The U.S., Europe and their G7 partners are likely to impose new sanctions on Russia as early as today, reported the Wall Street Journal, as Russian forces continue to stationed en masse along the Ukrainian border, while a promised truce in eastern Ukraine has yet to materialise.
Foreign companies, particularly those in the oil and gas sector, that leave Russia over Ukraine-related sanctions may never be allowed to make a return, warned a Russian minister on Thursday.
Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoy said that while no foreign firms have thus far signaled their intent to withdraw from projects in the country, there would be severe consequences if any company does do so.
Just days after making its first shipment of oil from the region, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has vowed to create a united system of naval bases for ships and next-generation submarines in the Arctic, calling on the government to provide full state funding.
Speaking at a meeting of his Security Council in the Kremlin on Tuesday, Putin emphasized the need to protect their interests in the Arctic, warning that other countries were also eager to draw out a slice of the region.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has presented a draft law to create a casino zone in Crimea, in the hopes of boosting local revenues and reduce Crimea’s reliance on Moscow.
According to the BBC, Crimea would become the fifth designated gambling zone in Russia, after Primorye, in the far east, Sibirskaya Moneta, in central Siberia, and Yantarnaya in Kaliningrad, by the Baltic Sea.
After a series of headline-grabbing statements about the possibility of “switching” European consumers over to American gas, the US media hastened to announce the launch of Obama’s oil and gas offensive against Russia. In reality, the EU is not prepared, neither technically nor in terms of price, to buy its energy resources from the US. It would take at least ten years to adapt even the technically advanced German energy system to work with American gas supply.
The Russian economy may not see any growth in 2014, admitted Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, as capital flight accelerates in the wake of the Ukrainian standoff.
Speaking at a government meeting, as cited by Russian news agencies, the Finance Minister claimed that nearly $63 billion had left Russia in the first three months of 2014, while more capital outflow is expected if tensions continue to rise between Moscow and the West.
“Continuing capital flight lowers the opportunities for economic investment and creates risk of an unbalanced budget,” said Siluanov.
Russia and China are “very close” to agreeing on a multi-billion dollar natural gas contract, which will see state-owned energy company Gazprom supply Beijing with as much as 38 billion cubic metres of gas a year, claimed deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich on Wednesday.
The deal, likely to run for 30 years, follows at least a decade of negotiations; and comes just as Moscow is embroiled in a political standoff with its current largest customer, the European Union, over Ukraine.
Russian companies listed on foreign stock exchanges should consider delisting their shares overseas and trade in Moscow instead, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was quoted as saying on Tuesday, claiming that the Moscow Exchange provided additional security amid foreign sanctions on Russian entities over Crimea.
“This is a question of economic security,” Shuvalov told reporters after a government meeting near Moscow.
Despite their current animosities, Russia and the U.S. need each other to maintain influence in Eastern Europe. For different reasons, neither side wants the crisis to continue, and each has a different read on the situation.
Russia’s foreign ministry has threatened to impede the operations of American diplomatic missions in the country, after U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday blocked a remittance from the Russian embassy in Kazakhstan to an insurance agency.
