The United States has all but declared the COVID-19 pandemic over and done with. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advised 230 million Americans, 70 percent of the population, to no longer wear masks in most cases, including indoors. Cities, counties, and states across the US have lifted their mask mandates. Restaurants, shopping malls, movie theatres, and grocery stores have dropped mask and physical distancing requirements. Even school districts have gone mask-optional since the end of February. This is despite more than 55,000 Americans contracting the disease and nearly 2,000 dying from it and the complications it causes every day through early March.
As the US approaches one million dead from COVID and 80 million sickened from this pathogen and its variants, it is clear that whiteness, capitalism, and narcissism have prolonged the pandemic, and horribly so. Two years ago, I predicted that the US as a “failing state” would do the bare minimum to protect ordinary people, and would sell the idea that despite the evidence, Americans can lead “normal lives” in the middle of a pandemic. “America’s lack of leadership at home and abroad during this pandemic has been stunning. But its populace’s denial of these facts is simply gobsmacking,” I wrote in April 2020. Two years later, this continued lack of leadership is America’s dystopian normal. Forget about federal-level mandates to mask up and to jab up on vaccines. Forget about continued support for families living with poverty and unemployment in the middle of yo-yo openings and closings with each surge of COVID-19. And forget about easing the pain of healthcare debt, student loan debt, and rental debt millions have accumulated during the past two-plus years. The business of the US is always in support of corporations and profit first. That is why President Joe Biden – and President Donald Trump before him – never declared the pandemic a national security threat or federalised the public health crisis COVID-19 undoubtedly became. They both have been too beholden to corporations to take this step. The result has been 25 months of “me first” responses to the pandemic. There have been endless protests against local and state-level mask mandates and endless videos of white Americans violating such mandates. Nearly 80 million Americans have yet to get a single vaccine jab – including my own mother – because they “don’t know what’s in this stuff”. Despite the obvious need for community collaboration to protect everyone from COVID-19 death and its long-haul complications, the fundamental belief in individualism is stronger than ever. If American individualism in this pandemic isn’t prime evidence of the US as a narcissistic nation, then nothing is. What’s worse is this narcissism is killing people, especially white Americans, and needlessly so. All because they believed the media reports of highly disproportionate COVID-19 sickness and death among Black and Brown Americans in early 2020. As the author Johnathan Metzl wrote in his Dying of Whiteness, “When politics demands that people resist available health care,” among other spiteful decisions, “these politics are literally asking people to die for their whiteness.” When combined with narcissism, white Americans, in particular, have acted in privileged ways towards the pandemic, ways that have killed tens of thousands and have sickened millions in the process. Pfizer and Moderna and other Big Pharma companies in the US and in Europe have refused to freely share their vaccine recipes with the rest of the world. But sure, let Americans complain about new variants when the US, the European Union, and the United Nations’s WHO have not done nearly enough to inoculate the world against the virus and its future possible variants. Biden asked everyone watching his recent State of the Union address to celebrate how the US, out of its own goodness, had “sent 475 million vaccine doses to 112 countries, more than any other nation” during the previous year. Keep in mind, the world’s human population is at 7.9 billion. We would need between 16 and 24 billion jabs to inoculate the entire world against COVID-19 and its variants as of today – current figures show about 10 billion jabs worldwide, mostly in the world’s richest nations. Another statement of hubris and needless navel-gazing. The US is barely two months removed from the height of the Omicron surge, when a million people contracted the variant in just one day. Yet President Biden, through his State of the Union speech, declared a return to the pre-pandemic normal. “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again,” Biden said. “Our schools are open. Let’s keep it that way. Our kids need to be in school,” he said. Despite his comment, “we will never just accept living with COVID-19,” Biden and the rest of the US have completely contradicted this sentiment. It completely reflects the US as a whole, where there was never a full, nationwide shutdown of activities with federal mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in 2020. It is a near-total capitulation to the wealthy and corporate, who have kept their fingers crossed that a vaccines-or-bust strategy would effectively end COVID-19 in the US. It is a ho-hum response to what the US has always been: A country of greedy capitalists who want a return to the racist, ableist, and narcissistic conditions that made the COVID-19 pandemic possible in the first place. They won’t even give us time to mourn our losses. The past 29 months of COVID worldwide are a reflection of profit over people, and rich and white people over everyone else. The past 25 months of COVID-19 in the US indicate exactly the same, except minus the shock and massive protests of people expecting better from their government. Instead, the racism of whiteness and narcissism and capitalism will subject more in the US and worldwide to needless death and disability, and continue to turn the US into a failing nation-state. It makes the early predictions of only “240,000 dead” by the start of 2022 an absurd lie, a macabre and laughable shame.
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Ukraine is now using Clearview AI's facial recognition technology for purposes such as identifying Russian soldiers, its CEO claimed. Hoan Ton-That told Reuters the company offered Ukraine's defense ministry free access to its system following the invasion by Russia. According to the report, Clearview suggested Ukraine could use the tech to reunite refugees with family members, fight misinformation, assess at checkpoints whether someone is a person of interest and to identify dead bodies. The company hasn't offered its technology to Russia. Engadget has contacted the defense ministry for comment. Ukraine officials previously suggested they were considering using the tech.
It's not clear exactly what Ukraine is using the system for, Ton-That said, while noting it shouldn't be used as the sole means of identification. He and Clearview advisor Lee Wolosky claimed other Ukraine government agencies plan to start using the tech over the coming days. Ton-That said Clearview has access to more than 2 billion photos from VKontakte, the Russian social media service, and more than 10 billion images overall in its database. Clearview's controversial tech has come under fire from many quarters over the last few years. This month, Italy fined the company €20 million ($27.9 million) and ordered it to delete images of Italian nationals. The UK provisionally fined Clearview £17 million ($22.6 million) in November for breaking data protection laws. Canada, Australia and France are among the countries that have told Clearview to delete images of its residents and citizens. It's also facing privacy lawsuits in the US, where lawmakers have urged federal agencies to stop using the tech. Meta, Google, Venmo, Twitter and other platforms have demanded that Clearview stop scraping images from them as well. NATO, as we know it today, is a de facto bulwark against Russian (née Soviet) expansionism into Western Europe and potentially elsewhere. It must have come as a complete surprise when France, Great Britain, and the United States all received letters of intent from the Soviet Foreign Ministry about joining the alliance. Against themselves. Originally a political alliance in Western Europe when it was formed in 1949, NATO became a solid military alliance as well when the Korean War made the idea of Communist expansion by force all too real. The same year the Soviets detonated their first nuclear weapon, the West formed an alliance to neutralize that threat. But before the Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe formed the Eastern Bloc in 1955, Russia made an attempt to join NATO. Guess who’s coming to dinner. Longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin finally died in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev was the new communist sheriff in town. So in 1954, when Soviets sent the letters of intent to NATO members, there was a renewed spirit of easing tensions. The Soviets reasoned that the aggressive nature of the NATO alliance would be much less dangerous to world peace if their former anti-Hitler ally were allowed to be a member.
Can’t blame them for trying. NATO told the Russians exactly that when the alliance rejected Russia’s application for membership, urging it and other Soviet satellites to allow the UN to do its job in keeping the world secure. It was not an unexpected response for the USSR. Nine days later, Russia and those satellites formed the Warsaw Pact, its Eastern Bloc counter-alliance. Europe was officially split for the next 40-plus years. “Most likely, the organizers of the North Atlantic bloc will react negatively to this step of the Soviet government and will advance many different objections. In that event the governments of the three powers will have exposed themselves, once again, as the organizers of a military bloc against other states and it would strengthen the position of social forces conducting a struggle against the formation of the European Defense Community,” Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov wrote." The global probe of offshore accounts around the world strike at the heart of Kiev's current government and power structure of a ruling class that rose to power on the promise of fighting corruption, including the television-star-turned-President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Nowhere could the the revelations from the Pandora Papers investigation hit harder than in Ukraine. The discovery of offshore accounts strike at the heart of the current government and power structure of a ruling class that rose to power on the promise of fighting corruption, including the television-star-turned-President Volodymyr Zelensky. The worldwide probe, prompted by a massive leak to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), has included work by journalists from the Ukrainian media Slidstvо.Info, which connected the shady financial dealings of Zelensky's television production company Studio Kvartal 95 to the Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Slidstvo found that the laundered money passed through the Cyprus branch of Kolomoisky-owned Privatbank, according to law enforcement officers. More than 600 journalists from all over the world worked on the Pandora Papers project for the past year. Among the millions of documents of offshore registrars are the names of some of the most powerful figures in Ukraine. Ivan Bakanov, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Serhii Shafir, the chief aide to the president, and the President Zelensky himself are all there. Igor Kolomoisky, the billionaire behind the President But, first let's rewind the tape: For this is a story about the actor and head of Studio Kvartal 95, who played the president in the series and won in real life. Volodymyr Zelensky's successful show business career was created in Ukraine through a hidden financial network of offshore companies. Nine years ago, the popular Kvartal 95 goes to TV channel 1+1. Their shows and programs are hits on the channel owned by Igor Kolomoisky, who will later support Zelensky and the team not only as entertainers but also as politicians. Today, Kolomoisky is a person of interest in investigations in Ukraine, Britain, and the United States. According to the Pandora Papers, millions from Kolomoisky went not only to the accounts of Ukrainian companies close to Zelensky and his associates. The money also went where there was warm weather and lower taxes. That year, when Kvartal began to cooperate with the oligarch, key people of the company registered several companies on distant islands. The network was assisted by the offshore registrar Fidelity and Ukrainian lawyer Yurii Azarov, whose signature is on all key documents. Maltex Multicapital is revealed At the heart of the network is the previously unknown company Maltex Multicapital, reveals Slidstvo. It is equally divided between the companies of Volodymyr Zelensky, brothers Serhii and Borys Shefirs and Andrii Yakovlev. The trust declaration was signed by the current head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov. His company was the nominal owner of Maltex. The names of the real owners were safely hidden in the vault. If we take a closer look at how the Kvartal business is structured, we will see that the products are created and shown mainly in Ukraine. At the same time, transactions are made through foreign companies. Accordingly, taxes on these transactions do not go to the Ukrainian budget. A little later, the co-owner of Kvartal 95, Serhii Shafir, stated that Zelensky had left the business. On March 13, 2019, amid the presidential race, a lawyer working for the firms of Zelensky and his partners, Yurii Azarov, signed the document. It is a transfer of shares to Maltex, which is equally divided between the offshore leaders of Kvartal 95. The firm of Serhii Shafir, the future chief aide to the president, received a quarter of Maltex's ownership free of charge from Zelensky's firm in Belize. The day after the inauguration, Zelensky appointed Serhii Shafir as chief aide to the president of Ukraine. On April 25, 2019, a few weeks after the transfer of Zelenskyy's share to Serhii Shafir, the same lawyer Yurii Azarov signed another document stating that Maltex intends to pay dividends to Zelensky's offshore. Surprisingly, his offshore company no longer owned a stake in this firm. Cases involving high-ranking civil servants are being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. NABU detectives are also investigating crimes related to money laundering. The investigation believes that the former owners, in particular Igor Kolomoisky and Hennadii Boholyubov, could have caused billions in losses to the state. But the Security Service of Ukraine was unable to calculate the amount of damage and the case got stuck. The current General Prosecutor refused to answer journalists' questions about the Privatbank case. Risk of U.S. jail time What destiny awaits Zelensky? And Kolomoisky? For the latter, this week Kolomoiskyi in the United States, where his fate risks being the same as former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko: to wind up in an American prison. For Zelensky, nobody wants to talk about the secret network of offshore companies. Only Borys Shafir, the co-founder of Kvartal 95, responded to a few of our questions. He, unlike his partners, did not go into politics, and now is the owner of a significant part of the offshore business of Kvartal. "Bakanov was our financial director, he arranged the financial schemes of our company. And honestly, I'm not ready to answer you now," said Borys Shafir. "Maybe I'm the owner." Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday its board approved a 20-for-1 split of the e-commerce giant's common stock and authorized a $10 billion buyback plan, sending the company's shares up 7% in extended trading. This is the first stock split by Amazon since 1999 and will give investors 19 additional shares for every share they hold. Trading based on the new share price will begin on June 6. Amazon's share split is similar to the one announced by Google parent Alphabet Inc last month. Several mega cap companies such as Apple Inc, Tesla and Nvidia have split their stocks since 2020. Amazon's stock, which closed at $2,785.58 on Wednesday, has nearly doubled over the last two years, when demand for both its e-commerce and cloud computing business surged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"This split would give our employees more flexibility in how they manage their equity in Amazon and make the share price more accessible for people looking to invest in the company," an Amazon spokesperson said. The stock buyback replaces the previous $5 billion stock repurchase authorized by Amazon's board in 2016, under which the company had repurchased $2.12 billion of its shares. After shares declined about 16% amid a tech rout this year, the company's market capitalization stood at roughly $1.4 trillion as of last close. The White House will unveil a comprehensive set of regulations targeting cryptocurrency on Wednesday, President Joe Biden has revealed. The president called it “the first ever whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying technology.” Among other measures, the order includes a 180-day deadline for several reports on “the future of money” – presumably referring to digital currencies like the one his administration has asked the Fed to step up its research and development of. For now, around 100 other countries are also working on so-called central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
There is “significant momentum” behind the idea of a CBDC, which is essentially a cryptocurrency without the privacy implied by the term “crypto,” controlled by (and accessible by) the Fed, according to a source who spoke to Reuters about the matter earlier this week before the White House’s statement was made public. The language used in the announcement – which carefully avoids discussing ‘cryptocurrencies’ as such, preferring the vaguer blanket term “digital assets” – is unlikely to have any immediate effect on how crypto is regulated in the US, the administration claims. Instead, the order directs agencies like the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to “assess risks and opportunities involved in cryptocurrency use” and issue regulations from there. The administration hopes to have all government agencies on the same page regarding how they handle crypto and other digital assets both legal and otherwise. The aim of the new policy, Biden’s office said, is to keep the US in the centre of both technology and the global financial system. The US’ dollar hegemony has wobbled in recent years as the national debt and inflation skyrocket and other countries worry about being tied to an ever-shrinking ‘reserve currency’ whose orbit they can’t leave. As the price of gas soars due to sanctions on Russian energy imports, the petrodollar alliance that has held since the US left the gold standard in the 1970s appears more fragile than ever. Krakovets, L’viv and numerous other towns — Monuments to Roman Shukhevych (1907–1950), another OUN figure and Nazi collaborator who was a leader in Nazi Germany’s Nachtigall auxiliary battalion, which later became the 201st Schutzmannschaft auxiliary police unit. Shukhevych later commanded the brutal Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for butchering thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles.
The monument in Krakovets (above left) and plaque in L’viv (above right) are two of many Shukhevych statues in Ukraine. Several major Dutch internet providers have reportedly begun blocking websites belonging to RT English, RT UK, RT DE, RT France, RT Spanish, as well as Sputnik. According to the ANP news outlet, the Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) targeted the said Russian media, as they are on the EU’s sanctions list, which the bloc enacted in response to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine. It is said that the ACM on Monday sent a list of undesirable media to internet providers,including VodafoneZiggo, KPN, and T-Mobile.
A VodafoneZiggo spokesperson told journalists that the company was indeed going to block the websites “as soon as possible, probably Tuesday,” with T-Mobile expected to comply soon as well. KPN, while agreeing to restrict access to the Russian media, has made it clear that it is “fundamentally” against the idea of blocking any websites in general. A spokesperson for the provider clarified that KPN does not think it is up to them to “determine what is good and what is bad.” The company would want to see “net neutrality” instead. Last Wednesday, the European Commission ruled that all RT channels, as well as Sputnik, be banned in all 27 member states over allegations of “systematic” disinformation regarding Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Commenting on the move, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that “systematic information manipulation and disinformation by the Kremlin is applied as an operational tool in its assault on Ukraine.” The official went on to claim that the Russian outlets posed a “significant and direct threat to the Union's public order and security.” Meta, Google, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok are complying with the ban already, not displaying RT and Sputnik’s material in the EU member states. On February 24, Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine, with President Putin citing the need to “demilitarize and denazify” the country as well as to prevent Kiev from being dragged into NATO. Moreover, according to the Russian president, the Ukrainian government’s policies toward the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass republics were tantamount to “genocide.” Ukraine and the West, however, suspect that the Kremlin in fact wants to install a pro-Russian puppet government in Kiev, coming up with pretexts for an aggressive and “unprovoked” war. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk called on Europe to restart its dormant nuclear power stations and expand its current energy output on Sunday amid Russia’s military conflict with Ukraine. In a series of Twitter posts, Musk wrote that it was “hopefully” now “extremely obvious that Europe should restart dormant nuclear power stations and increase power output of existing ones.” “This is *critical* to national and international security,” he warned as the West continues to sanction Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Musk also argued that nuclear energy was “vastly better for global warming than burning hydrocarbons,” and rejected radiation concerns by vowing to “eat locally grown food on TV” near nuclear power stations that the public considers to be “the worst.”
Despite Musk’s calls, it would likely take years for Europe to restart its nuclear power stations, which have gradually been shut down across the continent in favor of green energy commitments. Germany shut down half of its nuclear power plants in December as part of the country’s plan to phase out nuclear energy following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the same month, Belgium reached an agreement to close its nuclear power stations by 2025. France has remained one of the few European countries to stick with nuclear energy, with French President Emmanuel Macron announcing the construction of six new reactors last month. On Friday, Musk also called for the West to “increase oil & gas output immediately,” arguing that “extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.” “Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports,” he said
The US left more and more of the production to China, leaving them with a huge package of dollars. Those dollars were then invested in US government bonds, completing the circle again. China thus increasingly became the factory of the United States. Oil producers also saw the pile of dollars increase considerably. And there too, those dollars were reinvested in American government paper. It was a deal that everyone was relatively happy with until the financial crisis hit in 2008. The US started printing dollars en masse to save the banks and the economy and if you keep a large part of your reserves in this currency, like China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, you start to question the value of those assets.
Surely it cannot be that the Chinese mine raw materials, import energy and labor to produce goods and then be compensated with a stack of banknotes that the Federal Reserve creates at the touch of a button? And the Saudis and Russians also wondered whether it was such a good idea to pump up finite oil reserves in exchange for freshly printed dollars. The first cracks in the dollar's status as a reserve currency became visible. China, Saudi Arabia and Russia continued to export goods in exchange for dollars, but they were no longer willing to invest those dollars in US bonds. They saw the dollar out of business and turned to gold as a historical reserve asset. Dollars received from trade with the US were instantly converted to gold. Countries with dollar surpluses had expressed dissatisfaction with the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy through massive gold purchases, but it seemed to make little impression on Americans. In fact, the US began to abuse the unique privilege of the world reserve currency in yet another way. The US started to use the dollar as a weapon by cutting off access to dollars from countries such as Iran, but also recently Russia. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has warned against separatist inclinations and foreign meddling in Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be under its sovereignty. China wants to develop peaceful ties and ultimately reunify with the island, the official told an annual parliamentary session on Saturday. “All of us, Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, should come together to advance the great and glorious cause of China’s rejuvenation,” the premier said. The head of the Chinese cabinet made the remarks as he was delivering his working report to members of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), which they are to approve. The NPC and a separate advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), launched their two-week annual sessions on Friday.
The annual sessions are usually used by the ruling Communist Party to outline economic and military plans for China. This year’s gatherings are remarkable since later in the year President Xi Jinping is expected to continue his leadership of the country for an unprecedented third term. Taiwan has been administering itself since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, during which defeated nationalist forces retreated to the island. Taipei claims to be representing the will of the Chinese people, but most of the world recognizes Beijing in that role under the so-called “One China policy.” Tensions over Taiwan have been ramping up over the past few years amid new arms sales by Washington and visits of semi-official American delegations, which Beijing sees as undermining its claims to the island. China has ramped up military activities around Taiwan, stating that it was acting to balance similar moves by the US. Lately, there was speculation in Western media that Beijing may attempt to take over the island by force amid the security crisis in Europe caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Beijing refused to condemn Moscow for its offensive and accused the US and NATO of paving the way for hostilities by ignoring Russian national security concerns. Moscow said its attack was necessary to curb threats emanating from Ukraine due to NATO’s creeping expansion into Ukraine. Other parts of Li’s remarks, which covered Beijing’s relationship with Hong Kong, were notably devoid of condemnations of foreign meddling, which have been common in speeches by Chinese officials since the mass anti-government protests and rioting that gripped the autonomous city in 2019. He instead focused on the potential of economic growth for Hong Kong, Macao and other Chinese cities in the Greater Bay Area. It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country. On June 8, the Ministry announced that it will award C14 a little less than $17,000 for a children’s camp. It also awarded funds to Holosiyiv Hideout and Educational Assembly, both of which have links to the far-right. The revelation represents a dangerous example of law enforcement tacitly accepting or even encouraging the increasing lawlessness of far-right groups willing to use violence against those they don’t like. Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.
International human rights groups have sounded the alarm. After the March 8 attacks, Amnesty International warned that “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.” Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Front Line Defenders warned in a letter that radical groups acting under “a veneer of patriotism” and “traditional values” were allowed to operate under an “atmosphere of near total impunity that cannot but embolden these groups to commit more attacks.” To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity. Whether this is due to a continuing sense of indebtedness to some of these groups for fighting the Russians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real problem and we do no service to Ukraine by sweeping it under the rug. The anti-democratic ideology these groups espouse runs counter the values of the Euromaidan. Ukrainians took to the streets to confront former President Yanukovych because they wanted to live in a democratic state where everyone is held accountable. Honoring the values of Euromaidan therefore requires Kyiv to protect all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, or political views. Far-right impunity also represents a dangerous threat to Ukraine’s statehood. It’s been long understood in Western political and legal philosophy that the state must have a monopoly on violence in order to be a legitimate state, and when a state loses this monopoly, society starts to break down. Ukraine’s certainly nowhere near this point, but it shouldn’t take any chances either. Kyiv should understand that turning a blind eye toward all of this activity risks damaging Ukraine’s international reputation. The Kremlin won’t hesitate to cynically use the far right’s activities to push its false claim that Ukraine is a hornet’s nest of fascists, while Kyiv could also lose support in the West for its inaction. Luckily, the authorities still have time to nip things in the bud if they act now. President Petro Poroshenko could start by enacting a “zero-tolerance” policy on unsanctioned vigilantism and direct authorities to cleanse law enforcement agencies of far-right sympathizers such as Sergei Korotkykh, who heads the National Police’s head of security for sites of strategic importance. Government agencies at all levels should also stop cooperating with far-right groups. In addition to the Youth Ministry’s problematic funding, C14 and a Kyiv city district recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a “municipal guard” to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kyiv, and twenty-one operate in other cities as well. And C14’s dangerous leader Yevhen Karas even boasts openly about cooperating with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU). All this needs to end and state officials found to be cooperating with extremists must be removed. Finally, it’s important that Poroshenko and other senior government officials publicly condemn extreme organizations like C14 and speak out in support of marginalized groups. As three straight years of incident-free Kyiv Pride events demonstrate, the state certainly possesses the capability to deter far-right vigilantism if it wants to. However, the authorities are clearly aware of Kyiv Pride’s international visibility and the real test will come once the bright lights disappear. It won’t be easy to end far-right impunity, but the government must summon the will to do so now. There is also the possibility that Russia holds more than 2299 tonnes of gold, as additional gold may be being held in both the Russian State Fund of Precious Metals and Precious Stones, operated by The Gokhran (see , and also through Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. In an article on Sunday 27 February, the Financial Times speculates that due to Western sanctions against the Russian central bank, the Bank of Russia might sell gold:
The Bank of Russia appears not to have read the Financial Times, since, Russia just came out on 27 February and will do the opposite of what the FT suggested:
Across the UK, US, and European sanctions, the common theme is freezing of bank assets, blocking the access of Russian banks and Russian companies to Western capital markets, sanctioning Russian government owned companies, banning various Russian banks from the SWIFT system, and attempting restrictive measures against the deployment of Russia’s international reserves. While the “restrictive measures against the deployment of Russia’s international reserves” is interesting and could indirectly cover the ‘deployment’ of gold, given that all of Russia’s gold reserves held in Russian vaults, what exactly would ‘deploying’ mean when applied to the Russian gold? |
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