Was Bombing of Mariupol Theater Staged by Ukrainian Azov Extremists to Trigger NATO Intervention?
March 22, 2022
By Max Blumenthal – Mar 18, 2022
Testimony by evacuated Mariupol residents and warnings of a false flag attack undermine the Ukrainian government’s claims about a Russian bombing of a local theater sheltering civilians.
Western media have reported that Russia’s military deliberately attacked the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, claiming that it was filled with civilians and marked with signs reading “children” on its grounds.
The supposed bombing took place just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US Congress for a no fly zone, fueling the chorus for direct military confrontation with Russia and apparently inspiring President Joseph Biden to brand Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a “war criminal.”
A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it.
Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives.
Video of the attack on the theater remains unavailable at the time of publication; only photographs of the damaged structure can be viewed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied conducting an airstrike on the theater, asserting that the site had no military value and that no sorties were flown in the area on March 16.
While the Russian military operation in Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia gained nothing by targeting the theater, and virtually guaranteed itself another public relations blow by targeting a building filled with civilians – including ethnic Russians.
Azov, on the other hand, stood to benefit from a dramatic and grisly attack blamed on Russia. In full retreat all around Mariupol and facing the possibility of brutal treatment at the hands of a Russian military hellbent on “de-Nazification,” its fighters’ only hope seemed to lie in triggering direct NATO intervention.
The same sense of desperation informed Zelensky’s carefully scripted address to Congress, in which he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and played a heavily produced video depicting civilian suffering to make the case for a no fly zone.
By instigating Western public outrage over grisly Russian war crimes, Ukraine’s government is clearly aiming to generate enough pressure to overcome the Biden administration’s reluctance to directly confront Russia’s military.
But Kiev’s most emotionally potent allegation so far – that Russia deliberately bombed innocent children cowering inside a theater – has been undercut by testimonies from Mariupol residents and a widely viewed Telegram message explicitly foreshadowing a false flag attack on the building.
Children undergo military training at a summer camp run by the Azov Battalion in 2015
Azov Battalion fighters grow desperate in Mariupol, plea for Western military intervention
The strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol has been held by the Azov Battalion since 2014. Since its seizure, it has served as a political and military base for the ultra-nationalist paramilitary as it launched assaults on pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway republic of Donetsk.
Gathered from the ranks of extreme right activists that provided protesters with street muscle during the 2013-14 Euromaidan coup, the Azov Battalion has been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard by the country’s Interior Ministry. It was founded by the openly fascist organizer Andriy Biletsky, who has vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
With the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel symbol emblazoned on their uniforms and flags, Azov fighters make no secret of their ideological goals. Despite having been identified by the FBI, US Congress, and its own fighters as a neo-Nazi unit, and implicated in an array of sordid human rights violations, Azov has collaborated openly with US and Canadian military trainers.
Having accused Azov of seeking to exterminate the ethnic Russians of Donbas, Putin has marked its base in Mariupol as the front line of his stated campaign to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the city become the site of ferocious urban fighting, with Russian special forces and Donetsk People’s Republic People’s Militia forces waging a block-by-block fight for control as artillery rained down on Azov positions.
On March 7, an Azov Battalion commander named Denis Prokopenko appeared on camera from Mariupol with an urgent message. Published on Azov’s official YouTube channel and delivered in English over the sound of occasional artillery launches, Prokopenko declared that the Russian military was carrying out a “genocide” against the population of Mariupol, which happens to be 40 percent ethnic Russian.
Prokopenko then demanded that Western nations “create a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the modern weapons.” It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s position was growing more dire by the day.
As Russia’s military rapidly degraded Azov positions throughout the second week of March 2022, Azov soldiers apparently directed elderly civilians as well as women and children into the wardrobe hall of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol.
A video filmed inside the dimly lit building on March 11 featured a local man claiming that one thousand civilians were trapped inside and demanding a humanitarian corridor to allow them to escape. Only a small group of civilians could be seen in the video, however.
“I’m begging you to stop all this, give us the corridor to get people out, to get out women, kids, the wounded…” a bespectacled narrator (seen below) declared in the video.
Azov soldier (L) appears on March 11 with a local man outside the Mariupol theater
Since Russia launched its invasion, Azov Battalion soldiers have been filmed preventing civilians from leaving Mariupol – even forcing men out of their cars and brutally assaulting them while they attempted to break through the paramilitary’s checkpoints. If testimony from many Mariupol residents was to be believed, Azov had used many of them as human shields.
Days before Mariupol theater incident, chilling warnings of a false flag “provocation”
On March 12, a chilling message appeared on the Telegram channel of Dmitriy Steshen, a correspondent reporting from Mariupol for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
According to Steshen, local residents told him an alleged Russian bombing of the Turkish-built Kanuni Sultan Suleyman mosque in Mariupol that day was a false flag intended to “drag Turkey into the war,” and warned that a false flag attack on the Mariupol Drama Theater was imminent.
The Telegram message read as follows:
“Look at what our readers from Mariupol sent us. If the information can be verified, it needs to be highlighted [for the media]:
‘Zelensky prepares two [false flag] provocations in Mariupol!!! One of the [false flag] provocation is against the citizens of Turkey, who hid in the mosque built by Akhmetov, and this provocation has already begun by the Ukrainian artillery gunners shelling the grounds of the mosque, from their positions at [Zinsteva] Balka in Nizhniaya [Lower] Kirvoka. Zelensky was unable to drag the EU, USA and UK into the war against the Russian Federation. Now, Zelensky is trying to drag Turkey into the war, pinning his hopes on the explosive emotional character and the love the faithful feel for their sacred shrines.
The second [false flag] provocation Zelensky is preparing for use by Western media, after unsuccessful provocation with the [Mariupol] maternity hospital, Ukrainian soldiers, together with the administration of the Drama Theater, gathered women, children, and the elderly from Mariupol in the Drama Theater building, so as to – given a good opportunity – detonate the building and then scream around the world that this was by the Russian Federation air force and that there should be an immediate ‘no fly zone’ over Ukraine.’”
Steshin’s message recounting the warnings from Mariupol residents has been seen by over 480,000 Telegram users. It is below and can also be viewed here.
On March 12, Western outlets like the Associated Press repeated Ukrainian government claims that the Turkish mosque in Mariupol had been shelled by Russia with 80 civilians inside, including children.
However, Turkish state media revealed that the Ukrainian government had misled Western reporters. The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Mosque was not only fully intact, it had never been hit by Russian fire.
“Our mosque remained undamaged,” Ismail Hacioglu, head of the mosque’s association, told Turkey’s Andalou Agency on March 12.
Still filled with civilians, the Mariupol theater was next on somebody’s target list.
The Associated Press (top) relied entirely on Ukrainian government claims about the mosque in Mariupol, while Turkish media (bottom) interviewed the head of mosque. The contrast in coverage is revealing.
As Zelensky begs Congress for military intervention, news of a theater attack
Less than 48 hours after the debunked claims of a Russian attack on the mosque in Mariupol were introduced, humanitarian corridors finally opened up around the city. The flight of thousands of civilians toward Russian military positions further weakened the Azov Battalion, which was using Mariupol’s residents as collateral in its bid to compel a no fly zone.
On March 16, with his military collapsing under the Russian onslaught, the Ukrainian president and famed comedian-actor Zelensky appeared by video for a carefully scripted, elaborately produced presentation before an assembly of awestruck US members of Congress.
“I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky,” Zelensky proclaimed. The Ukrainian president thus invoked the most famous words of America’s most revered antiwar activist, Martin Luther King Jr., to appeal for a no fly zone that would bring the nuclear-armed militaries of the US and Russia into direct confrontation.
Just hours after Zelensky’s address, news arrived directly from the Azov Battalion’s press department that Russia had bombed the theater in Mariupol.
With a monopoly over information from the scene of the supposed attack, with no other news outlets present, Azov’s press department disseminated photos of the destroyed building to media across the world.
The Azov Battalion’s watermark can be seen clearly in the lower right hand corner of the image below. Azov’s photo was republished by international outlets including Sky News, but with the paramilitary’s brand cropped out. When South China Morning Post ran the image, it removed the watermark and credited “Azov Battalion via AP.”
One of the most widely published images of the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater was provided to international media by the Azov Battalion
Among the first English language media figures to convey the Ukrainian government’s narrative of the incident to a mass audience was Illia Ponomarenko, a Kiev-based, US-trained reporter who has managed to rack up over a million Twitter followers since Russia’s invasion began.
Ponomarenko happened to work for the Kyiv Independent, an outlet that has functioned as one of the most potent US information weapons in Ukraine. The paper had been set up with assistance from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US intelligence cut-out, and an “emergency grant” from its EU-funded cousin, the European Endowment for Democracy.
For his part, Ponomarenko has referred to the Azov Battalion as his “brothers in arms”, and boasted of “chilling out” with its fighters near “enemy lines.”
Seemingly swept up in the emotional maelstrom inspired by the news from Mariupol, President Joseph Biden blasted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as a “war criminal,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “pure thug.”
Next, Human Rights Watch issued a hastily composed press release headlined, “Mariupol Theater Hit By Russian Attack Sheltered Hundreds.” The billionaire-backed NGO acknowledged it had not interviewed any Mariupol residents after the attack, and provided no evidence to demonstrate Russian responsibility. Indeed, HRW’s lone source fingering Russia as the culprit was the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk.
Was Russia’s military so bloodthirsty – and politically self-destructive – that it had deliberately targeted a building that was known to be filled with children? Or had the Mariupol residents’ prediction of a false flag from four days before come true?
Suspicious signs, holes in the Ukrainian government’s narrative emerge
Though Azov boasts a sophisticated press unit which films its exploits in the field, and soldiers are publishing even the most banal video of themselves on social media, footage of the theater bombing was nowhere to be found.
Photos supplied by Azov to media in Ukraine and abroad invariably depict the bombed-out theater without any people in sight, living or dead.
One day before the bombing, on March 15, a group of military-aged men were photographed in front of the Mariupol theater. No women were visible anywhere in the image. The men can be seen placing pallets against the side of the building, ferrying large objects across the theater grounds, and cutting down a fir tree.
According to Human Rights Watch’s report on the theater incident, which contained no local testimony gathered after the attack, the men were “cook[ing] food on an open fire and collect[ing] water in buckets.”
As seen below, pallets and other objects were piled against the same area of the building hit by an explosive charge the following day.
While the theater appeared to have been heavily damaged – “they bombed the building to ashes,” claimed Ponomarenko – it turned out that not one person was killed by the blast.
“It’s a miracle,” the Kyiv Independent reporter chirped.
In a 7-minute-long March 17 package blending news and agitprop, ABC News claimed that all civilians had been saved from the theater, but that “hundreds were still missing.” Data on the modest-sized theater reproduced on its Ukrainian Wikipedia page puts its maximum seating capacity at 680, which raises questions about how “hundreds” could have fit in its basement.
Further, ABC claimed the theater had been hit by Russian artillery shelling, not an “air dropped Russian bomb” as Ponomarenko and many others have claimed.
Ukrainian media, meanwhile, has expressed confusion over the incident. The outlet 0629 has attempted to explain away the mysterious disappearance of the thousand civilians said to have been in the theater by claiming they were evacuated to the city of Zaporozhye a day before the supposed attack. “we are waiting for the official verified information and do not rush to conclusions,” the paper declared.
As Mariupol residents poured out of the city through the Russian military’s humanitarian corridors, testimonies began to emerge of ruthless Azov attacks on the fleeing civilians – and of a major deception at the local theater.
“When [Azov soldiers] were leaving, they destroyed the drama theater”
On March 17, a young woman delivered an eye-opening account of the situation inside Mariupol to ANNA, the Abkhazian Network News Agency.
“The Azov fighters were simply hiding behind us,” she told a reporter. “We were their human shields, that’s it. They were breaking everything, all around us, they were not letting us outside. We spent 15 days in a basement, with kids… They gave us no water, nothing.”
Describing how the Azov Battalion placed its tanks in front of local bomb shelters, the woman offered a revealing detail: “When they were leaving,” she said, referring to the Azov Battalion, “they destroyed the drama theatre. People with shrapnel were brought to us.”
Numerous evacuees echoed the woman’s testimony about Azov holding Mariupol civilians as hostages, and said they were targeted with gunfire as they escaped through humanitarian corridors.
“They burned everything,” an elderly woman recalled to Russian media. “They bombed [my] whole apartment…. They broke in and are sitting there, making Molotov cocktails. I wanted to come in, to take my things, but they told me: ‘No, you have no business here.’”
Asked by a reporter who attacked her and invaded her home, the woman replied, “Well, the Ukrainians, of course.”
A man intercepted by an ANNA reporter after escaping Mariupol fought back tears as he pointed back to the Ukrainian military’s positions. “Azov, those bitches… people tried to evacuate… Azov… they executed the people… the monsters, scum… they shot them up, entire buses.”
“The Ukrainian army was shooting us, shooting at people,” said another man who fled Mariupol. “Right at our house.”
“Ukraine didn’t let us leave the city, we were blocked,” another evacuee stated. “The Ukrainian military arrived and said, under no circumstances are you to leave the city if the Russian Federation opens a humanitarian corridor for you. We want to continue to use you as a human shield.”
The red line: lessons from Syria
Was the bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater of Mariupol a false flag attack executed by Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention, as some local residents claimed? If so, it was hardly the first cynical deception deployed by Ukraine’s government to draw the West into the conflict, and was unlikely to be the last.
On March 16, the day of the incident at the theater, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that “we have real concerns that Russia could use a chemical weapon, another weapon of mass destruction.” In the next breath, Blinken pointed to Syria, where he claimed “we’ve seen them use or acquiesce to [chemical weapon] use.”
It was in Syria where the administration of President Barack Obama imposed its “red line” policy declaring that any chemical attack would automatically trigger a US military response. That policy set the stage for a series of incidents that appear to have been carried out by foreign backed Syrian opposition forces to compel the US to intervene against Damascus.
In the deadliest incident, hundreds of civilians were killed when sarin-filled rockets were fired – apparently from insurgent-controlled territory – at multiple sites in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21, 2013. After Obama blamed the Syrian government and prepared to launch strikes, dissenting administration officials leaked to the media that the intelligence blaming Damascus was in fact no “slam dunk,” a clear reference to the CIA’s pre-Iraq war fabrications. Journalist Seymour Hersh subsequently reported that the US had collected significant intelligence pointing to insurgent guilt in Ghouta. It was this information, Hersh reported, that convinced Obama to abandon his so-called “red line.”
Under President Donald Trump, the US attempted to revive the “red line” by bombing Syria over chemical weapons allegations in 2017 and 2018. But significant evidence in both cases points to staged incidents carried out by insurgents. In the case of the April 2017 incident in Khan Sheikhoun, Trump ignored intelligence and launched airstrikes on the Syrian military. And in the Damascus suburb of Douma the following year, OPCW investigators found no evidence of a chemical attack, but had their findings doctored and censored as US officials worked to pressure and co-opt the organization.
As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, “The ‘red line’ was an open invitation to a false-flag operation.”
Dubious allegations of a Russian attack on the theater in Mariupol have failed to trigger the Biden administration’s red line. The question now is how far Ukraine’s government is willing to go to trigger the no fly zone it needs to hold off the imminent defeat of its military forces.
https://orinocotribune.com/was-bombing- ... ervention/
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Russia will sell gas for rubles
Historic decision. Putin officially announced that in unfriendly countries (which include the US, the EU and other satellites), gas will be sold only for rubles. Accordingly, those who do not want to buy for rubles will not receive gas. And there was also a clause that they would start with gas. Logically, oil is next in line.
After such statements, the dollar immediately fell below 100 rubles per dollar.
Even before these announcements, it was reported that Chubais had left his position "in charge of sustainable development" and fled the country.
Putin also said that the existing contracts for the supply of gas will be fulfilled.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7513305.html
Google Translator
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IS THE US "ALLIANCE" WITH THE MONARCHIES OF THE ARAB GULF BROKEN?
22 Mar 2022 , 8:03 am .
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets with UAE Vice President and Dubai Chief Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai on Friday, March 18, 2022 (Photo: Syrian Presidency)
US relations with the Gulf Arab countries in the Middle East are at the lowest point of our time. And this has become a major inconvenience for Washington to maintain the position of pressure and embargo on Russia and its energy resources.
Some recent events reaffirm this reading of the geopolitical chessboard. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London daily Al-Quds al-Arab , collects and analyzes four of them for The Cradle , adding that it is a growing trend.
BASHAR AL ASSAD VISITS THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. RIYADH AND ABU DHABI DO NOT ANSWER CALLS FROM BIDEN
First mentioned in the article is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after an 11-year hiatus, which received a lot of attention last week, especially among countries in the region. Arab.
UAE Vice President and Dubai Chief Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nehyan received Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
During the meeting, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid welcomed the visit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the delegation accompanying him and expressed his wishes for security and peace in Syria and among its population throughout the region, describing the visit as the beginning of brotherly relations between the two countries. He also stated that the Emirates would recommend Syria's return to the Arab League, from which it was expelled in 2011.
"The warm welcome given by its leaders was a slap in the face of the US administration," writes Bari Atwan, highlighting the evident nervousness of the US government at the event that has practically pulverized the strategy of "sanctions" and isolation against Damascus.
On the other hand, Bari Atwan reviews "the growing challenge to US hegemony by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates." These two traditional allies of Washington have put up resistance to the White House's attempt to soften the consequences of the blockade on Russian energy resources that has added to the crisis that has already occurred in the United States, namely, record levels of inflation and increase in fuel prices.
Biden's priority with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi was that they will collaborate with maximum economic pressure on Moscow by increasing oil production. These two Persian Gulf countries are major oil producers with excess capacity, which could soften the impact of fuel prices on US consumers.
President Biden was waiting for calls from the rulers of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, but they never came (Photo: AFP)
A week after the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the Saudi and Emirati governments simultaneously refused to comply with the rulings. Not only that, but the fact is even more diplomatic embarrassment for Washington, since Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his United Arab Emirates counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, did not even want to talk to Joe Biden on the phone.
At the same time, the two Arab leaders spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
THE PERSIAN GULF TURNS ITS BACK ON BORIS JOHNSON AND LOOKS ENTHUSIASTICALLY TOWARDS BEIJING
The United States is not alone in trying to put pressure on the Gulf monarchies. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the UAE and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, March 16.
The theme of the talks, according to the British side , was joint work to improve the stability of the world energy market amid the "chaos caused" by the Russian special operation. However, Boris Johnson led the meeting to threats against the two countries if they did not follow the western line on Ukraine, which includes, as Bari Atwan mentions, imposing "economic sanctions on Russia, or breaking their oil production agreements with her".
Johnson said there was an understanding during the visits "of the need to ensure stability in global oil and gas markets and the need to avoid destructive price spikes." His interlocutors did not make any high-level statements.
The last recent event that Bari Atwan mentions in his article is, on the one hand, the invitation that Saudi Arabia made to the president of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, for him to make an official visit to the Arab country, and on the other, Riyadh's initiative to trade oil with Beijing using the yuan as currency.
"This indicates that the kingdom and possibly other Gulf states may be willing to join the new global financial system that Russia and China are developing as an alternative to the Western one," says Bari Atwan.
ARAB OIL PRODUCERS FED UP WITH THE US… AND ISRAEL
Other manifestations of rejection of the West by the Persian Gulf in recent days are worthy of note, and are shown in the article by Bari Atwan. In the first place, reports that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have rejected the possibility of a visit by the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who has the objective of trying to save relations with the "allies" and continue pressing for an increase in the oil production.
Second, the visit of the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister, Sheikh Ahmad Bin Zayed, to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, which was seen as a "worldwide snub" towards Washington. says Bari Atwan.
In short, what we are seeing today are manifestations of a revolt against US hegemony in the Arab world by the axis of Arab 'moderation' led by the Egyptian-Emirati-Saudi trio. It is open for other Arab and Gulf states, such as Iraq, Algeria and Sudan, to join if they wish. This new axis may take a clearer form at the summit of Algiers in the fall.
Bari Atwan ends by explaining how the Arab countries' refusal to cooperate with the United States can also translate into a loss of space for the Zionist entity of Israel.
The Arab normalization process with Israel is bound to slow down. It is the biggest mistake that could have been made by standardizing countries, both old and new, and it should be stopped altogether. But there is optimism in this sense, since turning against the United States also implies turning against Israel.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/se ... olfo-arabe
THREE SCENARIOS FOR THE OIL MARKET: WILL CRUDE HIT $300?
Mar 22, 2022 , 8:19 p.m.
Can crude oil reach $300? (Photo: Economic Times)
Russia maintains gas shipments to Europe, at levels prior to the war with Ukraine, about 106.6 million cubic meters a day.
Brent crude reaches US$115 per barrel again.
Alexander Novak, deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, bets on the wisdom of Europe. Taking Russia out of the market is impossible, but trying would take crude to $300 a barrel.
Global energy markets see the height of a bull run that could be protracted.
After the crisis of raw materials and the accumulated inflation for the end of 2021 and the beginning of this 2022, which also led to an increase in fossil fuels, Russia's special military operation in Ukraine occurred, which has unleashed new tensions and a set of measures on the Russian economy.
The impact on the prices of crude oil, gas and other energies has not been long in coming, but paradoxes have not been absent either. The first one is that far from a drop in crude shipments from Russia to Europe, they have been maintained.
The Russian state gas company Gazprom has assured that it continues to supply gas to Europe through Ukraine in the daily volumes requested by European consumers, according to the official spokesman for the holding company, Sergei Kuprianov.
The spokesman indicated that "Gazprom supplied this Sunday, March 13, Russian gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine in the regular mode in accordance with the requests of European consumers: 106.6 million cubic meters per day."
However, the oil market continues to trade higher. The Brent marker remained above 115 dollars for this March 22. Likewise, WTI reached 119 dollars.
"UNCERTAINTY" AS THE PRICE DRIVER
Despite the normality that exists for now in energy dispatches from Russia to other countries, the factor of "uncertainty" is what, theoretically, continues to drive the rise in price. Uncertainty generated by the development of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict but even more so by the scenarios in the breakdown of energy relations between various countries and Russia.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday, March 21, that oil prices could hit $300 a barrel if the West rejects Russian oil, but said such a scenario is unlikely.
Trading sources have said that some buyers have been cautious about buying Russian barrels to avoid being caught up in Western "sanctions" imposed due to the crisis in Ukraine, reports El Economista .
Novak asserted that it is impossible for Europe to avoid buying Russian oil and gas for now, saying that European calls to stop purchases are political gestures to attract attention. "For now it is impossible" for Europe to reject Russian hydrocarbons, he said. "We'll see how it goes in the future."
The factor of the war between Russia and Ukraine is not the only component of the "uncertainties", since the reactions of the Houthi forces in Yemen continue, repelling the silent and bloody intervention of Saudi Arabia in the poorest country of the subregion .
Houthi missiles recently evaded US-made air defense systems protecting the Arab kingdom. Missiles launched from Yemen hit oil facilities of Aramco , the largest company in the Middle East.
Although the Saudi company stated at the time that the damages caused did not jeopardize its shipments to its clients, the short-term risk scenarios simply do not give up and cannot be concealed.
Saudi Arabia admitted on Monday the 21st that the Houthi attacks could affect crude oil supplies and pointed out that the Kingdom will not assume any responsibility for the possible shortage of supply due to the attacks.
For the same reasons, they indicated a "temporary reduction" in their crude production at the expense of the damage caused by Houthi missiles to one of their refineries.
Arab countries have been a special focus of interest for reasons of oil prices. Several media outlets reviewed a publication by The Wall Street Journal indicating that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates refused to answer the phone to Joe Biden, who would ask for an increase in production to lower prices.
In addition, a visit by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his meeting with the oil kingdoms drew attention, especially for its failed outcome. According to various sources, Johnson failed to persuade the Arabs to increase crude oil production, as they insist on not dismantling the difficult agreements that have been reached in the OPEC+Russia formula in recent years and that have served to govern the market. international oil tanker
THREE SCENARIOS
However, the temporary composition of the price, which is multifactorial, has a special epicenter in Russia and therefore the international oil market only opens the way to a few scenarios.
The first of these is that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will de-escalate and, therefore, the upward trend in prices can be stopped.
However, with or without armed conflict, coercive economic measures against Russia will continue and this could affect Russia's oil production in the short term. If it falls, the price would be pushed up.
The second scenario is that of the continuation of the conflict, which, combined with the effect of the measures against Russia, will continue to drive prices higher.
Countries like Venezuela and Iran could temporarily be freed from economic pressure thanks to the United States. Both could increase their crude production. This refers to the possibility that the United States is trying to create conditions for lower prices in the short term, but in the same way, they could be creating conditions for the long term, that is, to favor an expulsion of Russia from Western markets.
This is the third scenario, a long-term context where the influence of the world's second largest producer of crude oil is intended to be annulled. Either way, this will irreparably affect pricing systems and only opens up possibilities on several fronts. One of them is that not everything is concluded about the possibilities of taking Russia out of the market.
Several companies would be accessing Russian crude at discount conditions , and this, in financial markets tailored to the blockades of oil-producing countries adverse to the United States, has been taking shape as an alternative economy parallel to the dollar, to international mechanisms of payment and traditional marketing channels.
On whether or not crude oil can reach 300 dollars, any mathematical forecast is possible due to the flexibility and dimension of reality and the dynamism of events. Such a thing was demonstrated in 2020, when crude oil even cost less than zero dollars.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/tr ... -crudo-300
Above Google Translator
The Kiev security forces did not help civilians in any way.
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It is also curious that Germany has radically changed its policy, deciding not only to supply weapons to Ukraine, but also to invest 100 billion euros in its own armed forces, increasing defense spending to more than 2% of GDP. New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Germany's foreign policy maneuver in defense policy Zeitenwende, that is, a turning point, a new era. In general, it can be stated that today Germany has decided to reconsider the lessons of the Second World War, to start playing a much greater role in determining European priorities in the field of defense, foreign policy and security. This not only changes the balance of power in Europe, but may become for Russia and even the whole world one of the most dangerous consequences of the geopolitical transformations that we are witnessing today.
