I am not trying to absolve France from buying Russian LNG, but Politico's piece is lazy and does not get into all the underlying causes. For example, the WH's temporary pause on LNG exports to non-FTA countries: whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/….

That's just Monday and no, it is not satire: house.gov/legislative-ac…

Strelkov-Girkin - THE EPIC - Vladislav Surkov
#Cannes2025

Why stop at the 5th Directorate of the KGB agents and bona fide Russian neonazis? Add FSB agents and terrorists too!

The reason arbitrage opportunities exist - the markets are full of people who lack the understanding of cause and effect and the concept of spurious correlations.

Destroying Russia's refineries is justified according to three key criteria: military relevance; benign global impacts; and legal precedent.

The econ part up front:

Russia is a major producer and net exporter of crude oil. It also exports some refined products.
With refining…

A top EU court has struck down sanctions against Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, citing insufficient evidence they backed Putin's war against Ukraine. The ruling's a major blow to the EU’s sanctions regime against Moscow:

ft.com/content/5cc41a…

April 9, 1989: Soviet Crackdown In Tbilisi.
Georgia should be part of the EU and the Georgian Dream Party should stop playing with Russia, the copy of the Russian law has no place in Georgia. rferl.org/a/georgia-sovi…

Russia - still thinks that its borders don't end anywhere
France - tries to explain the benefit of strategic ambiguity
UK - still stuck in the old ways
US - in lalaland
Germany - wende-ing those zeiten

Ukraine continues the fight

Want to understand what Putin wants? Look to how he admires Alexander Solzhenitsyn—and to Solzhenitsyn’s most overlooked book, a Russian nationalist screed pushing many of the same revanchist conspiracies motivating the Kremlin. foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/07/put…

A longish explanation of how the Kremlin is tightening its control over the population. By reducing employment opportunities in the shrinking private sector via 'soft' nationalization, the Kremlin prepares to fight the war for years to come.
x.com/MuKappa/status…

Posted a thread, got slapped with this. Х-уйня forever.

“Soft” nationalization - Russia’s solution to labor vs. manpower optimization problem. 1/