Don's Weekly, 2 December 2024: Part 4

by Donald Hill

(…continued from Part 3…)

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The prime minister of Georgia suspended the country’s EU membership application process until the end of 2028. The opposition refuses to recognize parliament’s legitimacy due to fraudulent elections and have not taken their seats. Georgia’s president says that the constitutional coup is now complete and the illegitimate government declared war on its own people. Crowds are once again gathering in front of the parliament and the clashes seemed inevitable. Barricades were established on the streets and broke the windows of the ruling party offices.

Drones have been spotted over military bases in the US for months and more recently over US bases in the UK.

The anchor of the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3 is suspected of cutting two undersea cables and shows sign of dragging. It is unlikely that the captain would not have noticed that his anchor was launched and dragging. The movement of the ship and the time of the cables being cut correspond. Shortly after the second cable was cut, the shipped maneuvered as if it was raising an anchor. The ship is anchored in the Kattegat Strait where it is undergoing inspections and its crew is investigated.

In the waning days of the Biden administration, Blinken says the US will continue to support Ukraine through 2025. Many of the incoming personnel of the Trump administration say the US is spending too much money in Ukraine. According to a Pew Research Center Poll, 27% of Americans think the US is giving too much to Ukraine and 29% are unsure.

North Korea is expanding their factory that produces the KN-23 missiles it sends to Russia.

In the pursuit of personal power, the Slovak prime minister prefers the company of Putin and will attend the May 9th WW2 commemorations in Moscow, an event that began a 40 year domination of his country led by the nation that will host him.

At the CSTO summit in Kazakhstan, Putin told his defensive ally that Kazakhstan is practically a Russian-speaking country, a statement that all his neighbors would recognize as a passive threat. The president of Kazakhstan started speaking Kazakh, sending all the Russian attendees scrambling for their headphones. After talking about it since the 1990s, Kazakhstan made a plan to switch from the Cyrillic to Latin alphabet in 2017 starting in 2025. They made another plan in 2021 but have yet to adopt it. Officially, they say the Cyrillic alphabet distorts the Kazakh phonetic structure and tradition. For Kazakh speakers, the switch to a Latin alphabet represents a restoration of a national and cultural identity and a break from the colonial past. Besides the warnings from within Russia, 15% of the people in Kazakhstan are ethnically Russian. 71% are ethnically Kazakh.

A Dutch minesweeper was given to the Ukrainian navy. It is unknown how they will reach the Black Sea since Turkey blocked two UK minehunters that were loaned to Ukraine back in January. These defensive warships would remove the Russian mines that threaten the sea lanes but Turkey decides whether a warship can pass through its Bosphorus Strait under the Montreux Convention. Signed in 1936, the Montreux Convention guarantees the passage of civilian ships in peace. In a war that doesn’t involve Turkey, warships cannot pass through the straits except when returning to their base. It does not prohibit Russian cargo ships from carrying military equipment through the straits. At the same time, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria signed a deal to clear the Black Sea of floating mines. At the same time, Turkey built two corvettes for Ukraine at Istanbul, both of which are undergoing sea trials. It is unclear if they will block the transfer of the ships they built to Ukraine.

A couple weeks ago the US sanctioned Gazprombank and dozens of other banks. Anyone that uses these banks are also subject to sanctions. These banks were not sanctioned earlier to allow European countries to pay for Russian natural gas. Sanctioning them now will make it harder for Russia to evade sanctions. Turkey imports 40% of its natural gas from Russia and is in talks with the US to create an exception so they can continue to use Gazprombank to pay for natural gas.

After Russia cut off gas deliveries to Austria its cheap prices allowed it to be quickly sold to other countries. Its daily volume of shipping 42.4 million cubic meters per day remains steady. Significant volumes are sold to Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Smaller volumes are sold to Italy and Serbia. Austria had accounted for 17 of those 42 million cubic meters per day. Gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines will stop at the end of the year when the contract expires. Slovakia and Hungary will still receive gas through Turkish pipelines.

Russian income from all its fossil fuel exports has fallen since 2022. Gas revenues from pipelines and ships (LNG) saw the largest decrease.

China, India, Turkey and the EU are the biggest sources of Russia’s fossil fuel income. Most of the EU’s purchases are gas from shipping (LNG) and pipelines.

As of 2023, the EU’s dependence on natural gas has slightly decreased, but the sources of gas it buys has been altered. Russian gas was reduced from 150 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 43 bcm.. Norwegian purchases increased from 79.5 to 87.9 bcm. Various other sources increased from 41.6 to 62 bcm. And the US imports of LNG increased from 18.9 to 56.2 bcm.

Saudi Arabia has been announcing, and delaying, plans to increase production since June. Those plans are on indefinite hold with the oil prices remaining low as the Israeli-Iranian conflict deescalates. If prices do rise in the future then Saudi Arabia may increase production, which would undermine profits from Russian exports.

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(…to be continued…)