To: JonPreston
Do this again and I will push the abuse button.
Posted on 02/24/2024 5:59:01 AM PST by SpeedyInTexas
“Even Russia’s reported vast gold reserves are finite”
They report something like $200 billion worth. (but their lips were moving...)
On the Winter solstice (21 Dec), sunrise in Moscow is about 9 Am, and Sunset around 4 PM. On that day, St. Petersburg gets about an hour less daylight.
St. Petersbug is the most Northerly major city on Earth.
🟦 No legal recognition of the "Russian occupation" of Ukrainian territories;
🟦 No restrictions on Ukraine's defense forces;
🟦 No veto on Ukraine's right to choose future alliances;
🟦 Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, nothing about Europe without Europe; <> 🟦 Ukraine will never give up its language, faith, and national identity.
How this differs from the order of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson "We will not sign anything with them at all, let's just keep fighting" is unclear.
- UARU
A big kick in the nuts to Russian oil revenues in November. (35% decline)
My guess is that got their attention, and that the Russians are now pretending to engage in peace negotiations again, because they desperately need to deter a death blow to their oil infrastructure this Winter.
My advice would be to keep them talking, but blow that oil infrastructure up at the first excuse, to set conditions for a longer term peace with Russia after the inevitable end of the current war. It would be the best deterrence.
OilPrice.com (24 Nov):
“Russia’s budget is expected to receive $6.63 billion (520 Russian billion rubles) from oil and gas in November, a decline of 35% compared to the same month of 2024, Reuters calculations showed on Monday...
...Last week, the price of Urals crude loading at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk plunged to as low as $36.61 per barrel, the lowest in nearly three years...
...The discount of Urals relative to the international Brent benchmark widened to an average of $23.52 a barrel in the middle of November...
...October revenues for the Russian budget collapsed by 27% from a year earlier, as international oil prices dropped, sanctions on Russia intensified, and the Russian ruble strengthened...
...Last week, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said its analysis of the initial market impact of the sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil showed they “are having their intended effect of dampening Russian revenues by lowering the price of Russian oil and therefore the country’s ability to fund its war effort against Ukraine.”
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