Not feeling relaxed
Scholz & Putin in Moscow, cyber attacks in Ukraine, Navalny in prison trial, who are the Canadian truckers? Plus a little teaser on ÖBAG.
This morning I am short on time so I will blitz through what I think are the key stories to pay attention to from yesterday. First, I would like to recommend another Substack I discovered recently and am finding very useful in my inbox each morning. Here is today’s newsletter, fresh news from Russia by Sergey Aleksashenko:
Yesterday, Scholz and Putin gave a press conference after their talks. I live tweeted it here, a thread:
In short, I think they were speaking in apples and oranges. Putin shared palpable anger of the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade, demanded a return to 1997 NATO borders, and called what is happening now in Donbass a “genocide”. Scholz spoke in lots of big words about partnership and climate and peace and kept circling back to the Minsk accords which we all know don’t work for either side for a number of reasons. Incidentally, if you are as confused about the Minsk accords as I am, this is a great explainer by the FT:
Putin seems like a man prepared to fight for a long time now that he has the world holding its breath on his every word. Scholz came across as, well, very German and definitely not Merkel. Yesterday Russia announced it is pulling back some of its troops from near Ukraine’s border, but that has yet to be measured in any substantial way. Biden spoke in the late afternoon, and quoted a new figure of 150,000 troops, and warned the threat is still there. Yesterday afternoon, two major Ukrainian banks and many of its ministries and key government organisations were hit with massive cyber attacks. It’s not over, yet.
Scholz gave off the impression he just wants this Russia crisis out of the way so we can all get back to normal 2022 things like climate change and green energy and fighting covid. Putin is still stuck in the past and with grudges. I kept thinking all afternoon after listening to them that you need a big American cowboy to ride in on a horse and tell Putin to calm down and stop his temper tantrums, or else. But Biden is not that cowboy and his son mucked around in Ukraine and everyone still remembers. His team of advisors is unabashedly anti-Russia. That’s a problem.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Minsk accords are not implementable for a number of reasons, the most important being they have already lost 14,000 people fighting a years-long war with separatists in the east. Frozen conflicts have to end when one side wins decisively. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the long run.
Also yesterday, the Russian Duma put forward two bills about recognising the DNR and LNR. Many experts said forever this would not make sense for Moscow as the unclear status of the republics give Russia leverage over Ukraine. Nearly one third of residents have already received Russian passports. I cannot explain the details, but in my mind, perhaps naively, those territories are long gone. The problem is no one, including Zelensky, wants to be the Ukrainian politician who gave them away. Incidentally, I opened TikTok yesterday and came across all sorts of sad videos of before vs. after of Donetsk and let’s just say it is a terribly sad fate what has happened to what was once a promising city.
I can’t tell you what will happen. I even heard Russian defense minister popped up for a surprise visit to Syria and my first thought was, as this Russian journalist asks, alibi?
What to read? A lot of great stuff. First, this excellent piece on Russia-China relations by Sergey Radchenko:
Second, this on the ground report from near Mariupol, Ukraine by Canadian journalist, Neil Hauer,
On Navalny’s trial which is taking place in his prison, an unprecedented step even for Russia, read this thread in Russian. A mega thread by Liza Fokht who was there in person:
If you don’t read Russian, read this write up by Andrew Roth:
Finally, always read Talia Lavin on the far right. Her piece on the Canadian antivaxx truckers on Telegram and how they are actually part of a much larger global movement is relevant to all of us in Austria, too. We know they are all reading the same conspiracies online and engaging in the same antisemitism etc.
I really have to run but thank you so much for reading! Before I go, a little teaser here for what I plan to dive bigger into tomorrow: ÖBAG. For those of you not in Austria, that’s the vehicle through which the Austrian state owns its shares in many major corporations like OMV and A1. There have been musical chairs on its management and supervisory boards recently, and I am going to dive into all of that. I saw this news story yesterday about a big ÖVP guy getting a new job with a company owned by the ÖVP’s largest donor, whose daughter happens to sit on the ÖBAG board, and that got me thinking…
…which got me googling and I came up with quite a discovery on just the first name I started to google, that of a young female lawyer and tax specialist who was appointed to the ÖBAG supervisory board in July 2021 but as of Feb 2021 was the lawyer defending an ex-BVT man accused of helping Marsalek, the Wirecard fugitive. Not exactly the kind of lawyer experience you think of when it comes to reviewing if corporations are investing capex correctly and managing their businesses efficiently. A little teaser thread here with links. Stay tuned!
Have a great Wednesday!