January 11, 2023 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

“I have said many times since the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine: I think that Ukraine should get all the necessary military equipment they need and they can handle to defend the homeland. This means of course, advanced air defence systems, but also other types of advanced military equipment, as long as it is necessary to defend Ukraine”, said President of the European Commission Ursula der Leyen, answering questions about her position on Western-style tanks for Ukraine.

The European Union will propose new sanctions against belarus and iran, which support russia in the war against Ukraine.

Estonia intends to offer a legal framework for the confiscation and transfer of sanctioned russian assets to Ukraine by the end of January.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkiye Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu expressed support for the “formula of peace” put forward by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Group of Twenty summit in November 2022.

The Ukrainian military will begin training at the Patriot missile system in the United States next week.

The US Department of Defense is considering providing Ukraine with Stryker armoured combat vehicles. However, a final decision has not been made yet.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted an inspection at the Rivne NPP within the framework of the agreement on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. There were no comments from the inspectors.

Latvia can provide Ukraine with a new batch of Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and offer training for the Ukrainian military.

Czech weapon company Excalibur Army is investing about 650 million crowns (more than 27 million euros) in the construction of another production facility for the modernization of Soviet T-72 tanks for Ukraine.

Tobias Ellwood, head of the House of Commons Defence Committee, has said the United Kingdom should supply its tanks to the Ukrainian military.

The city of Kyiv will receive 10 city buses from Latvia.

Polish police handed over 10 generators to Ukrainian border guards.

rf

On January 6, russian urals oil was sold in the port of primorsk at $37.80 per barrel – almost twice lower than world prices ($78.57 per barrel) and much cheaper than the price ceiling set for russian raw materials ($60 per barrel). The EU's imposition of an embargo on russian oil supplies by sea, effective since December 5, has made russia dependent on China and India, which is why the federation must sell oil at a significant discount. On January 9, in Russia, they sold 10 thousand tons of oil for 218 million rubles, or $42.19 per barrel.

The Government of India is considering reducing the volume of energy carriers purchases from russia if the EU imposes additional sanctions on countries that buy russian oil, or if its cost exceeds $60 per barrel.

Lukoil, which was forced to stop the supply of russian oil to Italy, has sold its refinery in Sicily.

There is no strategy in the rf as to where in 5 years gazprom will be able to export the 90 billion cubic meters of gas lost in 2022 in the European market. In the autumn of 2022, two ideas were voiced: to Turkey, or through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In both cases, so far there are no specifics, foreign companies have not reported their consent to purchase this gas, no specific volumes of supplies or the necessary investments for the implementation of these projects have been made public.

The decline in world coal prices made unprofitable the supply of russian raw materials through the western seaports of the rf to Asian countries.

According to the center of economic forecasting of gazprombank, export prices for coal in December in the eastern ports of russia decreased by 8%, to $161 per 1 ton, and in European ports – by 5.4%, to $130 per 1 ton. This was due to a decrease in industrial activity in China caused by the increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19, reduction in demand for coal in Europe, increase in coal supplies to India from Mozambique.

At the end of 2022, the losses of vtb (a russian universal commercial bank with the state’s participation) exceeded 500 billion rubles. At the same time, international sanctions blocked vtb's 600 billion rubles in assets, which is 27% of its capital as of the beginning of 2022.

In 2022, private investors withdrew more than 30 billion rubles from retail funds of the rf – the most in all the existence of the industry. The previous anti-record was established in 2008, when, against the background of the global financial crisis, private investors withdrew more than 16 billion rubles from open funds.

In 2022, only 25 small and medium-sized businesses out of 2.3 million legal entities-entrepreneurs received compensation from the state budget of the rf for their expenses for issuing securities and paying coupon profits. And this despite the fact that subsidizing small business expenses when entrepreneurs enter the stock exchange is part of the russian government's program to increase such legal entities, provides for addressed and targeted assistance depending on the needs and stage of business development, as well as expanding financial support.

In 2022, only 26% of requests for loan from individuals were approved by the rf banks (in November the least since 2020 – 17%). For comparison: in January – February of 2022, before the aggression against Ukraine, 31% of russians were granted loans.

From January 10, a mortgage has risen in russia to buy housing in new buildings and in the secondary market. The minimum rate in sberbank is now 10.9% per annum. The bank stated that it was necessary to adjust the rates “because of current market conditions”. In the near future, other banking institutions will also increase interest on similar credit programs.

On January 10, the Kyrgyzstan Bank stopped operations with russian contact and unistream payment systems in Kyrgyzstan.

russian online stores ozon, wildberries and avito have begun to sell pirate versions of specialized corporate software Autodesk and Adobe, whose alternatives are simply not available in the rf.

During the New Year holidays, the revenue of the shopping centers of moscow and st. petersburg decreased by 10-15%, respectively, compared to the last New Year's season.

ojsc “gomel chemical plant” lost 95% of exports over the imposed sanctions last year. According to the director, the company found a way out of the situation, raising prices in the domestic market.

The kgb of belarus has made a list of IT companies, who in 2020-2021 made transfers from belarusian cards to the BySol and ByHelp belarusian solidarity funds to help victims of political repression. In order to avoid imprisonment for financing “extremist activity”, they are asked to transfer the ten times larger amount of the donation to the account specified by security forces. Interestingly, at that time, these funds were not yet recognized as “extremist” by the authorities.

In belarus, since 2023, a “superbaza”(“super base”- Transl.) of the income of the population will work. This means that employers should provide tax authorities with information about almost all incomes of employees. Officials also obliged banks to give them the tax data on clients-physical entities, whose total amount for profit operations for the calendar year exceeded 150 thousand rubles.

According to the national bank, in December belarusians bought $1 billion, while sold $ 890.6 million. Exceeding the purchase of foreign currency over its sale continues for the fourth month. Increased demand for currency from the population shows the degree of people’s trust in the belarusian ruble.

Belarus’ government has updated a list of goods selling of which in the markets is forbidden. From January 23, it will include cheese and cheese products, butter, as well as margarine products that are not packaged in consumer packaging.