WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/RT_com/status/1782872069543518433

https://www.rt.com/business/596461-s...frozen-assets/

‘Neutral’ Switzerland blocking $14 billion worth of Russian assets[/B]
Switzerland is holding an estimated 13 billion francs ($14.3 billion) in Russian assets frozen in its financial institutions, around half of which belongs to the state and half to private individuals, the national agency overseeing sanctions revealed on Tuesday.

While the value of Russia’s state assets remains unchanged, Swiss authorities reported a sharp drop in the value of privately owned funds.

As of the end of December, a total of 5.8 billion francs ($6.3 billion) in funds and properties belonging to sanctioned Russian individuals or entities was frozen in Switzerland, authorities have said. The figure represents a 1.7 billion franc ($1.9 billion) decline from the 7.5 billion francs registered at the end of 2022, according to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

“The decrease is explained by a loss in value of certain blocked assets – particularly securities related to Russia – as a result of international sanctions,” SECO said in a statement.

The sum is separate from the 7.24 billion francs ($7.9 billion) in assets belonging to the Russian central bank, which has also been blocked in Switzerland.

Swiss authorities said last year that they had frozen an additional 580 million francs ($636 million) in financial assets and two more properties, following their own investigations and “detailed clarifications” by banks. The current estimate includes 17 properties, luxury cars, works of art, furniture and musical instruments belonging to sanctioned Russians.

The agency also revealed that 140 million francs ($153.5 million) in frozen funds had been released “after further investigations found the legal requirements for their freezing were not met.”

Despite not being an EU member and considering itself to be a neutral state, Switzerland has supported the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia. The Swiss government said on more than one occasion that it had been closely following EU discussions on the prospect of seizing frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, but has yet to outline plans to do so.

Moscow has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the asset freezes, slamming the practice as “theft” and warning of countermeasures should the West move to confiscate the funds.

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https://x.com/IslanderReports/status...69051862802613

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https://x.com/ArthurM40330824/status...44335785607375

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https://x.com/mazzenilsson/status/1783188013129830698

https://www.ft.com/content/c2fc7827-...6-1476208c22da

Russian court orders seizure of $440mn from JPMorgan
Move follows lawsuit from state-owned bank VTB to recover funds held at America’s largest lender

A Russian court has ordered the seizure of JPMorgan Chase funds totalling $439.5mn a week after Kremlin-run lender VTB launched legal action against the largest US bank to recoup money stuck under Washington’s sanctions regime.

The move highlights some of the fallout western companies are feeling from the punitive measures against Moscow. It is also further evidence of the difficulties western lenders are encountering when trying to follow through with pledges to close their Russia operations since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The seizure order, published in the Russian court register on Wednesday, targets funds in JPMorgan’s accounts and shares in its Russian subsidiaries, according to the ruling issued by the arbitration court in St Petersburg. The assets had been frozen by authorities in the wake of the western sanctions.

The dispute centres around $439mn in funds that VTB held in a JPMorgan account in the US. When Washington imposed sanctions on the Kremlin-run bank, JPMorgan had to move the funds to a separate escrow account. Under the US sanctions regime, neither VTB nor JPMorgan can access the funds.

In response, VTB last week filed a lawsuit against the New York-based group to get Russian authorities to freeze the equivalent amount in Russia, warning that JPMorgan was seeking to leave Russia and would refuse to pay any compensation.

The following day, JPMorgan filed its own lawsuit against the Russian lender in a US court to prevent a seizure of its assets, arguing that it had no way to reclaim VTB’s stranded US funds to compensate its own potential losses from the Russian lawsuit.

JPMorgan and VTB declined to comment on the ruling.

When JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs announced their intention to close their Russia businesses, which made up just a small part of their worldwide operations, experts warned that any exit could take more than a year to accomplish. Other western banks including Citigroup, Italy’s UniCredit and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International are still operating in Russia.

Since a decree issued in 2022, exiting Russia requires a greenlight from President Vladimir Putin himself. Seven banks — out of 45 then operating in the country — have been granted presidential approval, including Mercedes-Benz Bank, Ikano, J&T and Intesa.

In early 2022, Russia also banned shareholders from “unfriendly countries”, including the US, from withdrawing their dividends.

Last summer, a Russian court froze about $36mn worth of assets owned by Goldman following a lawsuit by state-owned bank Otkritie. A few months later the court ruled that the Wall Street investment bank had to pay the funds to Otkritie.

In March 2023, another Russian court seized $204mn worth of Volkswagen’s assets in Russia pending a lawsuit by its former partner Gaz Group, owned by sanctions-hit oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The assets were later unfrozen as VW received permission from the Russian authorities to sell its Russian business to Avilon, one of the country’s largest car dealers.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/Zlatti_71/status/1782832156571570388

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/RT_com/status/1783098562349342733

https://www.rt.com/russia/596490-smo...lities-drones/


Ukraine strikes Russian oil facilities
Ukrainian drones have targeted energy infrastructure in Russia’s Smolensk Region, local Governor Vasily Anokhin said on Wednesday morning.

“Our region is again under attack by Ukrainian UAVs,” Anokhin wrote on Telegram at around 5am local time, adding that Russian air defenses were responding to the situation.

The drone attack targeted “civilian fuel and energy facilities” and resulted in several fires in the Smolensky and Yartsevsky districts, according to the official. Firefighters are tackling the blaze, Anokhin added, urging the residents to remain calm.

Smolensk Region is around 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow and borders Belarus. The distance from the city of Smolensk to the border with Ukraine is 400km.

Ukraine attempted to bomb another undisclosed oil facility in Smolensk last week. The drones were downed, but debris fell onto a storage unit of oil and lubricants, resulting in a small fire, according to Anokhin.

On Saturday, Russian air defenses intercepted several Ukrainian drone raids across the western part of the country, destroying some 50 UAVs over the border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, and also deeper into Russia – in Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga, and Moscow Regions.

Since January, Ukraine has launched a series of long-range attacks on Russian energy facilities, including oil depots and refineries, using kamikaze drones. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has suggested the strikes are meant to impress Kiev’s Western backers to compensate for a lack of progress on the frontline.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that US Vice President Kamala Harris met privately with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February, telling him to refrain from targeting Russian oil refineries. President Joe Biden’s administration reportedly believes that such attacks could raise global energy prices and provoke a massive Russian retaliation.

According to the media outlet, the Ukrainian head of state “brushed off the recommendation.” Despite the US becoming more and more insistent over the following weeks, Kiev doubled down on its strategy.

[Michel Leclerc]

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by christian (here)
We're not getting anywhere by siding with any of the big governments present today.

I'm not.

I'm personally not concerned about governments and borders; window dressing.

I, however, and some others, do side with what might be called "cultures". One of those is the Religion of Jerusalem. It is my Friend. I don't agree with them. But I have found they "live well" in a way that I am comfortable sharing the planet with.

Unfortunately it has been disagreed with since the 200s by the Church of Rome in a way not conducive to sharing. Take the Fourth Crusade as an example.

European countries in the vast majority have kicked out or prevented the Religion of Jerusalem, and, not because they got an upgrade or anything I would consider for a flat second. Seems to be due to supremacism.

I am not "pro" Russia, Iran, or China in terms of governments or political systems or anything, what I mean is some of the aspects of culture held by some of the nicer people there. In place of what I would call the lack of culture established in my own system. Most of all I am against the geo-strategic meddling at the taxpayers' expense.

In the long run, "my system" has never been up for debate, and, these days are probably the force that is needed to break it.

It would disappoint Mr. Medvedev because we do not really have what it takes to split into multi-nations with opposing air forces and commit SMOs on each other. On the other hand, I don't see how it is going to continue unbroken, either.

Propaganda is a rhetoric designed to transfer Reputation from one side to another. In that sense, I am doing propaganda *for* the Religion of Jerusalem. Due to events, it is effectively centered in Moscow. That is why I automatically understand them much more easily than English speakers and most Europeans.

Thank you Shaberon. I agree with the essence of what you are defending, as always. I would maybe – but that is only a matter of words – substitute for the word and concept of “culture” (which in its etymological base means something like “turning around, encircling, taking care of”, and is related to “wheel”, “cycle”, “chakra" and “polis/politics” ) the word and concept of “civilisation” (meaning in its base “allowing humans to sleep together and make love”, and is related to “home”) because it is closer to essence — the religious consequence of it would be to try and aspire at “the depth of it” (the depth of religious ideas, concepts, words) or, in other words: the “esoteron” of it, i.e. the "more inward" aspect of them, the "esoteric" aspect of them..

If people would open themselves up to the "holy primitivity” of the words they use, they would never come to prefer their identifications with superficialities to “the depth of it all" – which teaches them that they are each other’s brothers and sisters – who can never become estranged from each other.

[ExomatrixTV]

• WARNING! this is about to get MUCH worse, Putin readies for NATO attack | Redacted w Clayton Morris:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LaAMQOgIVd4

[Ewan]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
Text:

What is Project Maven AI and how is it disappointing US?

Project Maven AI is US Defense Department’s flagship project that uses artificial intelligence to make decisions on the battlefield in lieu of humans.

The technology is being tested in the Ukraine conflict area, with Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, Commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, cynically calling Ukraine “our laboratory”.

In theory, the system is supposed to process data from multiple sources, including satellites, drones, and even social media accounts of Russian soldiers, before anticipating, detecting, and destroying enemy targets by generating swarms of GPA-guided missiles with little input from humans.

However, field commanders have complained of the system’s failure in delivering “the picture of the battlefield” to “soldiers in the trenches”, according the New York Times.

In addition, Bloomberg has reported that while soldiers can accurately identify a tank 84% of the time, Project Maven AI is only managing 60%, a figure that tanks to 30% in snowy environments.

https://x.com/SputnikInt/status/1783172171277185388

Unfortunately, as with any AI learning model, it is going to get better and better.

Skynet is only a few years away.