.
Europe
Hungary
July 24, 2024 Data published by the Finland-based Centre for Research and Clean Air (CREA), show that last year Ukraine transited 14.6m tonnes of oil via the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline to EU buyers including in Hungary and Slovakia. Another 5.5 million tonnes were shipped in the first half of 2024, and around half of these volumes were sold by privately-owned Lukoil company. The rest was transited by other Russian producers including Tatneft, Gazprom Neft, Russneft, and a few other smaller outfits. Lukoil was the main recipient of the estimated $6bn revenue last year (calculated based on the reported transit volumes and last year’s oil prices), implicitly, aiding the Russian state in its role as the country’s biggest taxpayer. Less than half of last year’s volumes left to ship via the Druzhba network, designed to transport a maximum of 56.4m tonnes. Hungary along with a few other Central and Eastern European countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bulgaria won a temporary exemption to the EU oil import ban that took effect in 2023. Bulgaria, Poland, and Germany halted imports this year, the Czech Republic is working to cut reliance with a new pipeline to allow imports from Western countries. Hungary imported 56% more Russian oil in the first six months of 2024, compared to the same period in 2021, according to CREA data. At any point, Hungary could have substituted its Russian offtakes with seaborne imports secured via Croatian or Italian ports, and could thereby have aided landlocked Slovakia, with its MOL Group Slovnaft refinery. ’A market source told this author that Russia’s Lukoil had been selling oil to Hungary at a 20% discount to the Urals spot price, although it is unclear whether this discounted price was still on offer at the time of the Ukrainian curtailment’. It may explain the Hungarian government’s ability to control consumer fuel prices. On July 18, Hungary and Slovakia said they were not receiving Russian crude from Lukoil, a major supplier after Ukraine sanctioned the company last month. Is it possible’ Ukraine’s cost of transit might now be much higher than the revenue it receives from transmission tariffs’? Hungary’s Foreign Minister Szijjártó nonetheless called Ukraine’s decision, “incomprehensible, unacceptable and unfriendly,' while Prime Minister Orbán complained that his country was facing an imminent energy crunch. His Slovak counterpart, Robert Fico, called his Ukrainian counterpart on July 20 to say his country was being held hostage to a Ukrainian-Russian dispute. Hungary once again blocked €6bn ($6.5bn) in EU military aid to Ukraine at a meeting on July 22. Riled by Kyiv’s decision, Budapest and Bratislava are now calling on the EU to take action against Ukraine. The cut in supplies to Slovakia was doubly painful for Hungary since the country’s main refinery is owned by Budapest-based MOL, which is Hungary’s most profitable firm. It is likely to raise fuel prices in both countries, with all the political costs that may entail. ’The question still remains ’why Ukraine did not halt all flows and only imposed a partial ban’. Since the two countries are the biggest proponents for the extension of the Russian gas transit contract via Ukraine from 2025, it is hard to believe they intend to make any serious change in policy at all. It is unclear what solution might be found. (Source: cepa)
by Sabadus, a senior energy journalist writing for Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), a London-based global energy and petrochemicals news and market data provider and a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
European Commission
24 July 2024 2024 Rule of law report - Communication and country chapters
(Source: European Commission - Brussels, Belgium)
European Parliament
24 July 2024 The election of committee chairs and vice chairs yesterday was the last item on the agenda before the Parliament goes into a month-long recess. The cordon sanitaire, the mainstream’s agreement to exclude ’far-right’ groupings proved to hold. In none of the 24 committees and sub-committees did the Patriots for Europe, the Parliament’s third biggest grouping, or the smaller far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations, have members elected to committee chair or vice-chair. The Patriots claimed the Committee on Culture and Education and the Committee on Transport and Tourism - and saw their candidates lose out to Green MEP Riehl and EPP’s Vozemberg-Vrionidi. Members of the Patriots for Europe, led by France’s Rassemblement National and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, expressed their disappointment and called out the Parliament’s biggest group EPP. 'It clearly shows that they are not ready to accept democratic election results and cannot accept the fact that the Patriots are the third largest group,” vice-president of Patriots, Gál told after appointments finished. However, the ’hard-right’ ECR, the conservative Eurosceptic group led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, saw its members access to senior positions in the parliament. The election of two vice presidents and one questor from the ECR suggested that the group is an acceptable partner for the centrist coalition. The ECR received three chairs and ten vice-chairs. The group now presides over the Committee on Budgets, the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Committee on Petitions. Asked about the ECR’s cooperation with "pro-European forces' to get chairs and vice-chairs elected, Austrian Patriots vice-president Vilimsky said: “They have made a deal with the devil'. (Source: euractiv)
Russia
July 24, 2024 8:34 pm CET The Russian parliament adopted a law Wednesday hiking the penalty for personal use of internet devices by frontline soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Open-source investigators are concerned that the new rules could make it harder to identify and document Russian activities on the frontline. Ukrainian Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) agency Molfar, which analyzes Russian activities on the battlefield daily, told they have observed a decrease in the data published by the Russian military on social media for some time. The law classifies possession of devices that allow military personnel to store or send video, photos or geolocation data on the internet as a grave offense, punishable by up to 15 days detention. It also forbids the transmission of any information that could be used to identify any Russian troops and their whereabouts. Dva Mayora, a pro-war blogger, slammed the move as an showing an outdated understanding of modern mobilization. "They decided that a soldier should fight without thinking about his family, and the family of a mobilized person should, like the family of a soldier in WWII or the family of a Cossack, be proud that a man was mobilized," the blogger, who has over 700,000 followers, wrote on Telegram. The new law also prohibits transferring information about citizens called up for military training, as well as those discharged from the army, and members of their families. (Source: politico)
July 24, 2024 The Kremlin appears to be making a grab for Russia’s biggest online marketplace Wildberries. But it has already de facto taken over search engine Yandex and social media company VK. Now it turns out that the founder and driving force of the company, Bakalchuk, who is also Russia’s richest woman, is divorcing her husband, Vladislav, who only holds 1% of the company. Vladislav has turned to Chechen President Kadyrov for help, who said he would 'fix it”. Wildberries is in a very weird merger with an outdoor billboard company called Russ that is ten times smaller than it. The deal was personally endorsed by Russian President Putin. Russ is linked to billionaire Kerimov of Polyus Gold and veteran technocrat Shuvalov. Kerimov was born in Dagestan and is close to Kadyrov, but is also a Duma deputy, a billionaire and deeply ingrained into Russia’s elite politics, but has always maintained a measure of independence from the Kremlin. This is potentially a problem for Putin. Shuvalov is one of the most powerful men in the country and is totally loyal to Putin. He heads up the state investment company VEB. As Shuvalov will do what Putin tells him to do and Putin backs Tatiana, Kerimov clearly wants to get some control over Wildberries, which is worth billions, and is probably using Kadyrov, who has backed Vladislav, to facilitate that. Putin has been following a hybrid free market/state control model. Typically he sets up two competing giants that are under state control in some way (but can still nominally be privately owned companies) to ensure there is competition. The Kremlin can still pull the strings if it needs to, but day to day the company is expected to be efficiently run on market principles and do real, profitable business. Amongst these pairs are: VTB & Sberbank in banking; Gazprom and Novatek in gas; Rosneft and Gazprom Neft in oil; and so on. At the end of this process Putin may be in charge of the Russian equivalents of Google, Amazon and Facebook. With Kerimov in the company, which is still privately owned by Tatiana, Putin will clearly get a lot more control over it. Putin wants to see a state-owned, or at least a state-controlled, internet giant like Amazon or Alibaba set up that has global reach. Tatiana was already in the process of building that, as Wildberries has been rolling out in lots of new countries in the last few years, including a popular Ukrainian service – until the war started. Since then, Wildberries has still been expanding, but has redirected its focus south and east. No one really knows what is going on - Tatiana is now swimming with the sharks. (Source: intellinews)
Arctic
Wednesday 24 July Arctic is emerging as one of the most strategically important regions on the planet – and a key arena in the confrontation between Moscow and the West. Pyramiden sits at the foot of a stepped, snow-covered mountain that gives the settlement its name. Pyramiden is in Svalbard, a part of Norway. This is the most north-eastern Soviet town in the world. Pyramiden was once a thriving Soviet mining settlement. At its peak it was home to as many as 2,000 people. Norwegians and Russians have lived side by side on this archipelago, about a thousand kilometres from the North Pole. Pyramiden was a model Soviet settlement, and life here for the Russian miners and their families was good. There was a heated swimming pool, a school, and a canteen with free food. The miners would eat in the dining room underneath palm trees set on plinths. An enormous mosaic of the Arctic landscape still covers the back wall – a bright, colourful respite for the miners’ eyes after long shifts digging coal deep in the frozen dark. A Soviet-era Playboy model smiles hanging in the men’s dormitory, Russian car magazines were stuck here more than 30 years ago by Russian coal miners, something on the wall to just dream about during the long Arctic winters. The room became frozen in time; the miners left. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was eventually abandoned. But there are signs this ghost town is stirring back to life. A colony of kittiwake seabirds has taken over an apartment block in the town centre. Only two of the several dozen buildings in the settlement are still in use: the hotel, and a cultural centre, which has a working cinema. At the start of this year, just 12 workers lived in Pyramiden, mostly hospitality and maintenance staff. They’re workers for Trust Arktikugol, the Russian state-owned coal mining company that owns the land and Russia’s operations in Pyramiden. There are no roads into Pyramiden. Depending on the time of year, it’s only accessible by boat, helicopter or snowmobile. That hasn’t stopped visitors making the journey, and there are plans for more to come. In recent years, the company has tried to attract more visitors to the ghost town, describing it as an “Arctic phoenix that is more alive than ever”. But the COVID pandemic, coupled with sanctions in the wake of the war in Ukraine and a boycott by tourism companies, who don’t want any money going towards the Putin regime, have made that challenging. Over the past decade and a half, it’s become something of a tourism oddity, an open-air museum offering glimpses into life at the height of Soviet power. From the square, a stone bust of Russian Soviet leader Lenin stares down over the abandoned buildings. Pyramiden remains a tiny Russian foothold on NATO soil. Lately, though, tensions are on the rise. Moscow’s interest in Svalbard has increased. Russian provocations on the archipelago of Svalbard are driving up tensions at the top of the world. In recent years, Russians have been accused of using the archipelago as a backdrop for propaganda and patriotic stunts, and even sabotage. Still, Russian authorities allegedly have grand visions to bring this place back to life. The men’s dormitory has been gutted for renovations. Russian authorities have said they want to bring more tourists here via direct flights from the Russian mainland and on cruise ships. They’ve also said repeatedly in domestic forums that they want to build a new science centre in Pyramiden, inviting what Russia calls “friendly countries” – including China and India – to be a part of it. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has labelled Norway an “unfriendly country”, despite the fact that Svalbard is a Norwegian territory and one of the few places where official contact has been maintained between the two countries. It’s not clear if Norway would allow the science centre to ever become a reality. But for Russia, being seen as ambitious and defiant on a NATO member’s territory is potentially good propaganda for a domestic audience. Part of what makes Svalbard such hot property geopolitically is its location as a gateway to the Arctic. As temperatures rise, there are predictions the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer in coming decades, opening up new shipping routes - including what China calls the “Polar Silk Road”. It’s also close to the Kola Peninsula, where Russia keeps much of its nuclear arsenal and naval fleet. “At the end of the Cold War, the idea was that Svalbard would be basically a perfect location to control activity in the North Atlantic,” says Dr Østhagen, a senior researcher in Arctic security and geopolitics at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo. Svalbard is governed by a century-old treaty that gives Norway sovereignty but allows non-Norwegian citizens – including Russians – to live and work there visa-free. The treaty forbids the archipelago from being used for “war-like” purposes, but if war ever broke out, that may not hold. In recent times, Russians have been accused of pushing the boundaries in Svalbard. In Longyearbyen, the main town on the archipelago, Russians put up a huge red neon sign on their guesthouse without permission from Norwegian authorities. It reads “Visit Spitsbergen”, the Russian word for “Svalbard”. Last year, in Pyramiden, the Russian state-owned coal mining company released a video of staff and a visiting Russian Bishop erecting a seven-metre-high Russian Orthodox cross on a hillside, again without Norwegian permission. Then there are allegations of sabotage. In early 2022, one of two undersea cables that connect Svalbard to the mainland was damaged. The cables are the main point of connectivity for SvalSAT, the world’s largest satellite ground station located above Longyearbyen, the main Norwegian settlement on Svalbard. The number one suspect was a Russian fishing trawler that allegedly sailed back and forth over the cable more than a hundred times. The ship owner denied it. Last year, on Victory Day Russian locals held what has been labelled by some as a “military-style” parade in the main Russian settlement of Barentsburg. Vehicles with Russian flags drove down the main street while a helicopter flew above. “We are used to seeing flag parades in Russia, but we never saw them in Barentsburg,” says Terje Aunevik, the mayor of Longyearbyen. “We are not invited there anymore. So it’s a massive change on that and it happened just overnight, more or less.” Early one morning, the silence over Pyramiden is shattered by the beating rotors of a Russian Mi8 helicopter. The abandoned buildings have been decorated with bright red Soviet flags, their yellow hammer and sickle emblems flapping in the wind. About 20 Russians file out of the helicopter onto the snow. In the lead is a man who unfurls a giant Russian tri-colour flag – Neverov, the head of the Russian state-owned coal company that runs Pyramiden. The visitors have come from Barentsburg. Over the next few hours, three more helicopter loads of people arrive. They’re here to mark Victory Day with a special commemoration for the “Immortal Regiment”. It’s an event that’s held all over Russia, but this is the first time it has ever been held in Pyramiden. They parade up the main square holding images of relatives who took part in the war, before laying poppies at the foot of a monument to the “Great Patriotic War”. “We are here in archipelago for 93 years ... it is place with rich history,” says Neverov. Several workers from the company are filming the parade, which was later shown on a major state-controlled news channel back in Russia. For Norwegian authorities, activity in and around Svalbard by non-Norwegian actors like Russia and China is high on their radar. The Norwegian government has recently said it wants to strengthen control over Svalbard. (Source: abc *)
* Australia
Asia
China
24/07/2024 - 17:01 Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang that Russia was not ready to negotiate an end to the war in „good faith”, that currently there is no such readiness on the Russian side. ’I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China's strategic interests, and China's role as a global force for peace is important,' Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba was saying on visit to China for talks. His trip is scheduled to last until Friday. Kyiv would likely seek this week to convince China that it should participate in a second peace summit. China did not attend a peace summit in Switzerland last month in protest against Russia not being invited. A key Russian ally, China presents itself as a neutral party in the war. China has sought to paint itself as a mediator in the war, sending envoy Li to Europe on multiple visits, and releasing a paper calling for a "political settlement" to the conflict. Western countries said the plan, if applied, would allow Russia to retain much of the territory it has seized in Ukraine. The United States and Europe have also accused China of selling components and equipment necessary to keep Russia's military production afloat. Beijing has refuted claims that it is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, and says it is seeking to bring both Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table. It says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the United States and other Western nations, fuelling the conflict through arms shipments to Kyiv. (Source: france24 / AFP)
4 7 25 00:32 / .4 9 7
