Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online December 26
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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The war completely changed our lives. We have been writing about its consequences for each of us online since February 24. We have never taken money from readers for content, believing that we can earn money ourselves. But now our business model, like so much else in the economy, has collapsed. Help The Bell keep going!
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21:58 Ukraine will raise tariffs for oil transportation through the Druzhba pipeline, through which Russian oil goes to Europe. From January 1, Ukraine will have to pay 18.3% more for transit, TASS reports , citing Transneft data. The previous rate increase took place on 1 April. Transportation of one ton of oil through the Ukrainian section of the pipeline in the direction of Slovakia and Hungary began to cost €11.5, and from the beginning of 2023, its cost will increase to €13.6.
17:14 Sberbank will close its representative office in the UAE in early 2023. The office faced restrictions in work due to sanctions. “Unfortunately, due to sanctions, we are facing serious restrictions on the work of our office in Abu Dhabi and are forced to close it in the first quarter of 2023,” said Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Board. He promised that the bank would not abandon clients who work in the UAE market and would continue to help them.
The representative office of Sberbank in Abu Dhabi was opened in autumn 2020. It has become almost impossible for a sanctioned bank without access to SWIFT to operate in the UAE, said . Frank Media sources
16:52 Foreign media continue to make predictions about how the war in Ukraine will develop in 2023. it last week The NYT did . Today the FT writes what lessons can be learned from the war in Ukraine.
- The first conclusion that the experts interviewed by the FT make is that “the big war is back” after years of peace. And along with it, the importance of the industrial potential of countries has increased, because in order to conduct intense battles, the parties must possess huge stocks of weapons.
- The FT’s second conclusion is that Ukraine’s combat readiness in the war with Russia is supported by the supply of Western weapons, so the key question for 2023 is what kind of military support the West will provide to Ukraine and whether it will agree to supply modern tanks, long-range missiles and jet aircraft, which the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly asked.
- The third lesson that Moscow should have learned since the beginning of the war is that it is quality that matters, not quantity. Good logistics, a large number of soldiers and powerful military equipment are worthless without adequate leadership, FT interlocutors say. They note that the appointment of Surovikin was the right move, but state that Russian troops continue to demonstrate "low morale and weak standards of combined arms tactics and leadership on the battlefield." Ukrainian troops suffer heavy losses, many of the military are not well trained, some units are clearly extremely exhausted, they lack weapons and ammunition, but "their morale and determination are incomparably higher than those of their opponents," experts say.
- The fourth lesson concerns the importance of civil society in sustaining the war effort. An October Gallup poll showed that 70% of Ukrainians are in favor of continuing the fight. In Russia, the opposite is true: in late November, Alexei Levinson, head of the social and cultural research department at the Levada Center (recognized as a foreign agent), told The Bell that the majority of Russians were in favor of moving to peace talks.
- The fifth conclusion that the FT makes is that the war is being waged on several fronts at once, including in the energy and gas markets. Therefore, even if the fighting stops, other measures of pressure on Ukraine may continue.
14:49 According to The New York Times, Nord Stream AG, the operator of the blown-up Nord Stream gas pipeline, has begun to estimate the cost of restoring the pipe, and it starts at $500 million.
13:45 Andrey Isaev, deputy head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, explained what State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin had in mind when he spoke about raising taxes for those who left Russia so that they would not enjoy undeserved benefits.
It turned out that the greatest claims to the self-employed and individual entrepreneurs. “For the self-employed, for individual entrepreneurs, preferential tax regimes have now been created in our country. The self-employed actually pay 4-6%. In order to prevent this from being abused by people who have gone abroad, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin proposed to cancel preferential regimes for them, ”Isaev said today.
The amendments, which are being prepared in the State Duma, provide that those who left Russia and become non-residents in six months should not work under civil law contracts. They must draw up employment contracts, "surrender" the status of self-employed and pay 30% personal income tax, or register as individual entrepreneurs, but lose "Russian" benefits.
13:00 An extraordinary general meeting of Rosneft shareholders approved interim dividends of 50% of net profit based on the results of work in the first half of 2022. The company will pay 216.1 billion rubles, or 20.39 rubles per share.
The second largest shareholder of the company after the state-owned Rosneftegaz (40.4%) remains BP Russian Investments Limited with 19.75%. The British company recently again stated that it has not received dividends since February and does not intend to do so in the future, and has already written off its stake in Rosneft (including $ 24.4 billion in losses from leaving Russia), but does not have the opportunity to sell it from -for external sanctions and the position of the Russian government.
Rosneft claimed that this year it had already paid dividends to BP ($700 million) - it's just that the British company cannot withdraw them from the special account due to Western sanctions - and even offered to invest them in Russian projects. Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin called BP a shadow shareholder, since it no longer participates in management.
12:20 Central Bank Deputy Chairman Alexei Zabotkin, in an interview with RBC, explained the December weakening of the ruble by a decrease in oil prices due to external conditions. According to him, the exchange rate is still “fluctuating in the same range that has been observed since about the end of May this year”, and the ratio between inflation and the exchange rate has not changed: every 10% movement in the exchange rate will add inflation of the order of 0.5-0.6 %. “But at the same time, with the proviso that these 0.5-0.6% are not realized instantly, but are stretched over time for 6-12 months,” he explained.
The Bell devoted the final mailing to the dynamics and forecasts of the ruble exchange rate . Today the ruble is trading at 68.5 against the dollar after 70 on Friday.
10:49 The informed pro-war Telegram channel WarGonzo published the details of the second attack on the strategic aviation airfield in Engels. According to these data, the airfield air defense missile fired at an air target, but the drone did not collapse in the air, but changed its trajectory and hit "one of the airport's service buildings, where at that moment there were duty shift servicemen, including combat pilots." According to the source of the resource, three soldiers were killed and two wounded. The Ministry of Defense reported three dead from the technical staff.
The picture of what is happening is important, since it is more consistent with the new arrival of a heavy and durable drone, such as the Soviet Tu-141 converted into a cruise missile.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- Russian companies have another reason to split up their business - the Ministry of Digital Transformation still threatens them with a turnover fine for personal data leaks, albeit limited from above to the amount of 500 million rubles.
- The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed the second attack in a month on the strategic aviation airfield in Engels. According to the official version, a Ukrainian drone was shot down on approach at night, but three technical personnel died. The missile carriers were not damaged.
- Dmitry Medvedev published a harsh hawkish article on the results of 2022 in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The key phrases are “we now have no one to talk and negotiate in the West with, there is nothing, and there is no need to”, the special operation will continue until the “disgusting, almost fascist regime of Ukraine” is denazified, there will be no nuclear apocalypse “until it happens.”
- Apple has prevented Russian carriers from using settings on its smartphones that improve default voice communication by transmitting over LTE and Wi-Fi networks. This is one of the consequences of the sanctions: the restriction applies to new iPhone 14 models that are not officially shipped to Russia.
- On the anniversary of the opening of the GES-2 cultural center on Bolotnaya Embankment in Moscow, the Russian Forbes calculated the full costs of its creation, and it turned out that this is the largest charitable project in Russia. Novatek co-owner Leonid Mikhelson invested more than 30 billion rubles in it.
- The British Center for Economics and Business Research predicted a global recession in 2023. The global economy will be stuck at $100 trillion, which it barely passed in 2022, the main reason is the increase in central bank rates in an attempt to curb inflation.
- The Bloomberg Composite Index of Leading Indicators pointed to a slowdown in the Chinese economy in December due to the coronavirus outbreak after a weak November. Last Friday, it became known that 18% of the Chinese population could have become infected with the coronavirus in the first 20 days; over the weekend, the authorities stopped publishing daily infection statistics.
- A snowstorm with frosts that hit the United States over the Christmas weekend claimed several dozen lives, disrupted thousands of flights, and 60% of the country's population received alerts from emergency services. To what extent this will affect LNG supplies to Europe is not yet clear, but such a threat exists .