Thus the newspaper, which until some time ago was proud to host in the Latvian Palazzo Grazioli the same Vladimir Putin who today pretends not to know, yesterday reached heights that perhaps not even La Stampa reached with its first published page reached the Foreign Ministry. Ninecolumn title: Putin loses the pieces. First line of Blitz: Escape from the Tsar: The former Deputy Prime Minister leaves and the state banker resigns. Basically the premium. translation into reality. The only one to quit is Anatoly Chubais, so strategic in Putin’s entourage that he’s been relegated to the role of special envoy on the climate. Basically a joke with the legs given Russia’s status as a fossil fuel economy giant. In short, the newspaper of the man who hosted Putin begins its edition in Latvian with a ninecolumn headline to let us know that a Russian politician whose weight in Putin’s system of power is equivalent to that of a vegan in a butcher’s shop, he has left. Brilliant.
And the central banker, in fact the talented Elvira Nabiullina, who by chance never believed in the lie of temporary inflation and started raising interest rates long in advance, dismissed the tsar at the most delicate moment? Don’t worry, it’s stuck. The only rumor in this regard relates to a rumor by Bloomberg regarding his communication to Vladimir Putin that he does not intend to accept the third mandate, which the Russian President intends to entrust to her instead. A little different from those who sell you their de facto task of resisting the military operation in Ukraine, don’t you think? But the best so to speak is yet to come with the second part of the bolt: the desperate move: “Pay for the gas in rubles”. And it splashes the price. Well, the fact that Dutch ratings in Amsterdam are up 30% on the day already shows that this move might not be so desperate. Especially since it was delivered at an awkward time for Europe, to say the least: on the eve of yesterday’s summit, at which we had to discuss the implementation of sanctions and actually joint responses on the energy front. Here is the gift from the Kremlin. Which came in a context the newspaper of Latvia’s former Putin supplier doesn’t seem to include in its enlightened chronicle: Russia just paid due new bond coupons on time. And now, the guaranteed reprieve comes conveniently in June: In short, as I tell you from the start, those who expect Russia’s default as the providential move to bail Vladimir Putin out of the crate risk an endless and almost Beckettian wait.
And the Moscow Stock Exchange? Yesterday it reopened: at noon it marked + 5.49%. Perhaps someone is violating the sanctions and shoveling up strategic Russian stocks at a great price since big bucks like Gazprom were back in negotiations? Second, even before the announcement of the switch to ruble payments, the Russian currency had risen, and not a little: from 140 per dollar on March 8, it was around 100 on Wednesday morning. Without Moscow making a move, as it was about the Russians acted central bank bound by the reserve freeze. In short, there is no possibility of a Turkish option to support the currency. The market simply appreciates reality. Instead, the newspaper of the Latvian supplier only publishes his wishes as news. And the reality is that Russia will not turn out like 1998 at all. And indeed, until Europe finds a real and credible alternative for its supply, Moscow will remain firmly in the grip.
And if by the end of this year the umbilical cord with the tsar was cut until last week, the socalled European experts began to take action even before yesterday’s summit: Real independence from Russia will take three years. And meanwhile, how do you do it? To warm up, of course, you can burn the newspaper published by the one who loaned the Latvians to Vladimir Putin, but how do factories and industries do it? On the other hand, the Kremlin’s is a desperate move. For real? Beyond the mere question of gas costs, the Russian election has threefold significance.
First, to show the West and its central banks, engaged in a continuous printing operation, what alternative they might face from now on. That is, a gasbacked ruble, a ruble tied to a strategic commodity rather than a Qe plan printed out of thin air by pressing electronic creation keys. In short, if Turkey’s option to deploy reserves to halt the local currency’s free fall has been blocked by sanctions and the Russian Central Bank’s asset freeze, Moscow is sidestepping the issue. Create demand for rubles. And not artificial, but dramatically concrete. As shown by the bills of households and businesses and the continuous interventions by governments to cushion their impact on purchasing power and income.
Second, send a signal of financial resilience. Because the implementation of payment in rubles presupposes at least at the theoretical and political message level the overshadowing of the need for foreign exchange to pay for imports: If you want petrol, you have to buy rubles. And dramatically guarantees its strengthening of the exchange rate. Needless to say, this is a move with very high internal propaganda value.
Third, to urge the EU to speed up its accounts with reality. In fact, if the Brussels authorities initially proposed optimistic forecasts of liberation from energy dependence by 2022, we are already talking about at least 3 years of sustainable independence from Moscow. And as the Wood Mackenzie study I told you about on Tuesday shows, if Europe can count on enough gas reserves today to get through the summer, it’s only because Gazprom has guaranteed supplies so far. In addition, twoweek flows like those guaranteed until midMarch and the EU and UK will be able to boast of stocks of 27 billion cubic meters, the 5year average.
Does Brussels really have a valid alternative to Russian gas on its hands, or is it sailing on sight between Qatar, Algeria and Israel? If the countries of the Union gave in to blackmail and paid in rubles, the defeat would clearly be double. On the one hand, exposing the bluff, ending dependence on Russia and finding yourself in the awkward situation of imposing sanctions posed as bazookas but reduced to a mere water pistol, precisely by upgrading the Russian uniform thanks to European demand. Finally, the movement of the horse towards western central banks: a possible no to payment in rubles, where would it send the cost of gasoline, and therefore the weight of energy in the calculation of inflation, which is already skyrocketing? Does the Kremlin seem like a desperate move? Or does she come across as decidedly strategic, although she can’t admit it?
I understand that there is an almost entirely stable order in the media world that requires the denial of reality and the projection of what is just wishful thinking into the news. But be careful, because while someone might have passed off the farewell of a nobody like Anatoly Chubais as a sensational defector, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now number two on the National Security Council, was warning everyone of a turnaround that would come as the hours went by it became increasingly obvious and increasingly unacceptable to Moscow: “Russia has been the target of a mediocre and primitive Western game since the fall of the Soviet Union. For some, that means Russia must be humiliated, constrained, convulsed, divided and destroyed. In response to the Post, here is the scenario suggested by one of Vladimir Putin’s mostlistenedto advisers, Vladimir Soloviev, in an interview with Russian public television in the event of a complete breakdown of the diplomatic route: “Nuclear attack on the EU, Invading Poland and Lithuania and creating a permanent link from Belarus to Kaliningrad.
If you must shoot really big, it might be better to report what is actually said. However, dystopian and apocalyptic. And don’t turn the farewell of an oil and gas exporting superpower’s special climate envoy into version 2.0 of the Ides of March. But, you know, these are the same people who want to hang Putin upside down for being a despot who suppresses freedoms while informing and lobbying for the cancellation of Professor Orders’ cooperation agreement with Cartabianca. Hypocrite with helmet. Who knows, after the Pope’s words yesterday about the decision to reduce military spending to 2% of GDP, even today they will still have the bad taste of including the Holy Father on behalf of third parties in the warmongering bandwagon?
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