UkraineKupiansk sty

An informal memorial next to the former 'PMC Wagner Centre's St.Petersburg, St Petersburg, Russian Federation - 24 Aug 2023

HANDOUT on 6/9/2023

How U.S. military aid has grown since the start of the war

The Washington Post

UKRAINE YOUNG SOLDIERS

UKRAINE DRONES PRODUCTION

Wagner fighters deployed in Rostov-on-Don

Russia Ukraine War

The potent U.S. arsenal for Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Ukraine southern front

Promo image for russia-ukraine-frontline-map 

Ruble Sinks as Russia Isolated by Sanctions

Bloomberg

FTWP

HOGP

United States Russia Nuclear Treaty

Ukraine Russia War Crimes Hospitals

For The Washington Post

U.S. Army M1 Abrams tanks from the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 163rd Cavalry Regiment prepare to conduct movement operations during Exercise Eager Lion in Jordan, Sept. 6, 2022

Task Force Spartan

handout

UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT-WAR

Contributor

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

Middle East conflict live updates: Israel says it has reopened key aid crossing; U.S. paused bomb shipments to Israel

U.S. signals optimism for Gaza cease-fire as Israel moves into Rafah 

Substack courts TikTokers with new ‘creators’ program

Indiana primary updates: Mike Braun wins Republican governor race

Nats go over .500 the hard way by beating the O’s and Corbin Burnes

A look at what has changed since the Nationals were last above .500

Baseball can crush rookies. Why hasn’t it crushed Trey Lipscomb?

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

Russia is using toxic chemical weapons, wrecking a ban it helped create

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

The Washington Post wins three Pulitzer Prizes

Carolyn Hax: Family pushes siblings to ‘make amends’ after their mother’s death

Miss Manners: I’m offended by a golfer’s skirt choice

Ask Amy: I want to be closer with my brother. He never reaches out to me.

No, posting is not better political activism than talking to voters

The legal — and political — stakes of Stormy Daniels on the stand

In photos: The scene after a deadly tornado strikes Oklahoma

Fashion previews, protests, parties: The scene surrounding the Met Gala

US-VOTE-POLITICS-ECONOMY-BIDEN

Europe

World

National Security

Military

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraine-russia/

War in Ukraine

Maxim Shemetov

Russia’s Central Bank on Tuesday raised the country’s key interest rate by 3.5 percentage points to 12 percent — a significant increase that came a day after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/14/russia-ruble-economy-ukraine-war/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3" target=_blank>ruble tumbled to its lowest point in 17 months</a>.

The Russian currency has lost almost a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar since President Vladimir Putin began an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and it has decreased steadily against major world currencies in recent weeks. The economy has been battered by Western sanctions, inflation and an acute labor shortage, caused in part by men fleeing the country to avoid military conscription. All the while, military spending has soared as the war grinds on.

In a <a href="https://www.cbr.ru/eng/press/keypr/" target=_blank>statement</a> Tuesday, following its action at an emergency meeting, the Central Bank did not mention the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/14/russia-ruble-economy-ukraine-war/?itid=lk_inline_manual_10" target=_blank>drop in the value of the ruble</a>. Instead, the bank attributed the interest-rate hike to “inflationary pressure”<b> </b>caused by “steady growth in domestic demand surpassing the capacity to expand output.”

While the bank insisted Monday that the sudden depreciation would not harm the country’s overall financial stability, Putin’s economic adviser Maxim Oreshkin appeared to criticize the bank, writing in an op-ed for the state news agency Tass that the source of the weakened ruble was “soft monetary policy.”

“The Central Bank has all the tools to normalize the situation in the near future,” Oreshkin wrote.

Less clear is how the country plans to tackle its widening budget deficit and significant labor shortages, which have contributed to the spike in inflation.

More than 40 percent of Russian industrial enterprises reported a shortage of workers last month, according to <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/08/03/russian-factories-face-record-labor-shortages-a82042" target=_blank>a survey</a> — an acceleration of a trend that has been building since September, when Putin launched<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/21/russia-partial-mobilization-putin-war-ukraine/?itid=lk_inline_manual_10" target=_blank> a nationwide military mobilization</a> to shore up Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Russian economist Sergei Guriev, who is provost of Sciences Po university in France, said the ruble’s fall against major world currencies was “politically important,” since it would be felt immediately by the Russian public.

“The difference between 50 rubles to the dollar in 2022, and 100 today is something every citizen can observe … even those who are convinced and brainwashed by TV propaganda,” Guriev said.

“When the Central Bank increases the interest rate, that also hits Russian borrowers, firms and households with outstanding loans,” Guriev continued. “This will slow down the Russian economy and therefore undermine the increase in the real incomes and purchasing power of Russian citizens.”

The new depreciation marks a reversal, he said, bringing about “a reality where Russia no longer exports a lot and imports very little.” A Western boycott of most Russian oil started to be felt only at the beginning of this year, he added.

Guriev said the recent mutiny against Russia’s military leadership by Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as well as the expropriation of Western companies still operating in Russia, also contributed to capital outflows and helped to weaken the ruble.

Sergey Aleksashenko, a former Russian deputy finance minister, told The Post that the ruble’s devaluation had been caused by a “growing mistrust in Putin’s economic policy and the country’s future.” The president’s order to replace dollar and euro payments for Russian exports with “friendly currencies” had reduced the supply of currencies needed for imports, he said.

Some economists played down the sudden drop in the ruble, suggesting that it represented a consistent pattern of depreciation and inflation acceleration since the invasion, rather than a spontaneous crisis.

“Perhaps the current acceleration will lead to a tsunami depreciation, but this has not happened in the past,” said Oleg Itskhoki, a professor of economics at UCLA. “So it is not very likely, although not impossible, unless it triggers panic and a mass switch of savings from rubles to dollars by the broader public.”

Guriev also said he did not consider the recent developments to be critically damaging to the Russian economy.

“I think it’s normal that the Russian Central Bank stays committed to its inflation target and raises interest rates when it sees that inflation is getting out of control,” he said. “On the other hand, the question is to what extent further depreciation is possible if the Western coalition can tighten the sanctions pressure on the Russian economy.”

It is not the first time the bank has taken emergency measures during a crisis. At the end of February 2022, just days after the invasion, the bank raised the key rate to 20 percent from 9.5 percent.

And in 2014, after Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and an initial battery by Western sanctions, the bank raised the country’s interest rate to 17 percent from 10.5 percent.

Such increases, which rank among the largest ever announced by the bank, echo measures taken during the 1990s when Russia defaulted on its debt and devalued the ruble.

Elsewhere in Russia, a Moscow court on Tuesday convicted retired Russian military intelligence colonel Vladimir Kvachkov — a vehement pro-war figure — of discrediting the military, as the Kremlin seeks to bring nationalist pro-war critics to heel.

The 74-year-old retired colonel — who served in the military intelligence agency the GRU and who has called for a tougher approach in the war against Ukraine — told the court that Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov were discrediting the military, before Judge Alesya Orekhova sharply cut him off, the Russian media outlet Mediazona reported from the court.

Kvachkov was fined 40,000 rubles, about $408, reinforcing the message from Russian authorities that they will no longer will tolerate criticism of the military’s conduct of the war.

The case followed last month’s indictment of the pro-war nationalist Igor Girkin, who was detained on charges of inciting extremism over his criticism of Putin and his demands that Russia take a harsher approach in the war.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russia attacked the western region of Lviv with cruise missiles in the early morning hours Tuesday, according to regional governor <a href="https://t.me/kozytskyy_maksym_official/9581" target=_blank>Maksym Kozytskyi</a>. He said that at least 20 houses were destroyed, including one functioning as a kindergarten. Fifteen people were injured, including a 10-year-old and a 72-year-old, he said.

In Britain on Tuesday, three suspected spies for Russia who were living and working in the U.K. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/15/uk-bulgarians-spying-britain-russia/" target="_blank">were charged in a major national security investigation</a>, the BBC reported, describing them as Bulgarian nationals.

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that five people were arrested in February and that three were later charged under the Official Secrets Act with possessing “false identity documents with improper intention.”

The police did not specify what the documents were. The investigation found that the suspects were working for Russian security services and had passports, identity cards and other documents for Britain, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece and the Czech Republic, the BBC reported.

The police identified the three people charged as Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, and Katrin Ivanova, 31. Dzhambazov and Ivanova shared the same residential address.

<i>Ebel reported from Tunis. Karla Adam in London and Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.</i>

An earlier version of this article misstated in a quote the year that the ruble-to-dollar exchange rate was 50 to 1. It was 2022, not 2020. The article has been corrected.

Cambridge University, BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Russian, Ukrainian, French)

Francesca Ebel is The Washington's Post's Russia correspondent. Before joining The Post in 2022, Ebel was the Associated Press's Tunis correspondent.

Francesca Ebel

Russian central bank hikes interest rates to 12 percent as ruble falls 

the-washington-post

FILE PHOTO: National flag flies over the Russian Central Bank headquarters in Moscow

Reuters

Verified videos

Donbas region

Russian combat capabilities

HIMARS

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/world/europe&limit=20

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis on UK and European news. Includes news from the European Union, European commission news and European parliament news.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.