Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online January 25
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. On the events of the day - in the evening mailing of The Bell. Read more online here .
20:14 Joe Biden has officially confirmed that the United States will send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
19:10 Weekly inflation in the week by January 23 symbolically slowed down to 0.14% from 0.15% the previous week. In annual terms, it decreased from 11.57% to 11.49%.
18:48 After the opening of trading in the US on Wednesday, the Nasdaq Composite index fell 2% on Microsoft reporting. Alphabet, Nvidia and Tesla fell by more than 3%. The main reasons are the corporation's pessimistic quarterly earnings forecast, the slowdown in the growth of the Azure cloud service and the poor outlook for the PC market.
17:52 American International Paper, the largest foreign investor in the pulp and paper industry in Russia, has finally found buyers for the assets. It will sell its 50% stake in the Swiss Ilim SA, which controls the Ilim group, to Russian partners for $484 million, as well as a direct ownership stake in the group for another $24 million. The deal is subject to approval by the Russian regulator.
The partners of International Paper, who own the remaining 50% of Ilim through Ilim SA, are the chairman of the board of directors Zakhar Smushkin, as well as Boris and Mikhail Zingarevichi.
International Paper bought half of Ilim in 2007 for more than it sells now - for a total of $ 720 million, writes WSJ. During all this time, she recaptured investments by more than four times, the publication points out, but now she is losing a steady cash flow. Russian business gave her about $250 million in profit for the three quarters of 2022 and $204 million in dividends. The Group is a leader in the Russian industry, especially firmly in the production of market pulp. In 2021, it produced 3.64 million tons of finished products.
International Raper announced its intention to sell 50% in Ilim back in the spring. The pulp and paper industry in Russia, critically dependent on imports, was one of the first to experience the effects of sanctions. How the war brought an attractive billion-dollar market to the brink of collapse, The Bell wrote here .
16:32 The Moscow City Court, following a lawsuit filed by the Ministry of Justice in December, liquidated Russia's oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG). The MHG will appeal the decision.
The Moscow Helsinki Group was established in May 1976 to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Accords signed a year earlier and dedicated to the observance of human rights and freedoms. The founder of the human rights organization was the physicist Yuri Orlov. From 1996 to 2018, the MHG was headed by human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva.
15:33 State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin instructed the chairmen of the defense committees Andrei Kartapolov and security committee Vasily Piskarev to "urgently" study the issue of introducing liability for discrediting combatants in the Criminal Code.
This is a reaction to the appeal of the head of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, who on the eve asked Volodin to introduce an article into the Criminal Code on discrediting participants in hostilities, including convicts, with liability of up to five years in prison. And also to prohibit criticism of the participants in the military operation and the publication of information about their past offenses.
“Vyacheslav Volodin has repeatedly stressed: everyone who defends our country - military personnel, volunteers, mobilized, members of the Wagner PMC - are heroes. The attitude towards them should be respectful as to the participants in the hostilities, ”writes the official Telegram channel of the State Duma.
13:53 From February 1, Raiffeisenbank will stop accepting dollars and euros at ATMs. “The decision is related to changing customer needs. The low share of technically complex foreign exchange transactions affects the availability of ATMs for transactions with rubles, which are more often needed by customers,” the bank writes. You can still deposit dollars at branches.
Raiffeisen was among the foreign banks whose exit from Russia (at least on acceptable terms) was blocked by Putin's decree. It is not yet known about the specific options for its release.
13:43 The German government has officially confirmed the dispatch of a company of Leopard-2 tanks (14 vehicles) to Ukraine, and from the Bundeswehr. This means that we are talking about a modern modification of the 2A6 - with a more powerful gun, enhanced armor protection and improved situational awareness. In addition, Germany will allow the supply of tanks of its production to NATO allies.
13:12 According to the results of 2023, oil production in Russia will decrease by about 7-13% (by 50-80 million tons), RBC quotes the forecast of Kept partners (former KPMG). The main thing on which production will depend is the embargo and the price ceiling not on oil, but on oil products, which will come into effect on February 5. According to experts, the upper limit of the forecast is more likely, and there are risks of further decline.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak recently said that in January, Russian oil companies keep production at the December level. In December, the Argus agency predicted a decline in production on average per year by 4-8%, from 10.9 million to 10-10.4 million bpd, the US Department of Energy in early January - by 13% .
13:09 The New York Times analyzed satellite images and noticed that the number of burials in the cemetery near the Molkino farm in the Krasnodar Territory, where Wagner PMC fighters are buried, has increased significantly in recent weeks. As of January 24, there were about 170 burials there, which is seven times more than two months ago.
The existence of this cemetery became known last year. Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a video where he recruits prisoners in the colony, promised to take care of the bodies of the dead and spoke about the possibility of burial "near the Wagner PMC chapel." Activist and former Air Force officer Vitaly Votanovsky found out the location of this cemetery. Prigozhin later confirmed that the site was being used for the burial of PMC fighters. According to Votanovsky, those whose bodies were not taken by relatives are buried there.
The NYT notes that many of the killed PMC fighters are not buried, but cremated. One of the videos distributed by the state media last year shows that the cemetery in Molkino has walls to accommodate the cremated remains. The publication counted at least 21 rows of such walls with 42 compartments each, which indicates hundreds of deaths.
The main thing for the night and morning:
- The authorities are concerned about too low inflation in Russia: according to Vedomosti , the stagnation of demand in the economy was called the key problem of this year at a meeting with the president. The task set for this year is to restore demand and reach the inflation target (5-7%).
- The BBC, using open sources, managed to establish the names of 92 Russian soldiers who died during the shelling of a vocational school in Makeevka. This number is slightly more than the latest official toll death : 89 people. In this list, the publication included the names of only those soldiers who definitely died in Makeevka and whose death was confirmed by the Russian side. Families of at least 16 more soldiers cannot find them among the dead or among the living, the BBC notes.
- Senator Andrei Klishas called about booking the date and time of crossing the Russian border by car strange the amendments . According to him, in the form in which they were presented, they violate the constitutional rights of citizens to freedom of entry and exit from the country. To oblige Russians to book the time and date of leaving the country by car was proposed by the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport, former Deputy Minister of Transport Yevgeny Moskvichev. The bill assumes that the mechanism will apply to both carriers and individuals. Later, the author of the initiative himself clarified that it was only about road freight transportation (but this does not follow from the document ).
- The French network Decathlon decided to sell its business in Russia, RBC learned . In the spring of 2022, there were 57 Decathlon stores in Russia, now there are 28 of them left. The network can sell them both individually and all together, the sources say.
- The Ministry of Economy proposed to exempt operators specializing in domestic and inbound tourism from paying VAT for five years, writes Kommersant . The idea was supported by the Ministry of Finance, according to which the reduction in the revenue base from this "will be insignificant" - about 3-4 billion rubles. As planned, the measure should allow market participants to significantly increase their profitability and, as a result, make travel in Russia more affordable.