March 2023 – Page 6 – The Tarbabys Blog

Putin’s Mercenary Prigozhin Shifts Focus After Ukraine Setbacks

Bloomberg

Putin’s Mercenary Prigozhin Shifts Focus After Ukraine Setbacks

Bloomberg News – March 23, 2023

(Bloomberg) — Yevgeny Prigozhin, the powerful founder of mercenary group Wagner, is preparing to scale back his private army’s operations in Ukraine after Russian military chiefs succeeded in cutting key supplies of men and munitions, people familiar with the matter said.

Seen as an increasing threat by the security and political establishment, Prigozhin is struggling with a manpower and ammunition shortage in Ukraine after he was barred from recruiting from prisons, his primary source of recruits, and deprived of supplies. Wagner troops so far have failed to take their main target – the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut – despite months of trying and staggering losses. Now, Prigozhin is planning to shift focus back to Africa, the people said.

The shift is a sudden turn in fortunes for Prigozhin, a longtime Putin ally who catapulted himself to prominence as the tough-guy alternative to Russia’s faltering military in Ukraine.

But as his fighters struggled to advance more than a few dozen kilometers in and around Bakhmut despite months of fighting, top commanders managed to sow doubts with Putin about Wagner’s vaunted military prowess, arguing that what results he got came from using waves of convict troops sent to their deaths, people close to the Kremlin and intelligence services said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that aren’t public.

The Russian leader ultimately stepped in to transfer prison recruiting to the Defense Ministry, cutting off the flow of recruits to Wagner. Munitions supplies from the military slowed. Prigozhin’s independence also rankled with the Kremlin.

“Prigozhin is getting in everyone’s way,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik political consultancy. “His only protection now is his personal relationship with Putin, who still considers him useful in a certain way.”

After weeks of complaining publicly that the military wasn’t delivering vital shells and other supplies, Prigozhin admitted ealier this month that Wagner would have to “reset and cut down its size” after the battle for Bakhmut is over. He recently touted Wagner’s capture of a village in the area, but didn’t mention that its population was only two people according to the last census.

There’s no sign at present that Prigozhin will redeploy troops to Africa, but the people familiar with the situation said operations there are likely to get more of his attention in the future as the situation in Ukraine has become more difficult for his forces.

A recruitment announcement posted Monday invited applicants for mercenary vacancies for six months in Ukraine and 9-14 months in Africa, specifying that those who want to serve in African countries would be placed on reserve.

A one-time catering entrepreneur who said he founded Wagner in the Kremlin’s first war in Ukraine in 2014, Prigozhin sent troops to help Russia shore up Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. He also built a network in Africa stretching from Libya to Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic in support of the Kremlin’s geopolitical goals. Most recently, there have been reports Wagner is moving into Burkina Faso after the country ordered French troops to leave. The US and its allies have slapped sanctions on Prigozhin and Wagner.

Leaving on an African tour last month, French President Emmanuel Macron branded Wagner as “the life insurance of failing regimes and putschists,” calling it “a group of criminal mercenaries.”

Italian intelligence warned in a recent report that the increased activity of Russian private military companies could destabilize Northern and Western Africa, prompting an increase of migrant flows toward the European Union. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is extremely worried about a summer migration wave, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Her defense minister publicly blamed the mercenaries for fueling a surge in migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean. Prigozhin denied that.

Convict Soldiers

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin shifted his major efforts there, winning Kremlin permission to recruit prisoners with promises of early release if they survived six months on the battlefield.

Sent into combat with little preparation, about half of the 40,000 convicts who signed up have been killed or wounded in the fighting in Bakhmut and the capture earlier this year of the small salt-mining town of Soledar, according to UK intelligence estimates. Wagner in addition has some 10,000 professional contractors fighting in Ukraine that it has deployed more cautiously, the US says.

Prigozhin announced last week that he’d opened recruitment centers in sports centers and martial arts clubs in 42 Russian cities and said Sunday he hopes to sign up 30,000 new recruits, but it’s unclear how successful he’ll be in attracting volunteers.

His influence seemed to peak late last year as he publicly attacked Kremlin appointees in Russia and spooked insiders with calls for Stalin-style crackdowns on opponents. Sergei Surovikin, a top general with experience in Syria who was seen as an ally, was given command of the Ukraine invasion.

Prigozhin saved the harshest treatment for top military commanders. In a video posted on social media in December, Wagner fighters used expletives to describe Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s top general, because of their shortage of ammunition. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also came in for attacks.

The first outward sign that Prigozhin had gone too far came early this year, when Putin promoted Gerasimov to oversee the war in place of the Prigozhin ally.

Revelations of extreme brutality by Wagner including summary executions of ex-inmates who refused orders to fight that have emerged from defectors who fled to Europe damaged Prigozhin’s reputation in Putin’s eyes, one of the people with knowledge of the issue said.

Prigozhin’s shock troops remain useful from a military perspective, and if Bakhmut falls, Wagner may continue to play a role in further assaults in a bid to seize the remaining Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern Donbas region, said two people close to the Kremlin and intelligence services.

Political Reach

But he won’t be allowed any opportunity in state-controlled media to claim credit for taking Bakhmut, which would be the first significant advance for Russia since mid-2022, said one of them.

Prigozhin has also hinted that he’s not giving up political ambitions inside Russia, where he controls a powerful pro-Kremlin media company and enjoys lucrative state contracts. He said in a recent video message that Wagner will “transform itself from the best private army in the world into an army with ideology, and this ideology will be the struggle for justice.”

Ultimately, without the approval of the Russian leadership, that too could be denied him.

“Prigozhin became far too independent, which violated the balance between the elite clans,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Only Putin can decide what the limits are.”

Report Signals Humiliating End for Russia’s Shadow Army in Ukraine

Daily Beast

Report Signals Humiliating End for Russia’s Shadow Army in Ukraine

Shannon Vavra – March 23, 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin is preparing to pull his Wagner Group mercenaries’ attention away from the war in Ukraine, according to a Bloomberg report that cites sources familiar with the matter.

His current plan is to focus the private mercenaries’ focus back to countries in Africa, such as Sudan, Mali, and the Central African Republic, where Wagner has deployed forces. On Monday, Wagner posted a recruitment notice offering deployments to African countries that would last between nine to 14 months, Bloomberg reported.

The apparent decision to recalibrate Wagner operations in Ukraine comes after a series of setbacks Wagner has faced in trying to work with the Russian government to wage war in Ukraine. Prigozhin, who enlisted private mercenaries from prison, was blocked in recent weeks from recruiting from prisons. His colleague was also recently barred from accessing Russia’s military command in Ukraine.

Tensions have spilled over into the public eye as well. Wagner Group has also had to resort to pleading with Russia in various videos posted to social media to provide more ammunition they said was desperately needed to try to fight in Ukraine, to no avail.

It’s not clear how quickly the changes will go into effect. Evidence has emerged this week that suggests Wagner Group is still fighting in southern Bakhmut as well as Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bohdanivka, and in the direction of Predtechyne, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Witnesses Unravel the Chinese Mass Murder Mystery That Could Ruin Putin

Though Wagner Group has been working to flood the field with personnel, Prigozhin’s army has so far failed to capture Bakhmut, which they have been trying to seize for months.

Wagner Group’s efforts have not been particularly successful. Tens of thousands of Wagner fighters have died, according to a Russian non-governmental organization.

The White House National Security Council characterized the losses in and around Bakhmut as “an extraordinary cost” for Russia.

The Wagner Group has at times blamed those failures on Russia’s idle efforts to help out Wagner with supplies.

“We appeal to our colleagues and friends from the Ministry of Defense. We are confident there is this ammunition somewhere in the stockpiles, and we need them acutely… We will do the work for you—help us with ammunition,” some Wagner fighters said in a recent video on social media.

Norway watches as Russian subs and aircraft step up Arctic patrols

NBC News

Norway watches as Russian subs and aircraft step up Arctic patrols

Tom Costello and Dan De Luce and Joel Seidman – March 23, 2023

ABOARD THE KV SORTLAND — NATO ally Norway has announced that it is boosting the number of naval patrols near vital undersea gas pipelines off its coast, and released a trove of videos exclusively to NBC News illustrating what it sees as a growing Russian threat in the Arctic.

The videos provided by the Royal Norwegian Air Force capture the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game between the two militaries, with Russian attack submarines patrolling near a maze of undersea pipelines carrying vast amounts of natural gas to Europe and telecommunication cables linking Europe and America.

According to the head of the Royal Norwegian Navy, the videos indicate that Russian attack submarines and planes have expanded their presence in the High North, operating near Norway’s natural gas pipelines that represent a vital energy lifeline for Europe.

“We’ve seen increased military activity around Norway in the High North, in the North Atlantic. We have seen Russian submarines operating differently than they did 10 years ago,” Rear Adm. Rune Andersen said last week from the bridge of the Norwegian refueling ship Maud at the Haakonsvern Naval Base in the city of Bergen.

Norway released this video of a Russian surveillance aircraft off its coast. (Norwegian Government)

He did not quantify by how much Russian activity had increased in the past year.

Not only have there been more Russian patrols, their behavior has also changed, with them “operating more unpredictably” and some of their maneuvers appearing “more aggressive,” Andersen added.

A NBC News team accompanied a Norwegian Coast Guard ship, the KV Sortland, on patrol for three days last week in the North Sea, as the 25-member crew kept a close eye on gas installations while contending with heavy winds, frigid temperatures and rough seas.

The uptick in military activity came as tensions between NATO and Russia soared following the invasion of Ukraine. After a drastic drop in the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe, Norway replaced Russia as the top supplier to the continent. And since an unexplained attack last year on the Nord Stream gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany, Norway — backed by its NATO allies — stepped up security for the vast network of pipelines and communication cables off its coast.

“After the explosions, we have actually increased our presence over these installations,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said in an interview in Oslo. “Now we really need to protect the whole infrastructure system and also the installations at sea.”

“We are prepared for everything,” she added.

Norway, with more than 5,000 miles of pipelines, is now supplying 30 to 40% of Europe’s natural gas needs, up from about 20% before the Ukraine invasion. The undersea cables in the North Sea are part of a crucial global communications network that keeps data moving around the planet.

In Ukraine, Russia’s military has suffered serious setbacks and Western officials say it remains plagued by logistical and morale problems. But, Andersen said, Russia’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet, much of it based at its Murmansk military base near Norway, remains a formidable threat.

“The submarines and the maritime and air capabilities of the (Russian) northern fleet… they’re largely unaffected by the war in Ukraine. It’s still intact,” he added.

The videos released to NBC News show one submarine’s periscope peeking out of the water, and include footage of the latest Yasen-class attack submarines and a Borei-class submarine designed to carry 16 nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The imagery also depicts Tupolev TU-142 and Ilyushin II-38 surveillance planes designed to track submarines.

Russia has invested heavily in its submarine fleet, making its boats quieter and more lethal, analysts say. The new Belgorod submarine is designed to carry massive 80-foot-long nuclear torpedoes, as well as smaller mini-submarines capable of carrying out rescues or research, but military experts say the smaller submersibles also could be used to cut cables or pipelines along the ocean floor.

‘Suspicious activity’

Russian submarines, ships and aircraft in the area appear to be conducting surveillance of the gas pipelines, Norwegian officers said.

“They’re around this area. More than once, they’re going back and forth. They’re following the pipeline, “ said Comdr. Tirrell Herland, a Norwegian naval spokesperson, calling it “suspicious activity.”

The Norwegian government released video to NBC News showing this Russian nuclear attack submarine off its coast (Norwegian Government)

The Sortland’s acting captain, Helen Dahl, said Russian fishing trawlers often go dark by turning off their navigational transmitters, and are equipped with an unusual number of antenna — raising suspicions.

Meanwhile, unexplained sightings and events are also raising suspicions of Russian surveillance and activities.

In recent months, drones have been spotted flying over Norwegian gas facilities, airports and other infrastructure. In October, Norwegian police investigated reports of a drone flying over the Karsto gas plant in southwest Norway. The Norwegian government has not said who it thinks may have been behind the drone flights.

In 2021, undersea sensors that help Norway monitor submarines were knocked out and last year, a fiber optic cable between mainland Norway and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic was incapacitated in another unexplained incident.

The Troll 1 gas platform in the North Sea. (NBC News)

The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

Andersen, the naval chief, said his forces work with private pipeline companies to closely monitor and protect the undersea network of pipelines and cables.

“We have a relatively strong network of sensors. We have activity out there, on the surface, below the surface and in the air, enabling us to have a pretty good picture on what’s moving around in the North Atlantic,” he said.

The undersea infrastructure is a “potential vulnerability in times of conflict,” Andersen said. “And we need to make sure that we are able to monitor, survey and protect it.”

Norway and its NATO allies need to be vigilant given Russia’s track record of carrying out alleged sabotage and retribution outside its borders, including cyber attacks and more lethal operations, according to Ian Brzezinski of the Atlantic Council think tank.

“The list of what the Russians have done in the realm of subterfuge, subversion and assassination is long,” he said. “So, attacking subsurface infrastructure has got to be on their list of options.”

Czech authorities in 2021 accused the Russian military intelligence of setting off massive explosives at its ammunition depots in 2014, and British police in 2018 alleged that Russia used a nerve agent to poison former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and Yulia, his daughter

Russia has denied that it was behind the explosions at the Czech ammunition warehouses or the poisoning of Skripal in the United Kingdom.

Last week, the Sortland was pulled from its patrol duties to help provide security for a joint press conference by the leaders of NATO, the European Union and Norway who flew to the giant Troll platform in the country’s largest gas field. Three other warships — from Germany, the Netherlands and Spain also stood watch — part of an enhanced NATO presence now in the North Sea.

A fast boat from the Norwegian Coast Guard ship, the KV Sortland, patrols the undersea pipelines in the North Sea. (NBC News)

“Since these installations are so vital, they are also so vulnerable,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said as the Sortland and the other ships moved nearby.

Stoltenberg, joined by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said that the E.U. and NATO are forming a new task force to guard vital infrastructure and that the alliance had deployed more ships to the area since the September sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.

The attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, which damaged three of its four pipelines 260 feet under the ocean, remains an unresolved case. An investigation by the German, Swedish and Danish governments is underway, and no findings have been issued.

Tom Costello and Joel Seidman reported from Norway, and Dan De Luce reported from Washington.

‘Gerbil banking’ preceded the Great Depression. We’re seeing it again today

Fortune

‘Gerbil banking’ preceded the Great Depression. We’re seeing it again today

Maureen O’Hara – March 23, 2023

The recent action by a consortium of banks to deposit money in First Republic Bank harkens back to an earlier attempt to counter bank runs: the U.S. Postal Savings system.

Banking in the 19th century was notoriously unstable, with bank runs or “panics” coming all too frequently. By the turn of the 20th century, such runs were almost seasonal, prompting depositors to withdraw in advance of what might be a coming run, thereby, of course, precipitating liquidity crises at banks. This came to a head in the Panic of 1907, the granddaddy of panics, when the banking system collapsed.

Congress at that time considered an array of solutions to bank instability such as deposit insurance (favored by the Democrats), postal savings (favored by the Republicans), and a central bank (favored by almost none of them but viewed as something to study). Republican William Howard Tafts’ election in 1908 sealed the deal, and we got a Postal Savings system.

The idea of Postal Savings was simple. There were post offices everywhere and they would take deposits from individuals, paying them a slightly lower interest rate than the banks offered (a maximum deposit of $2,000 was also imposed to reduce competition with the banks). Now, when individuals became concerned about bank solvency and withdrew their funds, they could put the money in Postal Savings instead of under their mattresses. And what would the Postal Savings system do with the funds? Put the money back into the banks!

This gerbil-like treadmill would thus keep the funds in the banking system, while giving the Postal Savings system interest on its bank deposits to pay the system’s depositors. The circularity of flows out of and then back into the banking system at the heart of the Postal Savings system did have a certain cleverness to it.

As David Easley and I showed in a research paper, this system worked pretty well until the onset of the Great Depression. Faced with growing numbers of bank failures, even the Postal Savings system lost faith in the banks, and so shifted its investments from deposits to government bonds. While certainly not the major cause of banking’s problems, we showed that this action contributed to the liquidity problems undermining the banking system. With the collapse of the banking system in 1933, the view that the Postal Savings system could restore stability to the banking system similarly vanished, setting the stage for the establishment of FDIC deposit insurance.

The latest banking woes demonstrated once again that when concerns arise, depositors flee–but this time to the largest banks which are viewed as “Too Big to Fail”. And what did they do with the money? Already awash with deposits, they made the decision to put some back into First Republic. The gerbil lives again!

The actions of the large banks are admirable, but clearly, this is only a short-run answer. Is a new U.S. Postal Savings System the answer? No. Deposit insurance has proven its worth in protecting retail depositors, who, if they have amounts above the insurance cut-off can simply open accounts at multiple banks.

Corporations also qualify for deposit insurance and they face the same $250,000 limit–but is this the appropriate level? The reported inability of some companies to make payroll payments following Silicon Valley Bank’s closure and the need for a larger scale to meet basic corporate banking needs suggests it’s not.

The argument for insurance limits is based on limiting moral hazard at banks. But where this cut-off limit should be is debatable, and the FDIC’s willingness to deviate from its stated level when the need arises underscores the arbitrary nature of this guarantee limit. SVB’s corporate customer-driven bank run underscores why it is time to re-examine this important aspect of our banking system protection.

Maureen O’Hara is the Purcell Professor of Finance at the Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, and a former President of the American Finance Association.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

More must-read commentary published by Fortune:

SVB’s collapse adds financial instability to the Fed’s inflation fight. A recession may not be the worst outcome
The return to the office once seemed inevitable. A new study shows companies are already reversing course
How the IMF naively parroted Putin’s fake statistics–and botched its economic forecast for Russia
Local communities are buying medical debt for pennies on the dollar–and freeing American families from the threat of bankruptcy

Not Stopping Russia in Ukraine Would Force ‘Doubling’ of US Defense Budget, Milley Says

Military.com

Not Stopping Russia in Ukraine Would Force ‘Doubling’ of US Defense Budget, Milley Says

Rebecca Kheel – March 23, 2023

The top general in the U.S. military warned Thursday that not supporting Ukraine now would lead to a massive increase in future defense budgets — and global conflict that has been avoided since World War II ended.

“If that rules-based order, which is in its 80th year, if that goes out the window, then be very careful,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified to Congress on Thursday. “We’ll be doubling our defense budgets at that point because that will introduce not an era of great power competition. That’ll begin an era of great power conflict. And that’ll be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world.”

Milley’s remark at a House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee hearing comes amid growing skepticism from Republicans about the price tag of U.S. aid to Ukraine. Milley was testifying alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the Biden administration’s $842 billion request for Pentagon spending for fiscal 2024.

Congress has approved about $113 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. While that includes humanitarian and economic assistance, the bulk of the funding has gone toward providing weapons to the Ukrainian military.

While still a minority of the party, some members of the GOP have been increasingly vocal about questioning whether support for Ukraine is a good use of U.S. funding, arguing there are more pressing domestic needs or that there has not been enough oversight to ensure the money isn’t misused.

For example, expected Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was a vocal supporter of arming Ukraine when he was in Congress, last month said the war in Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” that is not a “vital” U.S. national security interest. He has since walked back the comment after criticism from Republican senators.

Even as some Republicans voice more opposition to the aid, the Biden administration continues to take heat from other Republicans over not providing more advanced weapons to Ukraine.

On Thursday, subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., while reiterating House GOP leadership’s talking point that it will not provide a “blank check” to Ukraine, criticized the administration for “giving Ukraine just enough assistance to survive, but not enough to win.”

Milley, without calling out any specific criticism of U.S. aid, described the war as an “important national interest” and “fundamental to the United States, to Europe and to global security.”

The general was responding to a question from Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., who said he thinks “it’s important to defeat [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in the Ukraine” but that it would be “helpful” if U.S. officials more clearly defined their strategic goals.

“The strategic end state is that the global rules-based international order that was put in place in 1945 is upheld,” Milley said. “How do you do that, how do you know you’ve achieved that end state? You achieve that end state when Ukraine remains a free, sovereign, independent country with their territory intact.”

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, who said he counts himself among those growing more skeptical of the aid, also pressed Milley on whether U.S. goals include Ukraine retaking Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Milley reiterated that, while he personally believes taking back Crimea would be “an extraordinarily difficult goal to achieve militarily,” whether to try to do so is a decision for the Ukrainians.

“Our task is to help Ukraine defend itself,” Milley added. “The United States is not at war with Russia, even though Russia tries to portray that.”

California’s relentless rains affect farmworkers, strawberry prices

Yahoo! News

California’s relentless rains affect farmworkers, strawberry prices

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – March 23, 2023

Strawberry fields in Pajaro, Calif. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A spate of heavy rains in California that have interfered with the strawberry harvest are having a negative economic impact on farmworkers and may soon hit consumers in the wallet too.

Since December, the state has been battered by unusually heavy snows and rains, and the effects of the extreme weather — which scientists say has been exacerbated by climate change — are hurting California’s key agricultural regions.

Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau in the San Joaquin Valley, told ABC News on Wednesday that the state’s Central Valley is dealing with a “catastrophic level of water.”

Damaged strawberry fields — Flooded strawberry fields damaged beyond repair in Ventura, Calif. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“There’s a lot of cropland underwater right now,” Stever Blattler said. “I can’t even begin to tell you the numbers — north of 50,000 acres. Maybe closer to 75,000, 100,000.”

Acreage for growing crops including tomatoes, onions, garlic and cotton “will be diminished for a while,” she said.

On Wednesday, the Community Alliance With Family Farmers told KCRA, a TV station in Sacramento, that hundreds of thousands of acres of California farms have been affected by the latest deluge, which hit the state earlier this week.

“The area some call ‘America’s salad bowl’ more resembles a soup bowl,” a reporter on Fox Weather quipped on Sunday, in reference to inundated portions of California’s Central Valley and coast. The state grows about half of all the fruits and vegetables produced in the United States, including 91% of U.S. strawberries, according to the Department of Agriculture.

“For the farms that were flooded, this catastrophe hit at the worst possible time,” California Strawberry Commission president Rick Tomlinson said in a statement. “Farmers had borrowed money to prepare the fields and were weeks away from beginning to harvest.”

Monterey County Farm Bureau executive director Norm Groot told Fox Weather that the latest round of flooding will likely cause even more damage than the estimated $330 million crop losses from the flooding that occurred in January.

Farmworkers wear protective gear while picking strawberries in a field in Oxnard. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

California farmworkers are also feeling the effects. Last week, more than 8,000 residents in Pajaro were forced to flee when a levee on the nearby Pajaro River broke. The community is composed largely of Latino farmworkers, and many saw their homes destroyed.

Last week, agricultural experts told the Associated Press that roughly one-fifth of strawberry farms in Watsonville and Salinas, areas near Pajaro, had been flooded. “When the water recedes, what does the field look like — if it is even a field anymore?” said Jeff Cardinale, a spokesperson for the California Strawberry Commission. “It could just be a muddy mess where there is nothing left.”

Cardinale told Bloomberg News that it’s too soon to know how much strawberry prices will be affected, but the outlet reported that they “almost are certain to rise.”

“There’s going to be an impact on national supply,” Nick Wishnatzki of Wish Farms, a berry grower that has farms all over the Americas, told Bloomberg.

Pajaro and its neighbors are just the latest in a series of California towns that were flooded this winter. In January, Fidencio Velasquez, a supervisor at Santa Clara Farms in Ventura County, told the Los Angeles Times that flooding had cost the farm upwards of $900,000 in damage to crops and equipment, and that 150 of its employees would be furloughed for weeks.

Raul Ortiz, 52, looks at destroyed strawberry fields in Ventura — A worker at American Berry Farm in Ventura surveys the damage after a recent flood destroyed strawberry fields there. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Thousands of residents of Planada, an agricultural community an hour west of Yosemite National Park, saw their homes and cars laid to waste in January by a series of dramatic rainfall events. Now they must rebuild at a time when flooded fields cannot be harvested, crops are rotting and the workers have no income.

“The very workers who put food on our table are getting hot meals from the Salvation Army,” Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers of America, told the New York Times in late February. “Whether California is on fire or underwater, the farmworkers are always losing.”

Wildfires and floods are both becoming more severe because of climate change. As UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain recently explained to Yahoo News, warmer temperatures are causing more evaporation, resulting in more moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere. But climate change is also increasing the likelihood of droughts.

Intense heat waves have led to worse wildfire seasons throughout the West in recent years. Smoke from those fires can destroy crops — ruining the taste of grapes, for example. Inhalation of wildfire smoke is also harmful to farmworkers, and working in extreme heat is a growing health hazard.

“We have compounding and cascading disasters from extreme storms, flooding, wildfires, heat waves and drought that are all impacting farmworkers,” Michael Méndez, assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine, told the Los Angeles Times.

Women are skipping marriage and becoming a force in the workplace

Fortune

Women are skipping marriage and becoming a force in the workplace

Megan Leonhardt – March 22, 2023

The number of single, unmarried women in the workforce has grown three times faster than the overall pool of workers in the past decade.

Women today are spending a larger portion of their lives single, many of whom are waiting longer to marry or start families, while others are opting to remain permanently unattached. It’s a global trend, according to Dinah Hannaford, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Houston. In the U.S., the median age of first marriage for women has risen from a low of 20.1 in 1956 to an estimated age of 28.2 last year, according to the Census Bureau.

More than half (52%) of women are unmarried or separated as of 2021, according to a recent report from Wells Fargo Economics. “As women spend a greater portion of their lives as a single economic unit, it is ushering in changes to their relationship with the labor market,” the report notes.

Although the reasons behind delaying or skipping marriage vary, careers play a large role—as the numbers show. Single, unmarried women, as it turns out, are a rapidly growing segment of the labor force, holding the highest participation rate of all women. The participation rate for married women, for example, is about 7 percentage points lower than that for single women, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Unmarried single women now account for 16% of workers, up from 13.9% in 2012, according to the Wells Fargo research.

These unmarried women are increasing their share of the labor force not only because of their growing population numbers, but also because they tend to have a greater financial need for work. Single women, particularly those who have never married, usually only have their own earnings to rely on, creating more of an imperative to hold down employment. Researchers found that the labor force participation rate of never-married women has increased 1.9 percentage points over the last 10 years—higher than the rate of never-married men.

The growing labor force participation rate among unmarried women also stands in contrast to an overall steady decline in the total U.S. participation rate (even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic). “The rising number of single women in the United States has thus provided some much-needed support to the U.S. labor force over the past decade,” the report says.

The labor force participation rate of working women (ages 25 to 54) has finally, fully rebounded after 13.6 million women lost their jobs during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago. In February, 77.2% of prime-age women were working or actively looking for a job, on par with the pre-pandemic rate of 77%.

But women—even single unmarried women—are still employed at lower rates in the U.S. than men due to a number of headwinds, including a lack of childcare, wage disparities, tax policies, and even government benefits. The latest data shows men’s workforce participation is still roughly 12 points higher than women.

So while single women who have never married are increasingly a critical labor source—particularly as employers continue to struggle with recruiting—there are still challenges to overcome to see continued financial and economic improvement for this sector of the population.

Russian missiles batter Ukraine, but Bakhmut offensive stalling, say military experts

Reuters

Russian missiles batter Ukraine, but Bakhmut offensive stalling, say military experts

Dan Peleschuk and Sergiy Chalyi – March 22, 2023

Aftermath of a Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia

Ukrainian servicemen ride a tank on a road towards the frontline town of Bakhmut in Chasiv Yarr

Ukraine's President Zelenskiy visits a petrol station in Donetsk region — Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy visits a petrol station in Donetsk region

KYIV/ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russian drones attacked Ukrainian cities and missiles blasted an apartment block, but a months-long ground assault on the eastern town of Bakhmut could be stalling in the face of fierce resistance, according to Ukrainian and British military experts.

Russian forces unleashed a wave of air strikes in the north and south of Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin bid farewell on Wednesday to Chinese leader Xi Jinping following a two day visit to Moscow by his fellow autocrat and “dear friend”.

But staunch resistance by Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut, the site of Europe’s deadliest infantry battle since World War Two, led British military intelligence to believe Russia’s assault on the town could be running out of steam.

There was still a danger, however, that the Ukrainian garrison in Bakhmut could be surrounded, Britain’s defence ministry said in its intelligence update on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s military General Staff agreed that Russia’s offensive potential in Bakhmut was declining.

Bakhmut has become a key objective for Moscow, which sees the town as a stepping stone toward completing its conquest of the eastern Donbas region.

In a show of defiance, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office released a video of him handing out medals to troops it said were near the Bakhmut front line.

“Ukrainian forces have more or less stabilised the situation in Bakhmut — and Russian forces are unable to do anything,” military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a YouTube presentation.

“They may have advanced a couple of hundred metres to the north or south of the city, but this has really achieved nothing.”

During Wednesday night, air raid sirens blared across the capital Kyiv and parts of northern Ukraine, and the military said it had shot down 16 of 21 Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones.

Firefighters battled a blaze in two adjacent residential buildings in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, where officials said at least one person was killed and 33 wounded by a twin missile strike.

In Rzhyshchiv, a riverside town south of Kyiv, at least eight people were killed and seven injured after a drone struck two dormitories and a college, regional police chief Andrii Nebytov said.

“This must not become ‘just another day’ in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. The world needs greater unity and determination to defeat Russian terror faster and protect lives,” Zelenskiy tweeted, along with a video of security camera footage showing a building exploding.

A playground and a car park at the scene in Zaporizhzhia were littered with glass, debris and wrecked cars. Emergency workers brought out the wounded along with anyone unable to walk.

An elderly woman with a scratched face sat alone on a bench, wiping tears and whispering prayers.

“When I got out, there was destruction, smoke, people screaming, debris. Then the firefighters and rescuers came,” said Ivan Nalyvaiko, 24.

International groups estimate rebuilding Ukraine will cost $411 billion – 2.6 times Ukraine’s 2022 gross domestic product.

CHINA-RUSSIA UNITY

Hosting Xi in Moscow this week was Putin’s grandest diplomatic gesture since he ordered the invasion of neighbouring Ukraine 13 months ago and became a pariah in the West.

The two men referred to each other as “dear friend”, promised economic cooperation, condemned the West and described relations as the best they have ever been.

Xi departed telling Putin: “Now there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”

“I agree,” Putin said.

But the public remarks were notably short of specifics, and during the visit Xi had almost nothing to say about the Ukraine war, beyond that China’s position was “impartial”.

The White House urged Beijing to pressure Russia to withdraw. Washington also criticised the timing of the trip, just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges.

China has proposed a peace plan for Ukraine that the West largely dismisses as vague at best, and at worst a ploy to buy time for Putin to regroup his forces.

Ukraine says there can be no peace unless Russia withdraws from occupied land. Moscow says Kyiv must recognise territorial “realities” after its claim to have annexed nearly a fifth of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Ukraine: The Latest podcast – hard truths from Ukrainian frontline troops

The Telegraph

Ukraine: The Latest podcast – hard truths from Ukrainian frontline troops

David Knowles – March 22, 2023

A handout photo made available by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows servicemen waiting to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky (not pictured) as he visits the Ukrainian military's advanced positions in the Bakhmut direction, during a working trip to the Donetsk region, at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, 22 March 2023, amid the Russian invasion of the country. Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory on 24 February 2022, starting a conflict that has provoked destruction and a humanitarian crisis. Ukraine's President Zelensky visits troops near the Donetsk frontline, Bakhmut - 22 Mar 2023 — A handout photo made available by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows servicemen waiting to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky (not pictured) as he visits the Ukrainian military’s advanced positions in the Bakhmut direction, during a working trip to the Donetsk region, at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, 22 March 2023, amid the Russian invasion of the country. Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory on 24 February 2022, starting a conflict that has provoked destruction and a humanitarian crisis. Ukraine’s President Zelensky visits troops near the Donetsk frontline, Bakhmut – 22 Mar 2023

In today’s episode of Ukraine: The Latest, we bring you updates from across Ukraine, dispel Russian misinformation on British tank rounds, and interview Kyiv Independent reporter Francis Farrell on his time reporting from the front lines across Ukraine.

Assistant Comment Editor Francis Dearnley discussed the significance of Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow that ended today:

I do think that if we are to summarise this as a glamorous ‘photo opportunity’, I do still think that photo opportunity matters enormously. When the war began, China was publicly – and I stress that word because in private, no doubt, they were making different calculations – cautious about their dealings with Russia, seeing how things would develop.
Evidently, they now think the prospects of a long war and a relatively secure Putin in the short-term mean that backing him publicly is worth it.

Our guest Francis Farrell commented on the morale of the Ukrainian troops he has met.

Almost all of them said the same thing: that they understand their job as infantry is to stand and hold the line. Probably the hardest job in the military in a full scale conventional war between two states like this. But they know what they’re fighting for. It didn’t seem like they were faking their patriotism or anything like that, but they were honest in the sense that they are very, very tired.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon spoke about Russian disinformation regarding British tank shells that are being supplied to Ukraine:

This is a classic Putin disinformation and absolutely bonkers. Putin has used the threat of new correct escalation from the very start to try and keep NATO out of this conflict and it hasn’t really worked. To suggest that a tank round that contains depleted uranium is some sort of nuclear weapon is absolutely ridiculous.

Yesterday Dom Nicholls interview former US National Security Adviser John Bolton. For a video of the interview click here.

In today's episode, we also talk to former national security adviser John Bolton. — In today’s episode, we also talk to former national security adviser John Bolton.

War in Ukraine is reshaping our world. Every weekday the Telegraph’s top journalists analyse the invasion from all angles – military, humanitarian, political, economic, historical – and tell you what you need to know to stay updated.

With over 24 million downloads, our Ukraine: The Latest podcast is your go-to source for all the latest analysis, live reaction and correspondents reporting on the ground.

Ukraine: The Latest‘s regular contributors are:

David Knowles

David is Head of Social Media at the Telegraph where he has worked for almost two years. Previously he worked for the World Economic Forum in Geneva. He speaks French.

Dominic Nicholls

Dom is Associate Editor (Defence) at the Telegraph having joined in 2018. He previously served for 23 years in the British Army, in tank and helicopter units. He had operational deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Francis Dearnley

Francis is Assistant Comment Editor at the Telegraph. Prior to working as a journalist, he was Chief of Staff to the Chair of the Prime Minister’s Policy Board at the Houses of Parliament in London. He studied History at Cambridge University and on the podcast explores how the past shines a light on the latest diplomatic, political, and strategic developments.

They are also regularly joined by the Telegraph‘s foreign correspondents around the world, including Joe Barnes (Brussels), Sophia Yan (China), Nataliya Vasilyeva (Russia), Roland Oliphant (Senior Reporter) and Colin Freeman (Reporter). In London, Venetia Rainey (Weekend Foreign Editor), Katie O’Neill (Assistant Foreign Editor), and Verity Bowman (News Reporter) also frequently appear to offer updates.

Russian soldiers stop receiving salaries: complaints coming from all over Russia

Ukrayinska Pravda

Russian soldiers stop receiving salaries: complaints coming from all over Russia

Ukrainska Pravda – March 22, 2023

The conscripts and contract soldiers in Russia are not paid promised salaries, allowances and social benefits.

Source: Vyorstka, a Russian news outlet

Details: According to the calculations of the news outlet, since the beginning of March 2023, the salaries of the servicemen have been delayed or not paid at all in 52 regions of Russia and in occupied Crimea.

Instead of the promised 195,000 roubles [approx. USD$2,530 – ed.] per month, their accounts receive much smaller amounts.

Judging by the stories of the Russian servicemen themselves and their relatives, frequent problems with payments began in January, but at the same time, individual cases of withholding and non-payment of salaries, allowances and social benefits have been reported at least since November 2022. It is noted that both conscripts and volunteer and contract soldiers face this problem.

Since the beginning of March, dozens of messages about the non-payment have been posted in groups devoted to payments to conscripts on the Russian social network VKontakte.

In the comments, the authors of the complaints are often told that the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation officially transfers salaries from the 10th to the 20th of each month and that delays may be related to the transfer of the serviceman himself to another unit. In these cases, some admit that they received payments later. Others publish payslips from the personal online accounts of servicemen on the website of the Ministry of Defence, in which there are zeros in place of payments.

According to Dmytro Loboyko, the Head of the Regional Studies Centre, people from the Russian hinterland associated “the hope of qualitatively changing their lives, but they had to face reality” with payment for participation in hostilities.