May 1, 2025 10:56 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the...r-AA1DZsgR
EXCERPTS: The full story behind Trump’s Damascene conversion will emerge over time, but Ukrainian officials say the British and French leaders played a critical role in steering the US president away from his pro-Kremlin infatuation, as did Boris Johnson. It was this patient whispering that paved the way for the Trump-Zelensky tête-à-tête on the marble floors of St Peter’s in Rome.
[...] The tables have turned: it is suddenly Vladimir Putin who is in trouble, trying to hold together an exhausted war economy as the price of Urals crude crashes to $56 a barrel – from $77 in mid-January – and as the global economic downturn tips the whole commodity complex into a cascading bear market. The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia has fallen 30pc over two months.
It comes as China tries to charm Europe, urgently seeking to preempt any EU moves to raise its own barriers against a diversionary flood of Chinese exports shut out of America. Xi Jinping may have to dial down his “no-limits friendship” with Putin – and reduce his covert help for Russia’s war – if he wants a serious hearing.
The minerals accord remains a bitter pill for Kyiv to swallow, but at least it is plausibly compatible with the Ukrainian constitution and does not obstruct EU membership. Deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko says Ukraine retains full ownership of “all resources on our territory”.
Ukraine will be able to purchase US weapons on a quasi “lend-lease” basis. The first $50m tranche of military support was approved last night.
The debt clock starts ticking from today, wiping the slate clean on the $120bn in total American aid since the war began, most of which was spent on production within the US or consisted of semi-obsolete inventory due to be scrapped.
Neither side will have a controlling vote over the investment fund. The US pledges to help Ukraine mobilise capital via the Development Finance Corporation, the geopolitical arm of the US treasury and commerce departments.
This opens the way for serious investment in the shale gas resources of the Yuzivska field. As I reported earlier this month, an internal study by Ukrainian experts concluded that the carbon ratio, porosity and thickness match the best US shale basins in the Marcellus and Permian.
“We could replace half the lost Russian gas exports to Europe,” said Andríy Kóbolyev, ex-head of Ukraine’s energy giant Naftogaz. If so, Russia can kiss goodbye to its European gas market forever. Ukrainian pipeline gas and American LNG will suffice.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, warned Putin that the deal committed Washington to “a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine”.
One never knows quite whom to believe when the Trump administration speaks, but the Kremlin has clearly overplayed its hand, miscalculating how far it could push its maximalist demands and how long it could keep stringing along a prickly and impatient US president.
Republican senator and Trump golf partner Lindsey Graham is going for the jugular. He may soon have a veto-proof 67 votes in the Senate for legislation that imposes 500pc punitive tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy or strategic minerals, if the Kremlin “refuses to negotiate a peace agreement, violates a peace agreement or invades Ukraine again in the future”.
Russia’s “hot Keynesian” war machine is now in the same state of exhaustion as the imperial German war machine in 1917. Germany had been able to preserve something close to a normal civilian economy over the early years of the First World War but the Allied blockade, chronic shortages, lack of manpower and money eventually forced the military to take over the whole productive apparatus. That too failed, and ultimately incubated Weimar hyperinflation.
Russia has depleted the liquid and usable reserves of its rainy-day fund. Military spending almost certainly exceeds 10pc of GDP in one way or another and it is being funded off-books by coercing the banks into lending some $250bn to defence contractors, storing up a crisis for the banking system... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: The full story behind Trump’s Damascene conversion will emerge over time, but Ukrainian officials say the British and French leaders played a critical role in steering the US president away from his pro-Kremlin infatuation, as did Boris Johnson. It was this patient whispering that paved the way for the Trump-Zelensky tête-à-tête on the marble floors of St Peter’s in Rome.
[...] The tables have turned: it is suddenly Vladimir Putin who is in trouble, trying to hold together an exhausted war economy as the price of Urals crude crashes to $56 a barrel – from $77 in mid-January – and as the global economic downturn tips the whole commodity complex into a cascading bear market. The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia has fallen 30pc over two months.
It comes as China tries to charm Europe, urgently seeking to preempt any EU moves to raise its own barriers against a diversionary flood of Chinese exports shut out of America. Xi Jinping may have to dial down his “no-limits friendship” with Putin – and reduce his covert help for Russia’s war – if he wants a serious hearing.
The minerals accord remains a bitter pill for Kyiv to swallow, but at least it is plausibly compatible with the Ukrainian constitution and does not obstruct EU membership. Deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko says Ukraine retains full ownership of “all resources on our territory”.
Ukraine will be able to purchase US weapons on a quasi “lend-lease” basis. The first $50m tranche of military support was approved last night.
The debt clock starts ticking from today, wiping the slate clean on the $120bn in total American aid since the war began, most of which was spent on production within the US or consisted of semi-obsolete inventory due to be scrapped.
Neither side will have a controlling vote over the investment fund. The US pledges to help Ukraine mobilise capital via the Development Finance Corporation, the geopolitical arm of the US treasury and commerce departments.
This opens the way for serious investment in the shale gas resources of the Yuzivska field. As I reported earlier this month, an internal study by Ukrainian experts concluded that the carbon ratio, porosity and thickness match the best US shale basins in the Marcellus and Permian.
“We could replace half the lost Russian gas exports to Europe,” said Andríy Kóbolyev, ex-head of Ukraine’s energy giant Naftogaz. If so, Russia can kiss goodbye to its European gas market forever. Ukrainian pipeline gas and American LNG will suffice.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, warned Putin that the deal committed Washington to “a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine”.
One never knows quite whom to believe when the Trump administration speaks, but the Kremlin has clearly overplayed its hand, miscalculating how far it could push its maximalist demands and how long it could keep stringing along a prickly and impatient US president.
Republican senator and Trump golf partner Lindsey Graham is going for the jugular. He may soon have a veto-proof 67 votes in the Senate for legislation that imposes 500pc punitive tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy or strategic minerals, if the Kremlin “refuses to negotiate a peace agreement, violates a peace agreement or invades Ukraine again in the future”.
Russia’s “hot Keynesian” war machine is now in the same state of exhaustion as the imperial German war machine in 1917. Germany had been able to preserve something close to a normal civilian economy over the early years of the First World War but the Allied blockade, chronic shortages, lack of manpower and money eventually forced the military to take over the whole productive apparatus. That too failed, and ultimately incubated Weimar hyperinflation.
Russia has depleted the liquid and usable reserves of its rainy-day fund. Military spending almost certainly exceeds 10pc of GDP in one way or another and it is being funded off-books by coercing the banks into lending some $250bn to defence contractors, storing up a crisis for the banking system... (MORE - missing details)
