Russians face travel bookings, Deripaska's FBI agent, US warns China against helping Russia

From March, Russians leaving Russia by private car may be required to book the date and time of departure. The chances that the amendments will be adopted are high, and it is not clear what documents will be needed.

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The mechanism for mandatory preliminary applications for crossing the border by car is contained in the amendments prepared by the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport, former Deputy Minister of Transport Yevgeny Moskvichev. The status of the author means that the initiative is serious and will most likely be approved.

• The new order is expected to come into effect on March 1. It will apply to both carriers and individuals - the time and date of crossing the border on a vehicle will need to be booked in the State Information System of Electronic Transportation Documents ( GIS EPD , has been operating since last fall). You can reserve any date and time, except for those already booked, and it will be free.
• Details, including the "list of documents required for booking", will be separately determined by the government. From the amendments themselves, it follows that next to the border control points, separate “control points for the arrival of a vehicle at a reserved date and time” will be equipped. They must be equipped with "means of forced stopping of the vehicle," notes RIA Novosti . Whether it will be possible in some circumstances to pass without a reservation is not clear.
• The technical basis of the system is already in place. Just last week, the Telematics concern (former NTS, bought in 2017 by the co-owners of the Platon operator Igor Rotenberg and Andrey Shipelov) announced the start of the implementation of a unified electronic queue booking system for cars. The stated goal is to speed up the waiting time for the border crossing for carriers by at least 25%, "since everyone will arrive at the appointed time."
• You can book a ride on the system’s portal, through the “Gosuslugi” or upon arrival at the border checkpoint using a coupon with a QR code. So far, the system is working in test mode at one of the busiest checkpoints - MAPP - Chernyshevskoye on the border of Lithuania with the Kaliningrad region.

What do I get from this?

With regard to carriers, Moskvichev's amendments can be considered useful and even overdue. At popular border checkpoints, there really are kilometer-long queues of trucks, moreover, local reservation systems appear “from below” there, as on the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge or at the Upper Lars crossing on the border with Georgia. And, for example, Kazakhstan is introducing reservations at the external borders of the EAEU.

There are many more questions about the initiative in relation to private cars. In September 2022, Russians fled en masse from mobilization in their cars to Kazakhstan and Georgia, where border queues formed several days long. The main question is what kind of documents (without which the car will reach the “arrival control point” at best) will be needed for booking now. The scope for lawmaking is too wide here, and it will be possible to change the list by a simple government decree. Considering the rumors about a new wave of mobilization, repeatedly denied by the authorities, and the unexpectedly urgent introduction of a new order, this cannot but cause concern.

SCANDAL

Deripaska's agent at the FBI

In the United States, there is a new big scandal with a Russian trace: this time, Charles McGonigal, former counterintelligence chief of the FBI's New York office, who was detained over the weekend, is accused of having links with "President Putin's close associate" Oleg Deripaska. write in detail about the case The Washington Post and The Agency , but the bottom line is that the official who participated in the investigations against Russian oligarchs allegedly established contacts with Deripaska's employee at the FBI, and after his resignation in 2019, he actually switched to the salary of a billionaire.

With Deripaska's money (at least $25,000 a month), McGonigal allegedly studied the possibility of removing the oligarch from the sanctions list and developed his Russian competitor, who is being referred to as Oligarch-2. Who it is is unknown, but McGonigal's interest was Oligarch-2's connections with a Russian company in which Deripaska himself wanted to gain control, and the competitor's second citizenship and foreign assets, the indictment says. Information about the assets - in the amount of $ 500 million - the accused managed to obtain before the start of the searches from him in November 2021.

The political significance of the case cannot be overestimated. Among other things, McGonigal worked on WikiLeaks, investigated Donald Trump's ties to Russia, and led the case of the autopsy of American agents in China. He has not yet been charged with espionage, but he worked not only with Russia: the second episode of the case concerns his connections with an ex-employee of Albanian intelligence. Deripaska's side has not yet commented.

What else is going on

• The US administration pointed out to the Chinese authorities that some companies of the country's huge public sector are helping Russia in the war, learned Bloomberg . This is not about weapons, but about military equipment and "economic assistance on the verge of a clear violation of sanctions." Nevertheless, the US warned China of the consequences. US officials believe that support from China has increased recently and this threatens the policy of isolating Russia.
• U.S. wheat prices sank to fall 2021 levels to $7.1 a bushel — nearly doubling from summer 2022 highs — on news of good prospects for the U.S. winter and sowing crops. The snow brought by the New Year's snow storm will protect the crops from the approaching frosts.
• The current week of corporate reporting in the US opened with the growth of indices , which again led the tech sector, which was hit hard last year. The Nasdaq Composite is up 8% since the beginning of this year. Investors are betting that the Fed will slow down the key rate hike, and the bad news for big tech will be won back, and they are waiting for reports from Boeing, IBM, Microsoft and Tesla. Meanwhile, in Europe, increasingly hoping to avoid a recession, consumer confidence has returned to pre-war levels.

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