Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online January 18
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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This online is complete. Read the continuation here .
19:11 Weekly inflation in the week by November 16 slowed to 0.15% from 0.24% from November 1 to November 9. In annual terms, it amounted to 11.57%, which is lower than inflation-2022 (11.94%). The growth in prices for fruits and vegetables has slowed down, the New Year peak in prices for tourist services has passed, but prices for electrical appliances have increased, the Ministry of Economic Development writes.
18:54 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed support for Ukraine in Davos, but did not say whether he would authorize the sending of Leopard-2 tanks to the country. This issue is likely to be decided at the meeting of Ukraine's allies in Ramstein on January 20.
Scholz said that Russia has not achieved its "imperialist goals", but Ukraine is very successfully defending itself. And for the war to end, Russian aggression must “fail.”
17:40 The Russian Ministry of Finance confirmed that there are no pounds sterling and yen left in the National Welfare Fund (NWF).
- These "unfriendly" currencies (2.7 billion pounds and almost 122 billion yen), and with them 28.5 billion euros, were sold in December for 2.412 trillion rubles. Funds were credited to the federal budget to finance the deficit.
- As of January 1, the NWF had 10.434 trillion rubles (7.8% of GDP), while the liquid assets of the NWF in the accounts of the Central Bank amounted to just over 6.1 trillion rubles (5.7% of GDP), notes Frank Media . This is 955 billion rubles less than in early December.
- Among the liquid assets are 10.46 billion euros, 309.7 billion yuan (at the rate of January 1, 3.06 trillion rubles), 555 tons of gold in impersonal form and 275 million rubles.
- About what holes in the budget the Russian economy entered 2023, and how this will affect the NWF, The Bell wrote here .
15:25 Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with the workers of the Obukhov plant in St. Petersburg, recalled that defense industry workers are being prepared for a deferment from military service: "I think that this issue will be resolved in the near future." Defense industry workers have already been excluded from the lists of partial mobilization.
14:26 Brent oil quotes rose by 1.5% to $87.4 per barrel after the IEA report forecasting an increase in oil demand in 2023.
14:08 A bill on the confiscation of the property of Russians "who by their actions harm the country" is indeed being prepared in the State Duma, but on its own initiative, RIA Novosti reported , citing its source. No official instructions were given to the committees in this regard, he claims.
The discussion about confiscation revived after the loud statement of the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin about the "scoundrels" who left, who also proposed a mechanism for confiscation through new criminal articles on incitement to extremism, the rehabilitation of Nazism and discrediting the Armed Forces. The idea was supported in principle by the head of the constitutional committee of the Federation Council Andrei Klishas.
The patriotic community proposes to act more simply and seize property on the basis of a foreign agency. However, this directly contradicts the Constitution.
13:31 In the first monthly report for 2023, the IEA writes that the opening of the Chinese economy will increase oil demand by 1.9 million b/d to a new record of 101.7 million b/d. The main factors of uncertainty in 2023 are two - China and Russia, the agency notes. In December, production in Russia remained at the level of 11.2 million barrels per day, but with the introduction of an embargo on Russian oil products from February 5, it may noticeably decrease and cause tension on world markets.
12:38 Lavrov said that he "has no idea how to live" when "this war is over." “Once this war is over, we will still defend our truth. But I still can’t imagine how to continue to live,” the minister said. According to him, everything will depend on what conclusions Europe draws. Russia has already drawn conclusions for itself, he noted.
12:09 Sberbank started working in Crimea. Prior to this, the bank was afraid of entering the peninsula because of the threat of sanctions. The first offices will open in the largest cities of Crimea in the first half of the year, RBC was told in the press service of Sberbank. The first ATMs on the peninsula have already been installed, all services will become available within a year.
11:27 The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and his first deputy died in a helicopter crash. He fell next to a kindergarten and a residential building in the city of Brovary near Kiev. In total, 16 people were killed in the crash, and 22 others were injured. at the crash site of the helicopter A fire broke out . Information about the causes of the crash is not yet available.
9:56 Putin may announce a second wave of mobilization in the coming days, possibly as early as January 18, according to the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Today Putin will take part in events marking the 80th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. Among other things, he will communicate with veterans of the Great Patriotic War and visit one of the defense enterprises.
“Putin loves to use symbolic dates to address the Russian people, and some Russian pro-war bloggers have noted that he will use this opportunity to either declare mobilization or war with Ukraine,” writes ISW. Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies have also repeatedly warned that mobilization could be announced in mid-January, the institute notes.
The Russian authorities have repeatedly called reports of a new wave of mobilization provocative. Only yesterday, Peskov said that the topic is being artificially supported from abroad. Western media, indeed, wrote about the mobilization of another 500,000 people, citing data from Western and Ukrainian intelligence services.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- In Russia, there is no more money for the development of artificial intelligence: the amount of funding for the development and implementation of solutions in the field of AI has been significantly cut, learned Kommersant . If earlier it was planned to allocate almost 57 billion rubles from the budget for the development of artificial intelligence until 2024, now less than 25 billion are planned until 2030. The volume of expected extra-budgetary financing has decreased even more dramatically - from 334 billion rubles by 2024 to 111 billion by 2030. But even the updated plans will be difficult to implement, experts say: high-performance foreign equipment is simply not enough for this.
- India overtook China in terms of population even faster than expected. According to the World Population Review, this happened last year: by the end of 2022, the population of China decreased for the first time in 60 years to 1.412 billion people, while the population of India grew to 1.417 billion. In the coming years, this gap will increase.
- Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its employees, that is, approximately 11,000 people, learned the Sky News channel . Information about the upcoming layoffs at Microsoft is confirmed by Bloomberg and Business Insider , who write that employees of the engineering and personnel departments will fall under the cuts in the first place. This is the second round of layoffs at Microsoft over the past year: in July, the company already laid off about a thousand people.
- Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya confirmed that a Russian missile had hit a residential building in Dnipro. According to him, it was "launched at an energy infrastructure facility" and "knocked out by Ukrainian air defense forces." And “since the air defense installation was located in a residential area in violation of international humanitarian law,” the downed missile fell on a residential building, the politician explained. He blamed Kyiv for what happened: “there would be no need on our part to carry out strikes on an infrastructure facility if the Ukrainian leadership had shown readiness for peace negotiations.” As a result of a strike on a residential building in the Dnieper, 45 people were killed , including six children, dozens more were injured, and several bodies were never found under the rubble.