It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, April 02, 2022
UK Rory Stewart’s tweet has won April Fool’s Day
The former Tory leadership candidate had Twitter users gasping and checking the date with his intervention.
Rory Stewart may well have won April Fool’s Day after suckering in bemused Twitter users by announcing that he had been asked by Boris Johnson to serve as his new communications chief.
There is infamously no love lost between Stewart and the prime minister. The former Tory MP and minister wrote earlier this year that Johnson is “a terrible prime minister and a worse human being”.
In an article for the Financial Times, Stewart said: “Twenty years have passed since the Conservative party first selected him as a candidate. Michael Howard and David Cameron made him a shadow minister, and Theresa May gave him the Foreign Office.
“Thirty years of celebrity made him famous for his mendacity, indifference to detail, poor administration, and inveterate betrayal of every personal commitment. Yet, knowing this, the majority of Conservative MPs, and party members, still voted for him to be prime minister.
“He is not, therefore, an aberration, but a product of a system that will continue to produce terrible politicians long after he is gone.”
‘An honour’
But social media users apparently have short memories, as Stewart duped them with his jokey announcement on Friday morning.
He tweeted: “It is an honour to have been asked by the PM to serve as Director of Communications for No10 Downing Street.
“I am looking forward to working with the PM, Ministers and Members of Parliament on the issues that matter most to our country.”
Of course, some people quickly clocked the calendar and realised that Stewart was joking. But that didn’t stop some of his followers from getting very upset nonetheless.
Check out some of these reactions.
Well played, Rory.
$2.44 Billion Pledged by Donors for Afghan Crisis The Islamic Emirate said it will monitor the aid-process provided by the international community.
The UN held a high-level virtual pledging event in cooperation with the United Kingdom, Germany and Qatar on Afghanistan, where a total of amount of $2.44 billion had been promised.
The meeting was held on Thursday.
The UN earlier said it was seeking $4.4 billion to alleviate the crisis in Afghanistan.
The UN warned that if aid did not immediately arrive in Afghanistan, the situation would deteriorate in the country.
“Without immediate action, we face a starvation and malnutrition crisis in Afghanistan”, said Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, while addressing the conference.
“There is very little cash. More than 80% of the population are in debt, key workers in vital services including schools and hospitals have not been paid for months,” he said.
The European Union announced 113 million euro for vulnerable people in Afghanistan as well as Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan.
However, the Islamic Emirate said it will monitor the distribution of aid provided by the international community.
“We monitor the procedures of its implementation. All the actions taken inside the country are under the supervision of the Islamic Emirate,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.
The conference was attended by 41 representatives of countries and organizations.
“The people of Afghanistan need a functioning economy to have any hope of the peace and prosperity that they deserve and it is our hope that we can work together to move things in the right direction,” said a spokesman for the World Bank.
The donors stressed that the aid should not be directed to the current Afghan government. The UN earlier said that it had appealed for $4.4 billion for Afghanistan’s crisis, the biggest appeal of the UN’s history. “The ban on some foreign media organizations’ programs in Afghanistan and the closing of girls' schools above grade six decreased the hopes of the international community for the Taliban,” said Mohammad Hassan Faiq, a political analyst.
Life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia after the Ukraine invasion: one woman’s story
Universul.net has spoken to an ordinary Russian woman to find out how life has changed since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
She describes to us the fear that has seeped into people’s lives who do not believe the official Kremlin line, how sanctions are biting, and her fears for the future.
She says Russians still bear the collective trauma from the days of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
War
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 2,000 Russians who dared to protest the war have been arrested. Last weekend alone, some 1,000 from nearly 40 cities across Russia were detained.
Thousands of Russians have died. Ukraine claims Russian combat losses were almost 15,000, although these figures are likely too high.
Casualty figures
Russian tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published casualty figures on its website allegedly cited to the Russian Ministry of Defense that showed 9,861 Russian servicemen had died. The outlet deleted the report and said it had been hacked.
Russia’s crackdown on news coverage and the imposition of a new law criminalizing reporting that accurately characterizes the Ukrainian invasion, means it is increasingly difficult to get reliable news about what is going on.
The media blockade is an attempt to control the narrative around the invasion, which the Russian government and state media have insisted on referring to as a “special military operation.”
International sanctions
Russians do not see coverage of how their forces have bombed cities and killed civilians in Ukraine. They are not fully aware of the scope of international sanctions even if they are already feeling the effects.
Universul.net spoke to someone we will call ‘Alina’ which is not her real name. We have decided to protect her identity to shield her from possible reprisals.
‘Alina’
Alina is about 40, is the mother of a teenage girl, has a career and looks forward to traveling abroad in the future.
She has relatives and business partners in Ukraine and friends in the ‘decadent’ west that Putin considers his enemy.
She is not a dissident nor a martyr like Alexei Navalny, bur neither does she believe the official Kremlin line repeated in the state media.
This is what she told us. Her comments have been slightly edited to read better.
Worried
„My mother’s cousin lives not far from Kyiv. She is still alive; her daughters and grandchildren have left the country and are now in Poland. I’m super worried about her, and we’re offering help but there’s little we can do.”
“She just wants all of this to stop.”
„I have a couple of people I know professionally and we were planning to do a project together, but that’s on hold for the foreseeable future.”
„From a non-emotional perspective, the Russian government’s actions have negatively impacted me.”
„If I add emotions to the mix, it starts to be very painful and sad.”
„If am thinking of all other consequences such as my daughter’s future or our economy, it looks bleak.”
„We discuss the situation every day at home.”
Pro-government version
„We have to tell our daughter what’s happening as she exposed to the pro-government version at school. We explain to her that this is a point of view that the family doesn’t share. It’s not easy.”
“Most of our friends are also shocked by what’s happening, but there are a couple who are justifying what the government is doing. It’s super difficult to draw the line between what unites us as friends and what separates us.”
„At work we focus on discussing our work. This is our personal choice and one we share. We try at least. However, it’s getting more and more difficult as sanctions are negatively impacting our business, every day a little bit more.”
Alternative views
„I listen to the news on official radio station a couple of times a week to understand how they are relating the story for the wider population. I also read and watch alternative points of view on Telegram and YouTube.”
„My mother and my husband regularly share with me non-official links and videos. We can access alternative information, but you have to look for it.”
„The government quickly closed down ‘alternative media.’ You need a VPN to get Facebook/Instagram. Many bloggers left Russia and some of them stopped their channels. The influencers who have stayed need to be very careful with language so they don’t fall afoul of the new legislation.”
Peaceful protests
„In previous years, my mother, my brother and my husband took part in peaceful protests.”
This year when the assault began, my husband tried to go to a protest but couldn’t find a ‘safe spot.’ There was a large police presence and big buses there to pick up people and immediately take them into custody.
„There is a large presence of police and armed forces in places such as Pushkin Square (Moscow).”
Jail
„If you are caught, you will spend 15-30 days in a detention facility.”
„People are more fearful now. It’s strange for us to be afraid to share our political views with people outside of our close circle but this is what is happening now.”
Stalin
„I think it’s because of ‘the memory of our genes.’ Under Stalin, if your neighbor informed on you to the police and you said something “wrong’ you risked going to prison,” she said.
Meduza: Inside the Kremlin. What does Putin hope to achieve now, and what is the mood in Russia
This week, the Russian defense ministry announced a shift in its stated military objectives in Ukraine as has been widely reported.
Russian forces, the ministry’s spokesman claimed, would “drastically reduce” their assault on Kyiv and Chernihiv (however, this has yet to materialize) and concentrate on seizing the Donbas.
Independent Russian news site *Meduza spoke to five sources who said this was based on military and political considerations.
For a start, Russian officials aren’t sure how long the country can survive under tough Western sanctions.
The story captures the mood in the Kremlin, the competing narratives and different public sentiments reflected in unpublished Kremlin opinions polls. It makes for grim reading.
Changing tack
By the end of March, a month into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s military leadership finally resigned themselves to the fact that Kyiv couldn’t “be taken with little bloodshed.”
That is, Russia couldn’t take the Ukrainian capital with the forces on the ground in its so-called “special military operation.” Five sources told Meduza the same story; three are close to Vladimir Putin’s Executive Office (the Presidential Administration and two are close to the Russian government.
Meduza’s sources said that during the early days of the invasion, both the Russian military and President Putin believed the “special operation” would be easy to accomplish. They simply did not expect so much resistance from Ukraine.
Indeed, in late February, a Meduza source close to Mr. Putin’s office was convinced that the biggest problems for Russia wouldn’t be the seizure of major cities, but getting “new administrations” running in occupied areas.
This person had little doubt that Russian forces would seize these territories (including Kyiv). “There’s nowhere to get personnel to manage complex, urbanized territory,” Meduza’s source said at the time. “There weren’t even enough of them for Crimea and Sevastopol.”
Donbas
By early March, however, the sources were beginning to change their tune. Now, they believe that managing to bring just the Donbas under its control is the most “likely scenario.”
Five sources attributed the softening of Russia’s positions in the peace talks with Kyiv to the military’s failures on the ground. After Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul on March 29, Russian defense ministry spokesman, Col. Gen. Alexander Fomin, announced that Russian forces would “drastically reduce military activity in the directions of Kyiv and Chernihiv.”
Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu declared the “liberation of the Donbas” was the “main goal” of Russia’s military operations.
Meduza’s sources claim that in late March, government officials showed the Russian president their calculations about the state of the Russian economy. According to these documents, one source said, “the country will not be able to live even remotely normally under such sanctions.”
“There are [government] meetings going on in various sectors with approximately the same content: we can hold out on old reserves for several months. What will happen after, if at least some of the sanctions aren’t lifted? It isn’t clear to anyone. What is clear is that everything will be very bad. Infrastructure problems will begin, and problems with transport,” said one source who is close to the Cabinet of Ministers.
The party of war
Three sources close to the presidential administration all emphasized that Putin has yet to make a final decision on what to do next.
According to one of these people, the president is currently “influenced by different groups and people.” He himself “would like to see a semblance of public discussion” about the war in Ukraine. This desire for “public discussion” implies that Putin is ready to hear out those who insist on peace with Ukraine, as well as those who call for a continuation of a full-scale war.
“People close to the Kremlin’s political circle are inclined to be in favor of negotiations, and their capabilities on the Internet will be deployed for this. The party of war , for example, [Chechnya’s head Ramzan] Kadyrov and [State Duma Speaker] Vyacheslav Volodin believe that the Russian president is in favor of fighting until victory, so they’re sort of following him,” a source close to the Presidential Administration said.
Possible truce
At the same time, officials in the Presidential Administration now fear that a “possible truce with Ukraine will impact Putin’s ratings.”
“Citizens have been ‘overheated’ by the propaganda. Let’s say a decision is made to stop at the territory of the Donbas. What about the ‘Nazis’? Are we no longer fighting against them? Propaganda has been hammered into people so much that I can’t imagine how we can stop at the Donbas, without a drop in ratings,” said a spin doctor working with the Kremlin.
A Meduza source close to the presidential administration also predicted problems stemming from another propaganda line — the swift “capture of Kyiv” and holding a victory “parade on Khreshchatyk” (the city’s main street).
“And what do you say after that? That we changed our minds about taking Kyiv? Why? Yes, there aren’t so many real, staunch supporters of war up to the very end, but this is a very vocal part of society which is already beginning to make noise [after the negotiations in Istanbul],” he explained, pointing to numerous comments from outraged “patriots” after the announcement about scaling back the assault on Kyiv.
Surveys
Since mid-March, as Meduza reported previously, Putin’s administration has been using surveys to determine how the public views the war and which problems concern Russians most. A Meduza source familiar with the AP’s findings said that Putin’s ratings have gone up since the “special military operation” began. (Similarly, a recent poll conducted by the independent Levada Center shows that Putin’s approval rating hit a whopping 83 percent in March, and his trust rating reached 44 percent.)
Nevertheless, what happens next remains unclear. And whether the possibility of “abandoning” the plan to take Kyiv will provoke opposition from the pro-Kremlin electorate is unclear, as well.
“Among the [supporters of the war] are ‘armchair patriots’ who say they support it, but won’t rally in the streets in support of a continuation of hostilities. Women over 40 are also part of the core support for the ‘operation.’ They support it, but when asked the question: ‘Are you prepared to send a member of your family to fight?’ they say they aren’t prepared to do that,” said Meduza’s source, explaining the results of the Kremlin’s opinion polls. The source added that most often, Russians cite the “threat from the West” as the reason they support the war which echoes “what they’re told on TV.”
Russian propagandists
Against this backdrop, the presidential administration held a meeting to discuss strategies for explaining possible peace talks with Ukraine to the Russian population, Meduza’s sources said. Allegedly, no “effective strategies” came out of this meeting. “So much coal has been thrown into the locomotive’s furnace, it won’t be possible to put it out immediately,” one political strategist said at the meeting, Meduza has learned.
The difficulty lies in the fact that some Russian propagandists are openly demanding that the war continues: “For example, [state] television host Vladimir Solovyov dragged [Russia’s head peace negotiator Vladimir] Medinsky through the mud.” Other propagandists “don’t understand how to backpedal so as not to lose face.”
Two Meduza sources close to the president’s office emphasized that there is a level of disappointment among the “patriotic public.”
“NOTIONALLY, FOR THEM, IT’S LIKE WATCHING A TV SERIES WITH A SPOILER: IN THE LAST EPISODE THEY’LL TAKE KYIV. AND NOW, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SERIES, THERE’S SOME NEGOTIATIONS — AND IT ALREADY SEEMS KYIV WON’T HAPPEN.”
The Kremlin is already preparing for an inevitable drop in the government’s ratings after the war ends amid the worsening economic crisis, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Secret Kremlin polls show that no more than half of the residents of these cities currently support the war.
New ideology
According to Meduza’s sources, political strategists close to the Kremlin have already been tasked with dreaming up a “new ideology for the country” and “some new national idea.”
As one source put it: “There will be peace in some form anyway, and people will ask questions: what was this for? Kyiv hasn’t been taken, the majority of the sanctions haven’t been lifted, living under them [sanctions] is bad. Why put up with all this? This void needs to be filled so that it won’t be filled by someone else.”
* Meduza is a Russian and English-language independent news website, based in Latvia which was set up in 2014.
More than 600,000 refugees from Ukraine have entered Romania since Russia invasion
Some 608,000 refugees from Ukraine have entered Romania since Russia invaded the country in what is Europe’ largest refugee crisis since World War II, the UN said.
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, on Wednesday said that more than 4 million people have left Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24.
That number exceeds the worst-case predictions made at the start of the war.
Some 2.3 million_more than half of the refugees from Ukraine_ have entered Poland, but some have since traveled on to other countries.
A small number have returned to Ukraine, either to help in the defense against the Russians or to care for relatives.
About 390,000 have entered Moldova, and 364,000 have entered Hungary in the last five weeks, UNHCR said.
Its figures are based on counts provided by the governments of those countries.
“The situation inside Ukraine is spiralling,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement Wednesday.
“As the number of children fleeing their homes continues to climb, we must remember that every single one of them needs protection, education, safety and support.”
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi traveled to Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss ways to increase support “to people affected and displaced by this senseless war.”
Russian general dubbed ‘butcher of Mariupol’ is a mystery to experts
Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defense Control Center,
sits at the right in this briefing in Moscow on March 25.
(Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)
For years, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev was an obscure figure in Russia’s sprawling military leadership. But over the past week, he has become well-known under a startling moniker: “the butcher of Mariupol.”
Ukrainian officials and activists have accused Mizintsev of orchestrating a siege of the southern Ukrainian port city that, according to its mayor, has killed thousands of civilians and leveled residential buildings.
“This is Mikhail Mizintsev. He is leading the siege of Mariupol. … He has huge experience of destroying cities in Syria,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, tweeted last week over a photo of the 59-year-old general, a man with close-cropped gray hair and pale blue eyes.
Mizintsev, who heads Russia’s National Defense Control Center, was placed under sanctions Thursday by the British government, which said he was “linked to the planning and execution of the bombardment of Mariupol, among other key Russian military operations against Ukraine.”
The Russian military officer has been dubbed “the butcher of Mariupol,” Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement.
But despite his newfound notoriety, some Russia-watchers were surprised to see Mizintsev singled out. Previously, he did not have much of a reputation despite decades of service, experts said.
“I honestly don’t understand all this — I don’t think he has any operational command responsibility here, and he’s not got any particular reputation as martinet or thug that I know of,” said Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London who studies Russia’s armed forces.
Jeffrey Edmonds, former director for Russia on the National Security Council and a senior analyst at the CNA think tank in Washington, said he knew little about Mizintsev and had never interacted with him.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert at the British think tank Chatham House, said that Mizintsev is a senior figure but that he has spent much of the past decades in jobs that were “effectively administrative — not just staff posts, but running headquarters, command posts, coordination centers.”
“So he’s different from the other prominent senior Russian commanders who have mostly had operational on-the-ground experience in Syria,” Giles wrote in an email.
The United States has not imposed sanctions on Mizintsev. However, Britain’s Foreign Office said he was “known for using reprehensible tactics, including shelling civilian centers in both Aleppo in 2015-16 and now in Mariupol — where atrocities are being perpetuated against Ukrainian people.”
The destruction of Mariupol has drawn comparisons with the siege of Aleppo in 2016, when Russian forces helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crush rebels there in an eight-month campaign that featured the use of cluster bombs, chemical weapons and other banned munitions, in addition to heavy shelling and conventional airstrikes.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s website, Mizintsev headed a ministerial coordination body responsible for the return of refugees during the Syrian war.
Mizintsev has been named as Russia’s point man in an agreement with the Ukrainians for a humanitarian cease-fire to allow beleaguered residents of Mariupol to evacuate and critical aid deliveries to enter the city, where more than 100,000 people are estimated to remain trapped.
The cease-fire is “purely for humane purposes,” he said at a briefing Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reported.
The Ukrainian government has released audio that it claimed was an intercepted recording of Mizintsev berating and threatening Russian soldiers for their appearance. The Washington Post could not verify the authenticity of the recording.
Ukraine’s former ambassador to Austria, Olexander Scherba, shared the clip on Twitter on March 23, describing Mizintsev as “the butcher of Mariupol.” Scherba later told The Washington Post that he did not know of Mizintsev before the war, adding that he was “not an expert” on the Russian army.
Giles, the Chatham House expert, said Mizintsev was a surprising figure to take the brunt of the blame for the attack on Mariupol, given his background.
But that does not necessarily mean he was not responsible, Giles said. “I find it hard to believe that, given the visibility into Russian operations that the U.S. and the U.K. have proven through their intelligence disclosures, that accusation can’t be based on something substantial.”
The relative anonymity of the Russian three-star general was apparent in Russia, too, according to Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who studies the country’s security services. But that was nothing unusual, he said.
“He is not a big name in Russia,” Soldatov said, adding that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was really the only military leader known to the public. He was also popular — a fact that could explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin is cautious about firing the more senior official, Soldatov added.
Shoigu disappeared for 12 days in March before returning to public life on Saturday as abruptly as he had departed. His absence sparked widespread speculation about Russia’s military leadership during a war that is widely perceived to have gone badly for the Kremlin.
Russia prepared for 8 years to be cut off from the West. Meet the payment system that’s still processing its credit card transactions
Fri, April 1, 2022 Igor Grussak—Picture Alliance/Getty Images
Since the start of the Ukraine War, a barrage of western sanctions has crippled the Russian economy and wreaked havoc on its financial system.
But for the past eight years, Russia has been preparing for the worst.
In June of 2014, just three months after its invasion of the Crimean Peninsula, the country established its own payment system to help process credit card transactions domestically. Russia’s National Payment Card System—known to Russians as NSPK—has continued to process credit card transactions during the latest fighting in Ukraine.
Even though Mastercard, Visa, American Express, PayPal, and Discover have all suspended their operations in Russia, its citizens aren’t experiencing the type of disruption many might expect.
Mastercard told Fortune via email that credit cards issued by Russian banks are no longer supported by its network. Instead, credit cards being used in Russia are now processed over something called a “switch,” run by the Central Bank of Russia.
Dr. Leo Lipis, the CEO of the payments industry consulting firm Lipis Advisors, said that a switch is “a hub for communication that connects the various banks involved in a payments network.”
This means Russian consumers relying on locally-issued cards bearing the Mastercard logo can still use their cards like they normally would, Lipis noted.
A spokesperson for Mastercard confirmed in a separate email to Fortune that the company doesn’t have the ability to block domestic transactions in Russia, but it receives “no benefit” from them. This is because Mastercard, along with other Western companies, signed an agreement for their transactions to be processed by NSPK in 2015.
Russians are still blocked from using Western credit cards outside of the country, but that’s only helped the Kremlin’s goal of keeping assets from moving abroad. The sanctions also boosted Russia’s own credit card company, MIR, which is built on the back of NSPK and owned by the Central Bank of Russia.
When MIR debuted in late 2015, Russians were slow to adopt the card. Then, the government mandated that public sector employees receiving state funds and welfare benefits use MIR payment cards, spawning new growth for the firm.
“When you go back to 2015, Visa and MasterCard pretty much shared the Russian market 50-50,” Lipis said. “And by the time you get to 2020, the market is shared three ways.”
Today, there are more than 100 million MIR cards issued, according to the company. And with U.S. card companies leaving Russia, MIR can more easily grow its market share.
In recent years, other countries, including Turkey, India, and China, have also developed their own payment systems to limit the influence of U.S. credit card companies and limit the pain caused by any sanctions.
After the recent invasion, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, turned to China’s Union Pay and the so-called Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in an effort to circumvent Western sanctions and issue new cards.
Union Pay has agreements with many European and U.S. credit card networks that allow foreign cards to be processed through its payment system and accepted in some Western countries, particularly in tourist destinations, Lipis said.
The payment systems expert noted that China’s Union Pay could be opening itself up to “secondary sanctions” from the West if it knowingly helps Russian banks circumvent sanctions.
Still, when it comes to processing transactions abroad, Russia’s MIR and the Chinese payment systems aren’t “adequate substitutes” for U.S.-based payment systems like Visa and Mastercard, Lipis said. And they carry less than 0.5% of the total value of payments made via SWIFT.
“There is some truth to the Visa slogan of it's everywhere you want to be,” he added.
The US reportedly watered down sanctions against a key Russian oligarch out of fear that disrupting his business empire could hurt the global economy
ALL HIS MOOLA IS IN TRUSTS
Hannah Towey Thu, March 31, 2022 Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
The US Treasury issued a special license exempting Alisher Usmanov's businesses from sanctions.
The move makes it legal for the oligarch's entities to continue doing business with US companies.
Officials reportedly feared that blocking his network of businesses could disrupt global trade.
The US Treasury made exemptions to sanctions on Alisher Usmanov, the Russian businessperson described by the European Union as one of President Vladimir Putin's "favorite oligarchs" whose net worth is estimated to be about $19.6 billion.
US officials feared that blocking the hundreds of businesses believed to be connected to Usmanov could wreak havoc on the global economy and supply chain, current and former Treasury Department employees told The Wall Street Journal.
To mitigate repercussions, the US focused sanctions on assets personally linked to Usmanov — such as his superyacht and private jet — instead of his business entities. The Journal reported the move was an example of sanctions put in place following Russia's invasion of Ukraine that were limited to avoid outsize influence on the US economy. On March 3, the Treasury issued a special license "authorizing all transactions and unblocking all property of any entity owned 50 percent or more, directly or indirectly, by Usmanov." Typically, businesses with a majority stake owned by sanctioned oligarchs have been blocked from doing business with US companies unless granted an exemption.
In an email exchange dated March 1 reviewed by The Journal with the subject line "Usmanov mitigation," Lisa Palluconi, a Treasury official, detailed the plan for watering down sanctions against Usmanov, saying that "messaging will be that we continue to look into his entities … or something like that."
Insider's email seeking comment sent to an address believed to belong to Palluconi was not immediately returned. Palluconi did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.
The Journal, citing current and former Treasury officials, also reported that the decision to limit the sanctions on Usmanov was partly influenced by a desire to avoid lawsuits from the oligarch, which could eat into the department's limited resources.
"Financial sanctions on Russian elites immediately cut them off from their wealth, their ability to make or receive payments, their travel, and their ability to extract revenue from their companies," a Treasury spokesperson told Insider. "The United States will continue to freeze and seize assets of these elites and their proxies as they support President Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine." Usmanov's business holdings are substantial. He controls 49% of OOO USM Holding Co., an investment group that owns the iron-ore supplier Metalloinvest and Udokan Copper — which claims to have Russia's largest undeveloped copper deposits. The Russian telecommunications company MegaFon is also a USM subsidiary. And Usmanov purchased the Russian business newspaper Kommersant in 2006 and owns Khimki Group, a real-estate developer, according to PitchBook.
A USM spokesperson told The Journal that the oligarch had previously called the sanctions levied against him by the US, the UK, and the EU "unfounded and unfair." He said his businesses received zero support from the Russian government.
Ukranian Mayor Held Captive Shares What Russian Soldiers Think Putin's 'Special Operation' Really Is (BFMTV/Alamy)
Ukrainian mayor Ivan Fedorov, who was kidnapped by Russian forces on 11 March and held captive for five days, has now spoken about his experience.
The mayor of Melitopol, a city in southeastern Ukraine, was abducted earlier this month, with a video of his kidnapping being posted on Telegram by the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
In the video the mayor can be seen with a black bag over his head as Russian forces take him away from the crisis centre where he was working.
Fedorov was released on 16 March and has now spoken about his experience, including what Russian soldiers think Vladimir Putin's invasion is really about.
Speaking to BMF TV, the mayor said that during the time he was held captive he came to understand that the Russian forces didn't know much about Ukraine.
"They weren’t prepared at all. They didn’t know anything about Ukraine and the city of Melitopol. They asked me questions about how the city budget is formed? Or who are the opinion leaders?" the mayor noted, as per the Independent.
"They said they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I've never seen a single Nazi."
Fedorov also noted that the soldiers told him they wanted to defend the Russian language, to which he is said to have responded (as per NPR): "95 percent of us speak Russian already and nobody’s stopping us, so there’s no problem."
Ivan Fedorov was received by the French President at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France today (1 April). Credit: Alamy
Reportedly, the forces also told Fedorov that they had heard veterans of World War Two were beaten during commemoration day, which he quickly cleared up.
He said: "I told them I know these men personally, because there aren't many of them left, and they're treated as heroes."
The mayor also told of how he suffered 'psychological violence' having his phone taken away and communication cut off.
Related video:
He said: "Five soldiers were with me in the interrogation room.
"I heard in the cells next, cries of the tortured, and I understood their degree of violence because human lives do not count for them."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to the rescued mayor on a call earlier this month.
Speaking further about the war in Ukraine, Fedorov noted that the invasion of his city started as early as 5am on February 24, when Putin declared a 'special military operation' in Ukraine.
With the mayor recalling that a strike targeting the military airfield of Melitopol occurred 'when the whole city was asleep'.
If you would like to donate to the Red Cross Emergency Appeal, which will help provide food, medicines and basic medical supplies, shelter and water to those in Ukraine, click here for more information
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