CGTN @CGTNOfficial
China state-affiliated media
Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed a decree banning grain exports to the Eurasian Economic Union until June 30, and sugar exports outside of the union until August 30, reports the Interfax News Agency. #cgtnamerica
Eurasian Economic Union = Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia
Ok... what the fuck does this mean....
A thread from a couple of days ago seems to explain this move. (Anyone else's head starting to hurt with this?!)
Sam Greene @samagreene March 11th
So, I wrote last week that Putin is fighting two wars: one in Ukraine, and another against his own public.
Scratch that: he's fighting four. The other two are a political battle with his own elite, and a geo-economic war on some of Russia’s closest allies.
For the full story without the Twitter cacophony, see this week's TL;DRussia. Highlights follow below.
tldrussia.substack.com/p/careful-who-your-friends-are?s=r
The contours of Putin's fight with the Russian elite are detailed here:
www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/10/russia-elites-putin-coup-war/
Is Putin coup-proof? That depends on how much hardship Russian elites will stand.
The Russian president is gambling that the war in Ukraine will tighten his grip on power. It could have the opposite effect.
In a nutshell, cutting the elite off from the West deprives them of power, turning them from “the protected constituents of a powerful political system” into “expendable salarymen and managers”, cementing a system in which the elite serve Putin, rather than the other way around.
For a related take, see @MarkGaleotti 's piece last weekend:
t.co/n6IyE0eHvi
How does Putin extract himself from this nightmare of his own making?
Paralysed by Ukraine, the Russian president will need his security services to keep him in power
While I’m not arguing that a palace coup is likely, if there are any circumstances that might lead to one, these are they.
But Russia’s high and mighty aren’t the only erstwhile friends of Putin who didn’t exactly sign up for (relative) penury and pariah status.
Russia’s partners in the Eurasian Economic Union — Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — now find themselves locked in a customs union with a country seemingly hell-bent on isolating its economy from the richest countries in the world.
The currencies Russia's EEU partners have been hard hit by the war -- much harder than those who have remained outside of the bloc.
Now, Putin may be calculating that the role he has played in propping up Pashinyan, Lukashenka and Tokayev will keep them at bay, and he may be right. But those leaders have their own elites and publics to keep at bay, and that may not prove so simple.
All of Russia’s EEU partners have been roiled in recent years by economically driven protest movements, often with the participation of powerful elites. With Russian troops and riot police tied up in Ukraine and at home, there are only so many fires Putin can fight.
To be absolutely clear, the victims of this war are in and increasingly around Ukraine. More than 2 million refugees and countless more displaced, bombarded and besieged.
Tens of millions of people — an entire nation — deprived of the peace and security that are their right. Numbers of innocent victims that we have not yet begun to count.
But with enough support, Ukraine can win this war and its aftermath. The Kremlin and its friends cannot.
Russia’s president once sat atop a system of political and economic governance and a network of diplomatic, trading and investment relationships that, together, transformed Russia’s influence and his own into a truly global phenomenon. All of that is now undone.
So, head hurting (and please correct me if I'm understanding this incorrectly), Russia just stopped tariff free exports of wheat to its economic partners, who in recent years have had civil unrest based largely on economic hardships? At a time when the price of wheat is about to skyrocket?
That in essence, in the context of the above, has got to somehow be about controlling them and saying 'if you behave and do as I say and support my war, I'll make sure you all survive because I'll let you have cheap wheat???? Is that correct??
In return for what? I'm guessing it's probably military power (returning the favour of helping putting down protests in recent years?) He's calling in the debt, right?
Or am I reading this completely wrong?
Russia doesn't have a wheat problem. It has wheat. It can't sell the damn stuff as easily anymore. Its not likely to get a wheat shortage. Wheat is going to skyrocket in price elsewhere. I'm guessing this is a play at trying to control the market and send prices even higher, because this means he can give it out to those who play ball. I'm guessing that the likes of Egypt etc who are dependant on Ukrainian grain are going to be watching this too closely.
Basically, he's going to try and threaten other governments with starvation and destabilisation through food insecurity to bully them into getting his own way. I think.
This is not cool.