January 29, 2024 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has approached Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis with a proposal to donate or sell weapons to Ukraine in exchange for US$200 million in US aid. In response, the leadership of the country has already given the necessary instructions to transfer to Ukraine the weapons and equipment that are no longer used by the Greek Army.

According to US National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby, the United States will promote Ukraine’s Peace Formula internationally to end the war in Ukraine.

Christian Lindner, Minister of Finance of Germany and Leader of the Free Democratic Party, has urged the European partners to increase their support for Ukraine. According to him, Germany is making its contribution and, if needed, “will mobilize even more”.

The Ukrainian Army ranks fourth in the European Global Firepower rating (GFP) of the most powerful armies of Europe.

Ukraine will receive more than EUR 15 million from the European Commission for the construction of school shelters.

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According to the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Problems, russian weapons exports from 2018 to 2022 decreased by 31 %. For the last 20 years, India has been the largest buyer: the rf has provided 65 % of weapons purchases, but after the rf’s invasion of Ukraine, the authorities of India rejects russian products and prefer to buy weapons from the United States.

Prime Minister of Mongolia Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene expressed doubts about the possibility of starting the construction of the “sila sibiri-2” gas pipeline in 2024, which is planned to be laid through the territory of his country; it is not for the first year, that the russian gazprom wants to involve the Chinese CNPC company in its construction, but the latter does not agree because of the doubtfulness of the economic expediency of this project.

On January 29, putin and lukashenko will adopt “The main directions of implementation of agreement on creation of the union state for 2024–2026”; today, belarus is the rf’s main military-political ally.

There was a quarrel between key russian oil companies: “rosneft” demands through the court 6.1 billion rubles for losses caused. At the same time, “transneft” tries to recover from rosneft 4.8 billion rubles of debt for pumping oil.

According to a preliminary estimate, it will take at least 1-1.5 months to repair a compressor at the catalytic cracking system at the oil refinery lukoil-nizhegorodnefteorgsintez in the city of kstovo, nizhny novgorod region; the technological system at the refinery has not been working January 4 due to the lack of imported components.

The government of the rf has significantly increased the pressure on russian business: in 2023, 350 thousand inspections were made against 339 thousand in 2022, and 1.1 million “preventive visits” – last year there were 560 thousand. 47 thousand “planned checks” are scheduled for 2024.

russian authorities are working on reducing preferential mortgage programs, including family mortgages for housing construction because this requires almost 1 trillion of additional budget expenditures for 2024-2026, while the government does not have spare money.

russian psb bank, mts bank, russian national commercial bank, st.-petereburg bank, sberbank and vtb have moved to receive applications from russians for a preferential IT mortgage.

In 2023, the share of car loans taken by the russians for the purchase of used cars was 15 % (890 billion rubles) – twice as much as in 2022.

In 2023, chicken eggs in russia went up 1.6 fold, in December alone – by 18.2 %. Given this situation, the russian authorities sought international assistance, after which 886 thousand eggs were received from Turkey. This became a January event for the rf and was widely covered by media. Eggs also come from Azerbaijan and belarus; in total, the rf wants to import 1.2 billion eggs.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ireland Micheál Martin has stated that “the government of Ireland has a clear position on the importance of increasing the sanction pressure on lukashenko's regime and harmonizing sanctions on the lukashenko regime and russia”.

state secretary of the union state of belarus and russia mezentsev has said that there is no threat to belarus’ independence from russia: “We must come to the model “two countries – one economy”.

The republican council on historical policy under the lukashenko administration and an interdepartmental commission on historical education under the president of the rf have signed a memorandum of understanding. The document also provides for the creation of the joint russian-belarusian commission on history.

In the internal troops of the ministry of internal affairs of belarus, several more units of special forces are being created. In total, last year five new units and two volunteer groups were created in the ministry of internal af