Ex-Fox News Producer Broke Law With Work for Russian Oligarch, U.S. Says

March 4, 2022


A former Fox News producer was charged on Thursday with violating U.S. sanctions by working for a Russian oligarch who has been accused of being a leading financial supporter of separatists in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and has close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin.

The producer, John Hanick, was arrested in London last month and charged in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in what federal prosecutors said was the first such indictment stemming from sanctions imposed as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Konstantin Malofeev — the oligarch who employed Mr. Hanick, according to the indictment — was labeled “one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea” by the Treasury Department when the sanctions were put in place in December 2014. Mr. Hanick worked for Mr. Malofeev from 2013 to 2017.

The case against Mr. Hanick, a 71-year-old U.S. citizen, was announced as the United States and much of the rest of the world continue to punish Russia financially amid broader efforts to halt its war on Ukraine. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced a new task force to “hold accountable corrupt Russian oligarchs” who had supported the invasion.

Although the charges against Mr. Hanick arise from eight-year-old sanctions, they are of a piece with other steps the United States and its allies have taken more recently and indicate that the federal authorities will use every available lever to exert pressure on Mr. Putin and his circle.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, emphasized the point in a statement.

The charges, he said, showed a “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes.”

Mr. Hanick, who was with Fox News at its inception and spent 15 years at the network before leaving in 2011, is charged in the indictment with one count of violating sanctions and another of lying to F.B.I. agents who interviewed him last year.

Lawyers for Mr. Hanick could not be reached for comment. A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Malofeev, a banker and devoted follower of the Russian Orthodox faith, is one of Russia’s most influential magnates and among the most prominent conservatives within the country’s Kremlin-allied elite. (The indictment renders his surname as Malofeyev).


He is a bulwark of Mr. Putin’s support on the Russian right, has ties to far-right politicians in the United States and Europe and has been accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine in addition to his activities in Crimea. He has denied the accusations.

He has also been a main figure in a push meant to increase Russia’s influence in Africa while diminishing that of Western nations.

Mr. Hanick’s work for Mr. Malofeev involved developing media outlets in Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and elsewhere, according to the indictment. He moved to Russia in July 2013 after negotiating an employment agreement “directly with Malofeev” that provided for a salary, a $5,000 monthly housing stipend and health insurance, the indictment says.

At the start, Mr. Hanick worked mostly on a project to build a Russian cable television news network, which went on the air in April 2015, the government said. Mr. Malofeev was by then subject to the U.S. sanctions as well as similar European measures.

Mr. Hanick played a leadership role at the network, described variously in emails as board chairman, general producer and general adviser, the indictment says.

Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia

Jose Pagliery
Thu, March 3, 2022

Screenshot/Right Wing Watch

As the United States increasingly goes after some of the Kremlin’s business tentacles, the latest person arrested for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia is a former Fox News director who left to launch a Russian propaganda network.

The Department of Justice on Thursday revealed that Jack Hanick was quietly arrested in London on Feb. 3 for dodging U.S. sanctions by helping a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeyev, start his right-wing Tsargrad TV.

The DOJ simultaneously unsealed a grand jury indictment against him, accusing Hanick of knowingly engaging in business dealings with Malofeyev, who had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in financing Russia-backed soldiers in eastern Ukraine who have violently tried to break off from the democratic country since 2014.

Sean Hannity’s Ukraine War ‘Plans’ Are Even Dumber Than You Think

The indictment also accuses Hanick of lying to FBI agents about his travels to Greece and Bulgaria to expand the TV network in 2015 and 2016, when he was interviewed by American investigators last year in New York City.

Federal agents assert that many of the damning details about Hanick’s Kremlin adventures were laid out in an unpublished memoir he kept in his email account, which was searched by the feds with a court-approved search warrant.

Malofeyev was sanctioned in December 2014 by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for financing separatists in the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia-aligned fighters there operated with the not-so-secret help of that country's military and used that government’s weapons when they shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers.

Malofeyev (also spelled in the West as Malofeev) started an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad TV. In 2020, he launched a similarly named right-wing political group in Russia with an imperialist bent that would—much like the National Rifle Association does in the United States—pressure politicians to toe the conservative line.

I’m a Former Russian TV Anchor. Fox News Mimics State TV.

According to The Warsaw Institute, a Polish-based geopolitical think tank, “Tsargrad” would test political candidates’ adherence to “traditional family, religious, and cultural values of the Russian people.”

The Financial Times in 2015 analyzed how Malofeyev launched his “conservative yet modern spin on global news” in an attempt to mimic the rise of Fox News. Then, in 2018, the online news site Salon called out Hanick for joining the Russian operation, noting that he had previously served as a director for Fox News host Sean Hannity. However, on Thursday, Fox News told The Daily Beast that assertion was wrong and never corrected.

Hanick got his start at Fox News when it first launched in 1996. Fifteen years later, in 2011, he left. Three years later, he joined forces with Malofeyev’s Russian propaganda operation. The Justice Department now wants to extradite him from the United Kingdom to New York City.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, issued a statement noting that sanctions “prohibit United States citizens from working for or doing business with Malofeyev but as alleged, Hanick violated those sanctions by working directly for Malofeyev on multiple television projects over the course of several years.”

Williams noted the indictment underscores his office’s “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes. This Office will continue to be a leader in the Justice Department’s work to hold accountable actors who would support flagrant and unjustified acts of war.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated Hanick was a producer on Sean Hannity’s show. While he worked at Fox News for 15 years, a Fox spokesperson said he never worked on Hannity’s program.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

School Superintendent Responds After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Scolds Students For Wearing Masks
POLITICS OVER SCIENCE

Virginia Chamlee
Wed, March 2, 2022

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

A school superintendent is responding after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was filmed berating students for wearing face masks during a visit to the University of South Florida on Wednesday.

Before a speech, DeSantis was filmed telling a group of high school students standing behind him, "You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything and we've gotta stop with this COVID theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."

While some of the students could be seen removing their masks in response to the comments, others kept them on.

In a statement sent to PEOPLE, Hillsborough Schools Superintendent Addison Davis said the district was "proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves," noting that it is their choice "to protect their health in a way they feel most appropriate."

RELATED: Ron DeSantis Claims 'Fabricated Media Narrative' of Tension with Trump, Says He's Focused on Re-Election

According to the district seven children were in attendance at the press conference, which was held to announce funding for cybersecurity education. All of the students attend Tampa's Middleton High School.

"We are excited our students from Middleton High School were highlighted as part of the statewide focus around cyber security education," Davis said in the statement. "Our Cyber Security pathway at MHS has had tremendous success through student's earning industry certifications, participating in internships and leading the way in computer systems and information technology."

The statement continued: "As always, our students should be valued and celebrated. It is a student and parents' choice to protect their health in a way they feel most appropriate. We are proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves and our school district."

While DeSantis is widely rumored to be preparing a 2024 presidential run, he is shot down that speculation, saying in previous interviews that he is "not considering anything beyond doing my job."

The Republican governor, who narrowly won his 2018 election, is not without controversy.

Still, he's worked to raise his national profile over the past few years, sometimes by fueling culture-war conflicts similar to former President Donald Trump.

DeSantis has touted his decision not to impose widespread restrictions during the pandemic (though it's worth noting he did order a statewide lockdown in April 2020) but he has faced much scrutiny for his handling of the virus. He opposed mandating public health measures in the state and attempted to block local leaders' authority to issue mask mandates in municipalities throughout the state.

RELATED: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Downplays 2024 Aspirations: 'Not Considering Anything'

Last July, DeSantis issued an order barring local school districts from requiring students to wear masks, despite federal recommendations that all students in kindergarten through 12th grade wear face coverings when they return to the classroom in the fall.

A fundraising group affiliated with DeSantis also released a line of merchandise that takes aim at masks and White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci, such as a $12 "Don't Fauci My Florida" koozie.

#WATERISLIFE

Climatologists: Drought to worsen in Oregon, Idaho this year

GILLIAN FLACCUS
Thu, March 3, 2022

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest warned Thursday that much of Oregon and parts of Idaho can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years, which already featured dwindling reservoirs, explosive wildfires and deep cuts to agricultural irrigation.

At a news conference hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, water and climate experts from Oregon, Washington and Idaho said parts of the region should prepare now for severe drought, wildfires and record-low stream flows that will hurt salmon and other fragile species.

Drought covers 74% of the Pacific Northwest and nearly 20% is in extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. An unusual ridge of high pressure off the U.S. West Coast scuttled storms in January and February that the region normally counts on to replenish water levels and build up a snowpack that feeds streams and rivers in later months, the experts said.

“This year we’re doing quite a bit worse than we were last year at this time, so one of the points is to make everyone aware that we’re going into some tough times in Oregon this summer,” said Larry O'Neill, Oregon's state climatologist. “Right now, we’re very worried about this region, about the adversity of impacts we’re going to experience this year.”

The predictions are in line with dire warnings about climate change-induced drought and extreme heat across the American West.

A 22-year megadrought deepened so much last year that the broader region is now in the driest spell in at least 1,200 years — a worst-case climate change scenario playing out in real time, a study found last month. The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

In the Pacific Northwest, the worst impacts from the drought this summer will be felt in Oregon, which missed out on critical winter storms would normally moisten central and southern Oregon and southern Idaho. Scientists are debating the cause of the shift in the weather pattern and some believe a warming northern Pacific Ocean could be part of the cause, said O'Neill.

“Climate change may be changing this storm track, but there is yet no consensus on how it is affecting the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

The National Interagency Fire Center recently designated all of central Oregon as “above normal” for fire danger starting in May — one of the earliest starts of fire season in the state ever. Most of central and eastern Oregon is in exceptional or extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and parts of eastern Washington and western and southern Idaho are in severe drought.

Seven counties in central Oregon are experiencing the driest two-year period since the start of record-keeping 127 years ago. Overall, Oregon is experiencing its third-driest two-year period since 1895, the experts said.

Most reservoirs in Oregon are 10% to 30% lower than where they were at this time last year and some are at historic lows, signaling serious problems for irrigators who rely on them to water their crops.

Southern Idaho is also experiencing severe drought and a major reservoir in the Boise Basin has below average water supply, said David Hoekema of the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

“It takes more than just an average year to recover and it doesn’t appear that we’re going to have an average year,” he said. “At this point, we expect southern Idaho to continue in drought … and we could also see drought intensify.”

Some of Oregon's driest areas are already running into trouble.

After a water crisis last summer that left dozens of homes with no water, more domestic wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry. State water monitors have measured a troubling drop in the underground aquifer that wasn't replenished by winter precipitation, said Ivan Gall, field services division administrator for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

His agency has received complaints of 16 domestic wells that have run dry since Jan. 1 and is scrambling to figure out how many more wells might go dry this summer in a cascading crisis, he said. Farming season in the agricultural powerhouse began Tuesday.

Last summer, farmers and ranchers in the basin didn't receive any water from a massive federally owned irrigation project because of drought conditions and irrigators instead pumped much more water than usual from the underground aquifer to stay afloat, Gall said.

The tension over water gained national attention when, for a brief period, anti-government activists camped out at the irrigation canal and threatened to open the water valves in violation of federal law.

“We’re going to start this year’s pumping season 10 feet lower than we did last season, which is a problem,” said Gall, who is already fielding calls from worried water users. “I think it's going to be another rough water year in the Klamath Basin.”

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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus

Activision Blizzard Employee Kerri Moynihan’s Parents Say Sexual Harassment Led to Their Daughter’s Suicide

March 4, 2022

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A Southern California couple whose daughter died by suicide at a three-day Activision Blizzard employee retreat is suing the video game giant for allegedly engendering a culture of “brutal workplace sexual harassment” that they say led directly to her death.

In the 50-page civil suit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday, Paul and Janet Moynihan accuse Activision Blizzard—which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion—of failing to rein in the bad behavior they believe “was a substantial factor in bringing about” 32-year-old Kerri Moynihan’s decision to take her own life.

The filing blames Activision Blizzard for having “fostered and permitted a sexually hostile work environment to exist in which female employees were routinely sexually harassed, belittled, disparaged and discriminated against, and Activision failed and refused to take corrective action or reasonable steps to prevent that harassment.”

“Examples of such sexual harassment included ‘cube crawls,’ in which inebriated male employees ‘crawled’ through office cubicles and groped or engaged in other inappropriate conduct toward female employees; unwanted sexual comments, advances and physical touching directed toward female employees by male co-workers (including, in some cases, by high-ranking male executives); open banter by male employees about their sexual conquests and female bodies; and jokes about rape,” it says.

Activision Blizzard has been under fire since last year, when the State of California sued the company for allegedly fostering a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture” under which sexual harassment was not just tolerated, but largely welcomed. The company, which is behind such blockbuster video game titles as “Call of Duty,” also agreed to set up an $18 million fund for harassment victims following a separate lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over discriminatory workplace practices.

“There is no place anywhere at our company for discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind, and I am grateful to the employees who bravely shared their experiences,” CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement at the time. “I am sorry that anyone had to experience inappropriate conduct, and I remain unwavering in my commitment to make Activision Blizzard one of the world’s most inclusive, respected, and respectful workplaces.”

On April 27, 2017, a security guard at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, where Activision’s global sales and finance teams were meeting, found Kerri Moynihan, a CPA and finance manager at Activision’s Santa Monica headquarters, dead in her room, her parents’ lawsuit explains.

Kerri, at the time, was romantically involved with her supervisor, a married man with a newborn son identified in the filing as Greg Restituito. Having a sexual relationship with a subordinate “is contrary to Activision policy,” the Moynihans’ suit points out.

On the evening of April 26, Kerri joined a group of co-workers for dinner, explains the lawsuit. She was scheduled to give a presentation to her colleagues the next day, it says. At around 11 p.m., Kerri and some work friends headed to the Grand Californian’s bar for drinks.

A photo included in the Moynihans’ lawsuit, showing their daughter, Kerri, just a few hours before her death.

Los Angeles County Superior Court

About 90 minutes later, Kerri “spoke with Restituito in the hotel’s lobby, then returned to the bar,” the filing continues. A few minutes after that, Restituito sent Kerri a text message reading: “Please don’t do that. Not tonight. Think about it and make your decision when your mind is clear.”

Shortly before 2 a.m., Kerri left the bar and returned to her room. Restituito was staying directly across the hall, states the lawsuit, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

“According to data from Restituito’s room keycard, beginning at approximately 2:15 a.m., Restituito repeatedly left his room for short intervals,” it goes on. “The next morning, beginning at approximately 8:30 a.m., Restituito tried contacting Kerri. At approximately 9:00 a.m., Restituito contacted hotel security.”

Kerri’s body was discovered just before 9:30.

One of Restituito’s room keys was found in Kerri’s hotel room, according to the lawsuit. But Restituito and Activision Blizzard stonewalled investigators, and attempted to cover up what had happened, the Moynihans allege.

Restituito told detectives that he had been in Kerri’s room to prepare for a presentation at the conference, the suit explains. According to a police report cited in the filing, Restituito made “seemingly unusual inquiries with other employees who were present with [Kerri] the night preceding her death.”

The lawsuit also contends that Restituito later went to Kerri’s apartment “and cleaned it and removed items from it.”Restituito denied having a sexual relationship with Kerri, and “lied to the police about his reason for having a key to Kerri’s apartment,” the suit says, pointing out that Restituito finally came clean about the affair under a second round of questioning by detectives.

Restituito did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. Activision Blizzard, according to the Moynihans, “refused to turn over Kerri’s work-issued laptop” to police, and told investigators that her work-issued cell phone had been “wiped.”

The Moynihans state in their lawsuit that “Kerri’s suicide (if that) was the product of an uncontrollable impulse,” listing several reasons, including the fact that she did not leave behind a suicide note; there is no proof of any pre-planning; she never intimated to anyone that she was considering suicide; she had plans to attend a country music festival a few days later; she was soon going to serve as the maid-of-honor at a friend’s wedding for which she had already bought plane tickets; and that she would never have left her beloved cat, Mr. Leo, alone without making advance plans for him to be cared for.”

In an emailed statement to The Daily Beast on Friday night, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said, “We at Activision Blizzard were, and continue to be, deeply saddened by the tragic death of Ms. Moynihan, who was a valued member of the company. We will address the complaint through the legal process as appropriate, and out of respect for the family we have no further comment at this time.”

Restituito worked as a senior finance director for Activision Blizzard until May 2017, the month after Moynihan’s death, according to a LinkedIn profile cited by the Post.

The Moynihans’ lawsuit makes reference to a July 2021 lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), which cited a female Activision Blizzard employee who died by suicide on a company trip with her male boss, but did not identify Kerri Moynihan by name. It also refers to “an incident in or about December 2016, in which male co-workers passed around a photograph of Kerri’s vagina at an Activision holiday party.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court

After the DFEH lawsuit was filed, Activision Blizzard called it “distorted, and in many cases false,” saying the company was “sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family.”

The Moynihans, whose attorneys declined to comment on the record for this article, obviously see things very differently.

Kerri, a Massachusetts native, graduated cum laude from Northeastern University in 2008 with a degree in business administration, her parents note in their lawsuit. She became a Certified Public Accountant the following year, passing the CPA exam on her first try. “Kerri was Paul and Janet’s only child,” the suit states. “She was a loving, caring daughter to her parents, with whom she was extremely close. Kerri emailed her parents on a daily basis and usually spoke to at least one of them every day. Kerri and her parents went on family vacations together and Kerri frequently visited them during the holidays.”

Activision Blizzard, for its part, did not “take all reasonable steps to prevent” their daughter from being harassed at work, which the Moynihans say was a “substantial factor in causing harm to Kerri, including, without limitation, humiliation, embarrassment, belittlement, sadness, discomfort, emotional distress, mental anguish and pain and suffering, all to her detriment and damage and tragically culminating in Kerri’s death.”

They are seeking damages of at least $1 million.

If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

The post Activision Blizzard Employee Kerri Moynihan’s Parents Say Sexual Harassment Led to Their Daughter’s Suicide appeared first on The Daily Beast.

Russian news network staff walks off set to end broadcast amid crackdown on media

March 4, 2022


As Russia continues to crack down on independent media outlets within its borders, one television news channel ended its broadcast by showing staffers walking off a set Thursday in an act of protest.

Regulators in Russia accused the channel, also known as Dozhd or TV Rain, of “inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, causing mass disruption of public calm and safety, and encouraging protests,” the BBC reported.

“We need strength to exhale and understand how to work further. We really hope that we will return to the air and continue our work, “Natalya Sindeeva, CEO of Dozhd, said in a statement posted to social media.

Dozhd has also halted its website. Independent Russian news media is increasingly coming under scrutiny as news about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine depicts the struggles faced by the military as casualties on the battlefield and global criticism continue to mount.

Radio station Ekho Moskvy also had its website blocked, Reuters reported.

“The Ekho Moskvy board of directors has decided by a majority of votes to liquidate the radio channel and the website of Ekho Moskvy,” Editor-in-Chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on messaging app Telegram.

Russia has repeatedly rejected the terms “war” and “invasion” over its incursion into Ukraine and had accused the West of spreading disinformation with help from media outlets.

On Friday, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure that could jail journalists for up to 15 years for reporting “fake” news about the military and invasion that conflicts with statements from Russian officials.

At the start of the war, Mikhail Zygar, the founder of Dozhd, posted an open letter signed by journalists condemning the invasion.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine is a shame,” he wrote. “This is our shame, but unfortunately, our children will also have to bear the responsibility for it, a generation of very young and not yet born Russians.”

In response to the new law, some media outlets have ceased reporting from Russia and will report on the war from outside the country. The BBC said more Russians are tuning in for factual information.

The BBC’s Russian language news website tripled its year-to-date weekly average viewership with 10.7 million people in the last week, the outlet said earlier this week.

“It’s often said truth is the first casualty of war. In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust – and in a significant development, millions more Russians are turning to the BBC,” Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, said in a statement. “We will continue giving the Russian people access to the truth, however we can.”

The post Russian news network staff walks off set to end broadcast amid crackdown on media appeared first on Fox News.

The Russian elite daughters of Putin’s inner circle are using Instagram to slam his invasion of Ukraine


Carmela Chirinos
Thu, March 3, 2022

Young Russian elites are advocating for peace in Ukraine on social media, highlighting the generational divide that threatens Putin's power in Russia.

Russian elites publicly protesting the war include the children of oligarchs and government officials close to Putin.

Sofia Abramovich is a 26-year-old professional equestrian. In a post to her Instagram story, she said Putin is the one that wants war, not Russia. The post explained that the rhetoric of Russia wanting war was Kremlin propaganda.

Sofia’s father Roman Abramovich is the embattled owner of Chelsea FC. Despite accusations, he denies having links to the Kremlin.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CYZI_pQrkAb/

Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite and former presidential candidate, has fled Russia and is now in Turkey with her son. Her parents are the former mayor of St. Petersburg and a Russian senator. She has kept advocating, and yesterday posted a picture to Instagram calling for a cease-fire. The caption reads that she is scared and calls on Putin and his government to end the war.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CamxdozMf64/

Elizaveta (Lisa) Peskova, the daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also posted to her Instagram account. For a brief hour, a story included the hashtag #notothewar.

Peskova is the vice president of the Foundation for the Development of Russian-French Historical Initiatives and appears to be close to her father.

Last week, her father stood up for the arrests of protesters saying that by law, rallies are not allowed.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CVIlI1rjIDM/

Maria Yumasheva, the granddaughter of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin and daughter of current government advisor Valentin Yumashev, has also shown support for Ukraine. Yumasheva’s father helped Putin come to power by suggesting he would be a great candidate to Yelstin, the former president of Russia. Yumasheva’s latest Instagram post shows a photo of the Ukrainian flag captioned “no war,” and she tweeted the same, according to Yahoo.

The 19-year-old attended an anti-war rally in London earlier last week to show her solidarity with Ukrainians. Her fiancé Fedor Smolov, a striker for Dynamo Moscow and Russia, was was one of the first national team players to speak up against the invasion.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaW1gXSrQKW/

Andrey Rublev has also spoken out. The 24-year-old Russian tennis player wrote on the TV camera, “No war please,” after winning a match in Dubai.

These young elites are not alone, and many in the world share the sentiment. Rallies around the world have broken out against the Kremlin.

In Russia, around 1,700 people have been arrested since the invasion started, and last week someone even wrote “No to War” on the front door of the Russian parliament.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Zaporizhzhia: China ‘very concerned’ after Russia seizes Ukrainian nuclear power plant

Shweta Sharma
Fri, March 4, 2022

Surveillance camera footage shows a flare landing at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during shelling in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia blast

 (Zaporizhzhya NPP via REUTERS)

China urged “all sides to exercise restraint” to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, after Russian military forces launched an overnight attack to seize Europe’s biggest nuclear facility.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday that Beijing is “very concerned” about the ongoing situation.

“We will monitor the situation and call on all sides to exercise restraint, avoid escalation and ensure the safety of relevant nuclear facilities,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing.

China, a close ally of Russia, which has so far stopped short of condemning Moscow for the unprovoked attack on Ukraine, released a statement after a fire broke out at the nuclear power plant after shelling by Russian forces.

The fire at an adjacent five-story training facility sparked worldwide fears of a potential nuclear disaster in entire Europe.

Ukraine’s Emergency Services said they managed to extinguish the fire with broke out at a building outside the plant’s premises. The Ukrainian authorities claimed the plant has been seized by Russian troops.

The Ukrainian president on Friday sounded an ominous warning by referring to it as a repeat of 1986 Chernobyl disaster and accused Moscow of resorting to “nuclear terror”.

“If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe,” he said.

The attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was condemned by world leaders who called out Russian president Vladimir Putin as “horrific” and “reckless” attack endangering the safety of the whole of Europe.

Surveillance footage that captured the incident showed a blast lighting up the night sky before sending plumes of smoke out the plant.

In a statement on Facebook, Ukraine’s emergency services confirmed that “at 06:20 [04:20 GMT] the fire in the training building of Zaporizhzhia NPP in Energodar was extinguished. There are no victims.”

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency said that it was putting its “incident and emergency centre in full 24/7 response mode due to serious situation” at the nuclear power plant.

China’s Xi Jinping-led government has tried to distance itself from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine while avoiding criticising Moscow. It also denounced trade and financial sanctions on Russia and did not announce any humanitarian aid to war-torn Ukraine.

A China-led development bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), on Thursday suspended business ties with Russia and Belarus, in a sign of Beijing’s limits of its support to the country.

“Under these circumstances, and 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 Beijing-based bank said in a statement on Thursday.

The multilateral development bank did not give the reason for the suspension in business with two countries, but said “its thoughts and sympathy to everyone affected”.

What China thinks of the global economic war against Russia

March 3, 2022


China has long expressed its displeasure with what it calls the US’s “financial hegemony” and its corresponding ability to slap sanctions on foreign countries.

Now, as the US and Europe hit Russia with unprecedented sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, Chinese officials, academics, and experts are grappling with the implications of the unfolding full-scale global economic and financial war.

No to sanctions, yes to economic coercion?

Officially, Beijing has opposed the use of sanctions against Russia, deeming them illegal, and counterproductive.

“As far as financial sanctions are concerned, we do not approve of these, especially the unilaterally launched sanctions because they do not work well and have no legal grounds,” Guo Shuqing, China’s top banking regulator, told a news conference yesterday (March 2). He also played down effects of the sanctions on China’s economy and financial sector.

Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday that “[b]lindly…imposing sanctions and creating division and confrontation will only further complicate the situation, and result in a rapid negative spillover of the crisis.”

Yet China’s opposition to sanctions does not seem to stop it from deploying economic coercion against businesses and countries that anger it. Most recently, China has blocked Lithuanian goods and launched a state-led corporate boycott of multinationals with ties to the European country. That follows an unofficial Chinese boycott of Australian coal that began in late 2020.

Global integration as protection against sanctions

So far, sanctions on Moscow have included exemptions for energy to allow continued exports of oil and gas supplies that power the world’s economies—particularly Europe’s. That Russia’s integration with the global economy is what earns it a small degree of reprieve from sanctions is not lost on observers in China.

Facing the risk of uses of sanctions by the west in the future, “we need to continue to increase our efforts to integrate into the world economic system,” writes Jin Zhong (link in Chinese), a macro investor and columnist for the nationalist news site Guancha. “Only with a deeper and broader integration with other countries’ economies and investments will the so-called economic sanctions have a ‘half-hearted’ effect.”

At the same time as China weaves itself into the global economic fabric, however, it should also become less reliant on the US, writes Song Guoyou, a professor at Fudan University. “The international community has both seen the full extent of the US willingness and ability to use financial sanctions externally and is further concerned about the real national security risks of excessive financial dependence on the US,” he argued (link in Chinese) in a commentary this week.

One area where China has already seen such risk is when it comes to chips, after the US used export controls against Chinese smartphone maker Huawei.
China’s homegrown SWIFT alternative

Some have argued that Russia’s expulsion from SWIFT, the global financial messaging system, will boost China’s own cross-border payment system CIPS. Yet CIPS is currently still dependent on SWIFT.

In light of this potential vulnerability, China should urgently and “vigorously promote the internationalization of the renminbi, focusing especially on the development CIPS and the digital yuan,” wrote Ming Ming, an analyst at Citic Securities.

The post What China thinks of the global economic war against Russia appeared first on Quartz.

RIGHT WING COMMENTARY; ANTI CANCEL CULTURE
Canceling China Will Not Be as Easy as Canceling Russia

 By Gary Bauer | March 4, 2022 | 

Displayed are Chinese and American toy soldiers. (Photo credit: PETER PARKS/AFP/GettyImages)

Cancel Culture has come for Russia. In response to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been largely cut off from the global financial system. Major credit card companies and electronic payment platforms like Apple Pay cut off their Russian customers. Russian assets are being seized all over the world.

Russian airlines have been banned from American, Canadian, and European airspace. Major movie companies like Disney, Paramount, and Sony are canceling movie releases in Russia. (No "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" for you, Vlad!) Even Russian vodka is now "verboten."

And the sanctions are hurting. There was a run on the banks as Russians rushed to grab whatever cash they could get their hands on. The Russian stock market plunged 30%. The ruble collapsed. The Russian central bank was forced to double interest rates to 20%.

I'm not suggesting the West's "economic blitzkrieg" isn't justified. But the reason it was so easy to cancel Russia is because Russia does not have its economic tentacles all over the world.

There are no Russian centers spewing Russian propaganda on our college campuses. Instead, we have Confucius Institutes spewing communist Chinese propaganda on our college campuses.

Our corporate CEOs are not dreaming of wealth made in Moscow. They're dreaming of wealth made in Beijing.

There are few Russian products, other than oil and vodka, that we depend on. We don't need Russia's oil, and it's easy to cancel vodka. But if the pandemic proved anything, it proved just how dependent we are on communist China for just about everything.

When Americans demanded COVID tests, where did the Biden Administration go to get all those tests? Not to American companies, but to communist Chinese companies. (The irony is breathtaking!)

Our political establishment, the great family dynasties of American politics both Democrats and Republicans (and you know who I'm talking about), are complicit in the transfer of massive amounts of American wealth to communist China. They sent our factories and our jobs to communist China in exchange for cheap goods.

When Donald Trump started to crack down on communist China, there were fears he might deprive American teenagers of TikTok. Oh, the inhumanity! Meanwhile, there's an actual genocide taking place in communist China, but you know, priorities.

Yet even as we see all this, our country is STILL moving toward increasing our dependence on communist China.

Joe Biden talked a good game in his State of the Union address about "Buy American." But he's waging war against the great American energy industry, while he's pushing solar and wind power, which the communist Chinese control.

I would love to think that when communist China eventually moves to seize Taiwan – and we all know it will – we will see the same zealous determination to punish communist China as we have to punish Russia. But I fear we will see the exact opposite.

Powerful segments of American society won't be beating the drums of war. They will instead be apologizing for communist China, trying to protect their bank accounts.

Yes, Vladimir Putin is dangerous, but Russia is a declining power. Its economy is one-tenth of ours. Its empire is over.

Communist China, however, is a rising power. Its economy rivals ours. It is daily engaged in provocative maneuvers to intimidate other nations. Its tentacles are spreading all over the world.

In fact, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently suggested to NBC News that he was "blown away" by the scale of communist China's espionage efforts in the United States, adding that the Bureau is opening up a new case against possible communist Chinese spies every 12 hours.

Wray said, "There is no country that presents a broader, more severe threat to our innovation, our ideas, and our economic security than China." And he warned that China's efforts are becoming "more brazen [and] more damaging than ever before."

Unbelievably, the Biden Administration just shut down a Department of Justice program to root out Chinese spies. While the left obsessed over what Putin might have on Donald Trump, perhaps we should be asking, "What does Beijing have on Joe Biden?"

One final irony: We're right to boycott Russian products to isolate the Russian economy in response to Putin's aggression. But make no mistake about it: Communist China will take full advantage of this. They are playing the long game, while we obsess over the latest images on the nightly news.

As Sen. Marco Rubio accurately stated, Communist China is "the real long-term problem for this country....China is Russia times 1,000."

We can punish Russia all we want. But at the end of the day, communist China remains our greatest enemy.

Gary Bauer is the president of American Values, an educational nonprofit. He previously served as President Ronald Reagan's chief domestic policy advisor and undersecretary of education, President Donald Trump's appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and president of the Family Research Council.

Why the Chinese Internet Is Cheering Russia’s Invasion

As the world overwhelmingly condemns the assault on Ukraine, online opinion in China is mostly pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin.

A bombed Ukrainian home in south Kyiv. Many Chinese social media users have praised President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and accepted his justification for invading Ukraine.

Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

By Li Yuan
Feb. 28, 2022
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If President Vladimir V. Putin is looking for international support and approval for his invasion of Ukraine, he can turn to the Chinese internet.

Its users have called him “Putin the Great,” “the best legacy of the former Soviet Union” and “the greatest strategist of this century.” They have chastised Russians who protested against the war, saying they had been brainwashed by the United States.

Mr. Putin’s speech on Thursday, which essentially portrayed the conflict as one waged against the West, won loud cheers on Chinese social media. Many people said they were moved to tears. “If I were Russian, Putin would be my faith, my light,” wrote @jinyujiyiliangxiaokou, a user of the Twitter-like platform Weibo.

As the world overwhelmingly condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese internet, for the most part, is pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin.

Mr. Putin’s portrayal of Russia as a victim of the West’s political, ideological and military aggression has resonated deeply with many on social media. It dovetails with China’s narrative that the United States and its allies are afraid of China’s rise and the alternative world order it could create.

For its part, the Chinese government, Russia’s most powerful partner, has been more circumspect. Officials have declined to call Russia’s invasion an invasion, nor have they condemned it. But they have not endorsed it, either.

Under Xi Jinping, its top leader, China has taken a more confrontational stance on foreign policy in recent years. Its diplomats, the state media’s journalists and some of the government’s most influential advisers are far more hawkish than they used to be.

Together, they have helped to shape a generation of online warriors who view the world as a zero-sum game between China and the West, especially the United States.

A translation of Mr. Putin’s speech on Thursday by a nationalistic news site went viral, to say the least. The Weibo hashtag #putin10000wordsspeechfulltext got 1.1 billion views within 24 hours.

“This is an exemplary speech of war mobilization,” said one Weibo user, @apjam.

“Why was I moved to tears by the speech?” wrote @ASsicangyueliang. “Because this is also how they’ve been treating China.”

Mr. Putin with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, in Moscow in 2019. They said this month that their countries’ friendship had “no limits.”

Credit...Sputnik/Reuters

Mostly young, nationalistic online users like these, known as “little pinks” in China, have taken their cue from the so-called “wolf warrior” diplomats who seem to relish verbal battle with journalists and their Western counterparts.

The day before Russia’s invasion, for instance, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said in a daily press briefing that the United States was the “culprit” behind the tensions over Ukraine.

“When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” asked the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

The next day, as Ms. Hua was peppered with questions about whether China considered Russia’s “special military operation” an invasion, she turned the briefing into a critique of the United States. “You may go ask the U.S.: they started the fire and fanned the flames,” she said. “How are they going to put out the fire now?”

She bristled at the U.S. State Department’s comment that China should respect state sovereignty and territorial integrity, a longstanding tenet of Chinese foreign policy.

“The U.S. is in no position to tell China off,” she said. Then she mentioned the three journalists who were killed in NATO’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, a tragic incident that prompted widespread anti-U.S. protests in China.

“NATO still owes the Chinese people a debt of blood,” she said.

That sentence became the top Weibo hashtag as Russia was bombing Ukraine. The hashtag, created by the state-run People’s Daily newspaper, has been viewed more than a billion times. In posts below it, users called the United States a “warmonger” and a “paper tiger.”

Other Weibo users were bemused. “If I only browsed Weibo,” wrote the user @____26156, “I would have believed that it was the United States that had invaded Ukraine.”

The strong pro-war sentiment online has shocked many Chinese. Some WeChat users on my timeline warned that they would block any Putin supporters. Many people shared articles about China’s long, troubled history with its neighbor, including Russian annexation of Chinese territory and a border conflict with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s.

One widely shared WeChat article was titled, “All those who cheer for war are idiots,” plus an expletive. “The grand narrative of nationalism and great-power chauvinism has squeezed out their last bit of humanity,” the author wrote.

It was eventually deleted by WeChat for violating regulations.

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the United States “started the fire and fanned the flames” that led to the war in Ukraine.

Credit...Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

The pro-Russia sentiment is in line with the two countries’ growing official solidarity, culminating in a joint statement on Feb. 4, when Mr. Putin met with Mr. Xi in Beijing at the Winter Olympics.

The countries’ friendship has “no limits,” they declared.

Given that the leaders met just weeks before the invasion, it would be understandable to conclude that China should have had better knowledge of the Kremlin’s plans. But growing evidence suggests that the echo chamber of China’s foreign policy establishment might have misled not only the country’s internet users, but its own officials.

My colleague Edward Wong reported that over a period of three months, senior U.S. officials held meetings with their Chinese counterparts and shared intelligence that detailed Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine. The Americans asked the Chinese officials to intervene with the Russians and tell them not to invade.

Rising concerns. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has started reverberating across the globe, adding to the stock market’s woes and spooking investors. The conflict could cause​​ dizzying spikes in prices for energy and food, and severely affect various countries and industries.

The cost of energy. Oil prices already are the highest since 2014, and they have jumped as the conflict has escalated. Russia is the third-largest producer of oil, providing roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes.

Gas supplies. Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.

Food prices. Russia is the world’s largest supplier of wheat and, together with Ukraine, accounts for nearly a quarter of total global exports. In countries like Egypt and Turkey, that flow of grain makes up more than 70 percent of wheat imports.

Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.

Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctions intended to restrict Russia’s access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.

The Chinese brushed the Americans off, saying that they did not think an invasion was in the works. U.S. intelligence showed that on one occasion, Beijing shared the Americans’ information with Moscow.

Recent speeches by some of China’s most influential advisers to the government on international relations suggest that the miscalculation may have been based on deep distrust of the United States. They saw it as a declining power that wanted to push for war with false intelligence because it would benefit the United States, financially and strategically.

Jin Canrong, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing, told the state broadcaster China Central Television, or CCTV, on Feb. 20 that the U.S. government had been talking about imminent war because an unstable Europe would help Washington, as well as the country’s financial and energy industries. After the war started, he admitted to his 2.4 million Weibo followers that he was surprised.

Just before the invasion, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, ridiculed the Biden administration’s predictions of war in a 52-minute video program. “Why did ‘Sleepy Joe’ use such poor-quality intelligence on Ukraine and Russia?” he asked, using Donald Trump’s favorite nickname for President Biden.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Shen had held a conference call about the Ukraine crisis with a brokerage’s clients, titled, “A war that would not be fought.”

When the fighting began, he, too, acknowledged to his Weibo followers, who number 1.6 million, that he had been wrong.

Nationalistic emotions on social media were also sparked by the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine. Unlike most embassies in Kyiv, it didn’t urge its citizens to evacuate. Hours into the war, it advised Chinese people to post the country’s red flag conspicuously on their vehicles when traveling, indicating that it would provide protection.

The state-owned People’s Daily, CCTV and many top government agencies posted about that on Weibo. Many people used the hashtag #theChineseredwillprotectyou, referring to the flag.

The idea echoed a movie, the 2017 Chinese blockbuster “Wolf Warrior 2,” which ends with the hero taking fellow passengers safely through a war zone in Africa as he holds a Chinese flag high. “It’s Chinese,” an armed fighter says. “Hold your fire.”

Two days later, the embassy reversed course, urging Chinese citizens not to display anything that would disclose their identity. Chinese people living in Ukraine advised fellow citizens not to make comments on social media that could jeopardize their security.

As the war drags on, and especially if Beijing calibrates its position in the face of an international backlash, the online pro-Russia sentiment in China could ebb. In the meantime, other internet users are getting impatient with the nationalists.

“Putin should enlist the Chinese little pinks and send them to the frontline,” wrote the Weibo user @xinshuiqingliu. “They’re his die-hard fans and extremely brave fighters.”


Li Yuan writes the New New World column, which focuses on the intersection of technology, business and politics in China and across Asia. @liyuan6
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 28, 2022, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: In China, Many Take Putin’s Side