , told The Bell. Marcel Salikhov, director of the Institute of Energy and Finance
13:25 After reports of failures in the mobile applications of Tinkoff, Alfa-Bank and Raiffeisenbank, users reported a failure in Sberbank Online as well. At 13:20, access to the Sberbank, Alfa and Raiffeisen applications was restored. Alpha attributed the failure to technical work. Raiffeisen did not confirm the information about the failure - the application is working properly.
12:35 The Agency of Kazakhstan for the Regulation and Development of the Financial Market confirmed that the country's banks received permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury to work with the Russian Mir system in terms of "the use of bank cards of the Mir system by individuals , namely, citizens who migrated from Russia to Kazakhstan to carry out operations that ensure their livelihoods. OFAC notes that operations will remain under special scrutiny.
In mid-September, the US Treasury warned foreign banks about the risk of sanctions in case of servicing Russian Mir cards. The NSPK payment system itself, on which Mir is based, is not under sanctions, but it is obvious that banks preferred not to take risks.
Immediately after the start of mobilization, at the end of September, Russians who arrived in Kazakhstan faced refusals to service Mir cards. According to Deutsche Welle , which summed up the picture (recognized as a foreign media agent), de facto they were not accepted even by the largest bank in the country, Halyk, not to mention second-tier banks. Mir was hosted by a subsidiary of VTB and Bereke Bank, which bought the assets of Sberbank-Kazakhstan. Banks themselves determine the policy in this area, then the Kazakh regulator pointed out.
11:41 Demonstration of the Ukrainian flag, as well as "blue and yellow colors that determine its color scheme," in itself does not constitute an offense, the Prosecutor General's Office says in response to a request from St. Petersburg deputy from Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky. Meduza, recognized as a foreign agent, drew attention to him. However, "the qualification of the actions of a person depends on the totality of the actual circumstances of the case," the department warns.
The day before, a video was widely circulated on social networks in which a resident of Rostov-on-Don criticizes the blue and yellow street decorations of the city. It turned out that they are from last year and correspond to the flag of the Rostov region. In other cases, law enforcement agencies were involved in the fight against blue and yellow - about the incident in the Pskov region, for example, wrote Sever.Realii, recognized as a foreign agent.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- Russian airlines managed to remove 200 aircraft with Russian registration from the Bermuda registry in six months, learned Kommersant . This means that they can fly abroad, the prices for international flights should decrease slightly.
- EU sanctions against Russia have had a limited impact on the union's own economy - dire consequences only in limited sectors, says the European Commission report . The report comes out during the discussion of the ninth package of sanctions against Russia and undermines the position of blocking Hungary.
- On Friday night, burned down completely a large hardware store OBI in Khimki near Moscow . The fire was accompanied by explosions of paints and varnishes stored in the store, and one security guard was killed. In October, there were reports of a new change of ownership and an attempted raider takeover of the network. The main version of the fire is arson (according to RIA Novosti ) or a short circuit (according to TASS ).
- The job search service HeadHunter is included in the register of information dissemination organizers of Roskomnadzor. This means that he is obliged to comply with the requirements of the "Yarovaya Law" - to store data on correspondence, calls and other actions of users for six months and provide them at the request of the FSB and other government agencies.
- A letter from Foxconn founder Terry Gow has largely convinced China's leadership to ease coronavirus restrictions, has learned The Wall Street Journal . Gou warned of China losing its leading position in production chains due to lockdowns, and Chinese officials saw him as a convenient excuse to talk about easing measures.
- The US Federal Trade Commission has blocked a $75 billion mega deal to buy Microsoft's gaming giant Activision Blizzard, seeing it as a threat to competition. Why this purchase of Microsoft and how it will change the landscape of the entire industry, The Bell wrote here.