The Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation, does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
Among the superyachts around country are the 238-foot Clio, according to Reuters, citing shipping database MarineTraffic. The vessel is owned by Oleg Deripaska, who founded aluminum giant Rusal. It was anchored off the Maldivian capital of Male on Wednesday, per Reuters.
According to a Bloomberg analysis, the four biggest luxury yachts currently in the Maldives are owned by Russians. They include the 459-foot Ocean Victory, which belongs to steel magnate Viktor Rashnikov.
Russians own about 7% to 10% of all superyachts in the world, according to industry publication Superyacht News.
The superyachts’ journey to the Maldives comes as Germany seized a superyacht owned by EU-sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov on Wednesday, according to Forbes, citing three industry sources. It’s the first superyacht owned by a Russian tycoon seized since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
The Maldives government did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Russia Expert Fiona Hill Reveals How It Could All Go South For Vladimir Putin
Lee Moran – March 3, 2022
Russian affairs expert Fiona Hill said there is one group of people in particular that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably has to worry about” more than anyone else if his invasion of Ukraine doesn’t go as planned.
It’s not Russia’s obscenely rich oligarchs, who face economic sanctions and seizures of their assets worldwide, the former top analyst on the National Security Council told Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Late Show.”
Instead, it’s the “very small circle” — such as Russia’s heads of intelligence, military and security services — who cooked up the invasion plan with Putin, said Hill.
“These are not the kind of guys who have yachts off Monaco, palaces in Paris or anything like this,” Hill explained. “These are people who are very much rooted in Russia itself and I don’t think they’re too worried about all of these sanctions and everything that’s cut off, because they’re not invested in the West. They’ve really got that bunker siege mentality — fortress Russia.”
Members of this small circle are who Putin “probably does have to worry about” if “it looks like Russia is losing,” said Hill, an intelligence analyst under former President George W. Bush and Barack Obama who later served on the National Security Council under Donald Trump. Hill was an important witness during Trump’s first impeachment.
“I don’t think they care about the world of public opinion,” Hill added. “But if there’s not any movement on the ground, if that great convoy of tanks just basically runs out of gas and is just left there, and if they have to kind of lay waste to Ukraine to basically get a success … you might then start to get a backlash from those people who are thinking this has not gone as they intended.”
With war on its doorstep, Moldova applies for EU membership
Alexander Tanas – March 3, 2022
EU summit in Brussels
CHISINAU (Reuters) – Moldovan President Maia Sandu signed a formal application for her country to join the European Union on Thursday, charting a pro-Western course hastened by Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
Sandu’s move comes days after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a request for immediate EU membership as it battles invading Russian forces.
Moscow is fiercely opposed to the eastern expansion of both the EU and especially of NATO, which it sees as a direct threat to its own national security.
Sandu, the prime minister and the parliamentary speaker all signed the document during a briefing in the capital Chisinau, where pro-Russian and pro-EU politicians have vied for control since Moldova won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
“It took 30 years for Moldova to reach maturity, but today the country is ready to take responsibility for its own future,” said Sandu, before holding up the signed document to the television cameras.
“We want to live in peace, prosperity, be part of the free world. While some decisions take time, others must be made quickly and decisively, and taking advantage of the opportunities that come with a changing world,” she said.
The application will be sent to Brussels in the coming days, she said.
Negotiations to join the EU – which both Chisinau and Kyiv have not even begun – typically take many years as the candidate country aligns its legislation with that of the 27-nation bloc.
EU leaders may discuss Ukraine’s request at an informal summit next month, diplomats said.
(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Toby Chopra and Gareth Jones)
France’s Macron thinks ‘the worst is yet to come’ in Ukraine after talking with Putin, reports say
Jake Epstein – March 3, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets French President Emmanuel Macron (R) on February 07, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.Kremlin Press Office/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
France’s Macron thinks “the worst is yet to come” in Ukraine after talking with Putin on Thursday.
A senior French official said the 90-minute phone call did not yield any diplomatic progress.
The official said Putin was determined to carry out the ongoing war in Ukraine until “the end.”
French President Emmanuel Macron thinks “the worst is yet to come” in Ukraine after talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, according to multiple reports.
A senior French official said Macron’s warning came after the two leaders spoke for 90 minutes, which did not yield any diplomatic progress, The Washington Post reported.
The official said Putin was determined to carry out the ongoing war in Ukraine until “the end,” the paper reported.
Putin also told Macron that Russia’s goals in Ukraine would be “fulfilled” and that the war was going “according to plan,” Reuters reported, citing a statement issued by the Kremlin.
The statement read: “It was confirmed that, first of all, we are talking about the demilitarisation and neutral status of Ukraine, so that a threat to the Russian Federation will never emanate from its territory.”
Russia on Wednesday captured its first major city, Kherson, after nearly a week of failure to break Ukrainian resistance.
Western officials have warned that Russia’s lack of anticipated progress in Ukraine so far may lead to Putin’s decision to stage a more aggressive approach.
In the last few days, Russian forces have ramped up their attacks on Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv, and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, as troops reportedly fire missiles at civilian areas.
As a result, the US State Department has accused Russia of “widespread” human rights abuses in Ukraine, while top advocacy groups warn that ongoing bombings and attacks against Ukrainian citizens could be considered war crimes.
The International Criminal Court on Wednesday announced that it is launching an investigation into potential war crimes in Ukraine.
The results of that research remain a mystery, as does a solution to the enigma of whether the heir to Lenin’s throne—one Vladimir Putin—believes his own hype or is experiencing buyer’s remorse over an invasion that caught the rest of the Kremlin unawares.
Sadly, work has not yet begun dissecting Putin’s cerebrum for clues.
Short of delving inside his mind, Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia on the U.S. National Security Council during the Trump administration, did a splendid job of purifying Putin’s sense and sensibility in a recent interview. “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally,” she told Politico. “It’s reestablishing dominance over what Russia sees as the Russian Imperium. We’re treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again.”
Rewind about 150 years and you will hear a familiar refrain from Russia’s imperial Romanov family, who spent 300 years brutally persuading their subjects to back endless wars. “If the West is cursing Russia, Russia is doing something right,” blustered the multi-titled Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.
To be sure, you really had to be in the audience to feel the full force of tub-thumping late-19th-century Tsar Alexander III’s patriotic call to arms but Alexander Romanov is widely believed to be Putin’s favorite tsar. His father—Alexander II—was assassinated in 1881. A group of young people hurled three bombs at him (without the assistance of TikTok). The Bolsheviks in 1918 murdered the last of the Romanov thoroughbreds in a cellar. The Soviets followed with 69 years of great expectations. The happy drunk and baptized Russian Orthodox Christian Boris Yeltsin became the star of the show in 1991, until Putin took over in 2000.
Still, for the casual visitor, Russia’s memory lane never stretched much further than the gift shop at the Hermitage Museum.
Once upon a time in Moscow, Red Square was an open air market built atop a pavement of logs laid down to cover the mud and keep the tsar’s boots clean and the patriarch’s robe sparkling when they strolled out of the Kremlin. That is the level of reverence Putin has spent the past 22 years resurrecting on state-controlled television for his isolated home audience of 146 million Russian souls.
“Russian politicians excel in making people everywhere believe in things which are not real,” Vladimir Yerofeyev once explained over dinner during my years as a correspondent in Moscow. Yerofeyev should know. He was Joseph Stalin’s translator and no slouch when it came to triggering the trickery Russian leaders use to rally public support to exorcise Western criticism.
The Imperial Kremlin has two masters, one temporal, the other spiritual. The tsar and the Russian Patriarch of All Moscow and All Rus. The tsar and his hierophant-in-chief worked and lived and ruled in tandem. “There’s no difference between the secular realm and the spiritual realm,” explains the Byzantine and Russian historian Henry Hopwood-Phillips. “The tsar and the patriarch are meant to occupy the same body and the same mystical mind. That’s the anvil of Russia’s domestic Byzantine statecraft.”
And Putin’s hammer is wielded by God.
“Let God save the Russian soil,” Putin’s Patriarch Kirill earlier this week on TV told his flock of 90 million devout parishioners. “When I say Russian, I use an ancient expression from the chronicles of where Russian soil started, which includes the Ukraine and Belarus. God forbid,” Kirill thundered, “that the evil forces that have always fought against the unity of Russia and the Russian church get the upper hand in brotherly Ukraine.”
Kirill’s frequent pronouncements in support of Putin’s destruction of Ukraine are not gibberish and, for more Russians than many in the West might want to believe, it’s not lunacy. According to a Feb. 27 poll conducted by Obshestvennoemnenie, 71 percent of the 1,500 respondents said Putin is “working his post rather well” and that they “generally trust him.” Indeed, Russia’s incarcerated opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in a message recently smuggled out of his jail cell, raged against Putin’s primitive melding of the secular and the spiritual to retain miraculous power.
“I will not remain silent watching pseudo-historical nonsense about the events of 100 years ago become an excuse for Russians to kill Ukrainians,” Navalny pleaded. “Let us not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar.”
He is desperately trying to recapture a romanticized heyday.
“Putin looks to be suffering deep melancholy,” reckons Hopwood-Phillips. “His consciousness is still floating in the 17th century, and 44 million Ukrainians are paying the price.”
In Putin’s Russia, nostalgia is what it used to be.
Drone footage shows the horrific aftermath of a Russian attack on a town north of Kyiv
Charles R. Davis – March 3, 2022
An aerial view shows a residential building destroyed by shelling, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in the settlement of Borodyanka in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022. Picture taken with a drone.REUTERS/Maksim Levin
The town is located some 35 miles northwest of the capital, Kyiv.
A resident told Reuters that a Russian tank fired on a supermarket there.
Drone footage from a town north of Kyiv shows that Russian forces have attacked civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
The footage, recorded by the news agency Reuters, shows widespread destruction of residential buildings in Borodyanka, 35 miles from the Ukrainian capital. The town has been subjected to repeated shelling from the Russian military.
A resident of the town described a possible war crime, claiming a Russian armored personnel carrier and tank directly attacked civilians.
“They started shooting from their APC towards the park in front of the post office,” the man told Reuters, testimony that could not be independently confirmed. “Then those bastards started the tank and started shooting into the supermarket which was already burned. It caught fire again. An old man ran outside like crazy, with big round eyes, and said ‘give me a Molotov cocktail! I just set their APC on fire!'”
Locals claim to have repelled the Russian advance in the town.
In a speech on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to offer a pretext for targeting civilian infrastructure, claiming Ukrainian forces were using civilians as “human shields.”
According to Amnesty International, Russia has been “attacking civilians in Ukraine,” with widespread reports of artillery fire and cruise missiles hitting non-military objectives, including a Holocaust memorial in the capital.
At least 22 people were killed in one strike on Chernihiv, another town north of Kyiv, the Financial Times reported. Locals reported the indiscriminate use of cluster bomb munitions, another potential war crime.
Georgia, another former Soviet state that Russia invaded, asks to join EU days after Ukraine application
Alexandra Ma – March 3, 2022
European Commission President von der Leyen.Kenzo Tribouillard/Pool via REUTERS
Georgia submitted an application to join the European Union on Thursday.
Georgia is a former Soviet satellite state that shares a border with Russia. Russia invaded it in 2008.
Ukraine applied to join the EU earlier this week amid Russia’s invasion.
Georgia, the former Soviet satellite state that Russia invaded in 2008, formally submitted an application to join the European Union on Thursday.
The move comes three days after Ukraine submitted its application to join the EU amid Russia’s invasion, which was in its eighth day on Thursday.
Georgia, like Ukraine, is a former Soviet satellite state that shares a border with Russia.
Russia sent troops into the country in what transpired to be a five-day conflict in 2008. After the war, Russia recognized two disputed territories — South Ossetia and Abkhazia — as independent states, though the Georgian government and the United Nations consider them Georgian territories under Russian occupation.
Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said in a statement Thursday: “History has made the European choice of the Georgian people a strategic goal. Since the day of gaining independence, our country has consistently continued to move in this direction, and today is another demonstration of our efforts.” It made no mention of Russia or Ukraine.
Russians should not assassinate Vladimir Putin, says Boris Johnson
Mason Boycott-Owen – March 3, 2022
The Prime Minister’s spokesperson said: “We stand with the Ukrainian people in demanding the immediate end to the Russian invasion.” – PHILL MAGAKOE /AFP
Boris Johnson does not want Russians to assassinate Vladimir Putin, his spokesman has said, despite a US senator inviting a ‘Brutus’ to deal with the Russian president.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator, last night publicly called for that move, telling Fox News: “How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate… and take this guy out.”
Today, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said Mr Johnson did not agree with that idea.
The spokesman said: “We’ve said before that Putin must be held to account at the International [Criminal] Court for the horrific acts that have been seen.”
It comes as Gordon Brown called for a new Nurenberg to be established so that Mr Putin can be tried for his crimes of aggression against Ukraine.
“If we were to acquiesce in any way, none of us could ever take freedom or democracy for granted ever again,” said the former prime minister.
Russian invasion of Ukraine affecting Louisiana economy, and not just with higher gas prices
Sabrina LeBoeuf, Monroe News-Star – March 3, 2022
Rising gas prices aren’t the only consequence of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine. The conflict is having other effects on the U.S. economy, according to University of Louisiana Monroe economics professor Tammy Johnston.
“There seems to be a lot of negative things happening right now, and none of it is going to be a quick fix,” Johnston said.
Gas prices are increasing because 7% of the oil in the United States is imported from Russia, Johnston said. Currently, Louisiana is experiencing some of its highest gas prices since 2014. Things could become worse if Russia cuts off its oil supply, Johnston said.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html
Additionally, the stock market is becoming more volatile due to the conflict. Johnston said there has been a dip in the stock market caused by Russia’s invasion and the uncertainty that has come with it.
Johnston said this affects most people through their retirement savings, which are usually 401(k) accounts that invest in the stock market.
“Even if people aren’t actively investing, they have retirement savings,” Johnston said. “And so you’ve got the 401(k)’s, and they’re going down in value. And so it’s causing a lot of anxiety.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is having a ripple effect on the economy at the local, state and national level.
Fertilizer prices are also on the rise, leaving farmers to absorb the price jump. Johnston said Russia is the second-largest producer of fertilizer in the world, so the invasion and sanctions on Russia do not help.
Since last year, fertilizer prices have risen 50%, and they continue to go up, Johnston said, with some fertilizer prices having doubled . These increases will affect food supply, she said, but farmers are going to be the most affected.
“My family back in Illinois has a farm, and whenever I was there at Christmas, that was all the talk was — the cost of fertilizer,” Johnston said. “At least for our farm, we made a point to buy the fertilizer earlier than we usually would because we were anticipating even more increases.”
Furthermore, travel restrictions enacted due to the conflict in Ukraine, along with heightened fuel prices, are causing air-fare costs to go up. This change will affect tourism, an industry Louisiana relies upon heavily. Increased prices deter more folks from travelling to tourist-heavy places like New Orleans.
Johnston said these economic woes sit on top of problems that pre-dated the invasion in Ukraine, including inflation. She said the U.S. Federal Reserve is preparing to increase interest rates in March to offset inflation. This will cause people to want to spend less, thus causing prices to go down. However, this chain of actions has the possibility of leading to a recession.
“We’ve got a lot happening all at once, and none of it’s good,” Johnston said.
China-backed bank halts lending to Russia, Belarus
March 3, 2022
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was launched in 2016 to counter the West’s dominance of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (AFP/Mark Schiefelbein) (Mark Schiefelbein)
The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank said it will suspend business related to Russia and Belarus, which have been hit with massive international sanctions over the Ukraine war.
In a statement issued Thursday, the AIIB said that “in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review”.
The bank added that it was “actively monitoring the situation” in Ukraine and that management would do the “utmost to safeguard the financial integrity of AIIB”.
The multilateral financial institution, a brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was launched in 2016 to counter the West’s dominance of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Russia is among the AIIB’s founding members and holds around a six percent vote in its operations. It also has a seat on the bank’s board of directors.
It is the third-biggest stakeholder behind China — which holds almost 27 percent of voting power — and India.
Disclosures on the AIIB website show it has so far approved two Russia projects with financing of $800 million.
Only a small portion of its loan portfolio is in Russia.
Two projects for Belarus have also been proposed, in the fields of public health and transport.
“AIIB stands ready to extend financing flexibly and quickly and support members who have been adversely impacted by the war,” the bank said, without giving further details.
While Russia and Belarus are members of the bank, Ukraine is not.
While majority of governments have reacted to Russia’s invasion with sanctions, Beijing, which has close ties with the Kremlin, has taken a cautious line over the invasion — neither condemning it nor voicing outright support.
Financial institutions and businesses around the world are scrambling to distance themselves from Russia and Belarus over the conflict.
The Shanghai-based New Development Bank, established around the same time and for similar reasons as AIIB, also said it has “put new transactions in Russia on hold”.
