Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online January 10
The Bell continues to host an online video dedicated to the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022.
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20:55 The World Bank has sharply revised its forecast for global economic growth in 2023.
Analysts expect global GDP to increase by 1.7% in 2023 due to inflation, monetary tightening, reduced investment in the private sector and the disruption in supply chains caused by the war in Ukraine. This is well below the June forecast for global economic growth of 3%.
“The risks we warned about six months ago have materialized and our worst-case scenario is now our baseline,” told World Bank economist Ayhan Kose, who wrote the report, the FT. "The global economy is on a razor's edge and could easily slip into recession if financial conditions tighten." The analyst noted that the recent drop in energy prices will soften the pressure, but the main threat to global economic growth is the increase in interest rates by central banks to fight inflation.
According to World Bank forecasts, GDP growth in developed countries in 2023 will be only 0.5%, while developing countries, with the exception of China, will grow by 2.7%. The Russian economy, according to the organization, will shrink by 3.3%, and in 2024 will grow by 1.6%.
19:06 The intensity of Russian artillery shelling in Ukraine has dropped sharply compared to the peak values for the entire period of the war, told US and Ukrainian officials CNN. In some sectors of the front - by as much as 75%. The interlocutors of the agency do not have a clear idea of the specific reasons. According to one version, this may be due to a lack of ammunition in the Russian army, or, according to another, with Russia's reassessment of tactics on the battlefield due to the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
17:28 The G7 countries intend to set two price ceilings for Russian oil products in February: one for those that are traded at a premium (diesel, kerosene), and the other for those traded at a discount (fuel oil), Reuters reports citing a G7 representative . He explained that setting a price ceiling for oil products is more difficult than for oil, as there are "a lot" of them and the cost often depends not on where they are produced, but on where they are bought.
The parameters are still being discussed between the G7 countries and the EU, writes Bloomberg. The agency, citing a G7 representative, notes that the $60 per barrel oil price ceiling introduced on December 5, meanwhile, successfully fulfills two tasks set for it: it limits Russia's revenues and prevents oil price jumps.
The price limit for oil products from Russia should come into effect on February 5.
16:42 Great Britain has not yet made a final decision on the supply of tanks to Ukraine, but such a possibility is being discussed, confirmed a representative of the British authorities . Sky News, citing a military expert , writes that the transfer of British Challenger-2 to Ukraine will require long-term training of Ukrainian military personnel. "It's a pretty efficient tank," but it's "crammed with electronics" and therefore "requires a lot of preparation," the source said.
15:09 The Financial Times has learned what Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were talking about less than a month before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Putin, according to the sources of the publication, did not inform the Chinese leader about the scale of the invasion. His phrase that "Russia does not rule out taking any possible measures" in the event of an attack by Ukrainian nationalists on its territory was taken as evidence of the limited nature of the operation.
According to the sources of the newspaper, for the failure of intelligence, which did not reveal the true intentions of Russia, the ex-deputy head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, a likely contender for the post of minister, Le Yucheng, was demoted.
China's leadership will learn from what happened, experts and sources say.
- First, it will make diplomatic efforts to prevent itself from a situation of conflict with the rest of the world, and especially in the European direction.
- Secondly, it will overestimate, in a broad sense, political “investments” in Russia that have not justified themselves.
- Thirdly, it will include in the forecasts the option of Russia's defeat in Ukraine and its transformation into an "insignificant political and economic force."
- Finally, the country's leadership is growing distrust of the Russian president personally. From his policy, especially in the Ukrainian direction, China intends to distance itself.
14:45 Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin officially summed up the results of the federal budget for 2022: expenditures over 31 trillion rubles, revenues almost 28 trillion rubles.
These figures are in line with the Finance Ministry's latest data on the 2022 budget deficit of 3.35 trillion rubles (which is more than the Finance Ministry's already high estimate of 2% of GDP or 2.9 trillion rubles in December). The deficit was covered from the NWF, through state borrowings and a one-time increase in the mineral extraction tax from Gazprom.
In 2023, the country's budget is also planned to be in deficit, RBC notes . It provides for an increase in defense spending to almost 5 trillion rubles (17% of total spending) from the original 3.5 trillion rubles, security and law enforcement spending to 4.4 trillion rubles from 3 trillion rubles.
12:55 The Washington Post has applied methods of analysis of the fighting in Ukraine, including analysis of satellite photos of crematoria, videos and eyewitness interviews, to analyze the real scale of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
The main conclusion is that the official statistics of 5,200 deaths from the very beginning of the pandemic have been underestimated by orders of magnitude. Investigators found urgently built (and significantly filled) car parks at funeral homes, queues of hearses at the entrances to crematoria, collected evidence of their three-shift furnaces and the price of a place in a cremation line (in Shanghai - $ 300).
11:39 Armenia refused to conduct the CSTO exercises "Indestructible Brotherhood - 2023" on its territory. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced this today. During the press conference, he recalled that the security of the Lachin corridor to Nagorno-Karabakh is the responsibility of Russian peacekeepers.
- The corridor has been blocked since December 12, when the only road Stepanakert-Goris was blocked by some "eco-activists". Azerbaijan blamed Russian peacekeepers for this, the Russian Foreign Ministry strongly denied the accusations. A humanitarian crisis has begun in a region with a population of 120,000, Armenian media wrote.
- In November, Pashinyan refused to sign the declaration of the CSTO Council following the Yerevan summit, pointing out the lack of a political assessment of Azerbaijan's actions and that Armenia's membership in the CSTO did not ensure the reaction of the military alliance to "aggression".
- According to Kommersant , Armenia's exit from the union is brewing. Last week, protests were held near the Russian base of peacekeepers in Gyumri against their “inaction”.
- The Carnegie Center, closed in Russia , wrote that Russia does not have a good game on the issue of the corridor: any active intervention of peacekeepers will block it and quarrel between Moscow and Baku in the context of the war in Ukraine and the growing influence of Turkey in the Transcaucasus.
11:13 Gas production in Russia last year (in contrast to increased oil production) fell by 11.8% to 672 billion cubic meters, reports Kommersant . This was mainly due to Gazprom, which reduced supplies to Europe to historical lows. Independent producers, on the contrary, have increased production - Rosneft by 16%, Novatek by 1.7% - and thus can increase their share in the domestic market. Interlocutors of the publication on the market expect that by the end of 2023, Gazprom's production will fall by another 30-40 billion cubic meters.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- Several Western media immediately reported that NATO member countries are seriously preparing for the supply of Western-made tanks to Ukraine. Until now, this has been one of the "red lines" that the alliance was afraid to cross. It is possible that the British Challenger-2 will be sent first, but the German-made Leopard-2 will become the main one.
- In 2022, Russia increased oil production by 2% to 535 million tons, and exports to non-CIS countries by almost 19% to 207 million tons. But already in February, it is threatened with a further decline in production due to the embargo on petroleum products. Meanwhile, the discount on the Baltic Urals approached 50%.
- The regulator of the Netherlands has issued a five-year license to the legal entity TVR Studios BV for commercial broadcasting of the Dozhd TV channel recognized in Russia as a foreign agent.
- The ex-governor of Sevastopol and former deputy minister of industry Dmitry Ovsyannikov has achieved the lifting of sanctions in the EU court, writes Meduza, recognized as a foreign agent. This is a potentially important precedent: it seems that the path for Russian officials to freedom from restrictions lies in leaving the civil service.
- Russian pro-military channels write about the likely imminent start of the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Soledar after the creeping offensive of the Russian Armed Forces sharply complicated the defense of the city. Some of them took yesterday's speech by Volodymyr Zelensky that the city was completely destroyed, but his heroic defense allowed Ukraine to build up strength and gain time as preparation for public opinion to surrender.
- Virgin Orbit, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, lost nine commercial satellites in the failed launch of the LauncherOne orbital stage from a dedicated Boeing-747 carrier. The company's shares plunged 25%.