Some really interesting developments are happening apropos the banking and financial situation in Russia and the world. Firstly, to set the stage: there’s the rumor going around that Saudi Arabia has allegedly declined to renew its purported “50-year Petrodollar deal”, signed—again, allegedly—on June 9th, 1974.

Another sitrep collating the latest news. Nothing you wouldn't already know about if you have been following the news closely, but it's useful to have the most relevant new developments all gathered into one place.

The most interesting, as usual, is not so much what is happening in Ukraine, where Russia continues to dismantle the "mother of all proxy armies" in a cool and methodical manner, nor is it the Saudi related rumor referenced in the title, but rather the mounting evidence of deliberate and accelerating dedollarization in BRICS+, and increasing desperation on the part of the collective West as it loses the financial and economic war.

Also, Dmitry Medvedev has yet again escalated his "bad cop" rhetoric to another level, which i personally find very entertaining.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    18 days ago

    Oh, i completely agree with you.

    However, that part of the sitrep is referencing a summary written by someone on Twitter of a longer article recently written by Medvedev in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. And it's a bit misleading because that's not exactly what the original article said.

    Here's the article in question: https://rg.ru/2024/06/14/vremia-metropolij-isteklo.html

    I recommend reading it, it's a scathing and quite accurate indictment of western imperialism and neo-colonialism.

    Though i wouldn't have been surprised if there was also a bit of climate denialism in there, because that's unfortunately not uncommon in Russia. As a major fossil fuel producer and with a population that already leans more conservative, Russia has been particularly receptive to that narrative.

    But actually when you read that passage in the article it's a bit more nuanced and leaves some room for interpretation (at least in the translation i got):

    Under the guise of caring for the environment and combating climate change, narratives that are de facto beneficial to the "collective West" are being promoted "green/climate neocolonialism". Rich countries are forcing the states of the Global South to take hasty and uncalculated measures to "preserve nature", without taking into account the traditions and structures that have developed over centuries in the field of agriculture, water and subsoil use. Our partners directly point to the methods used in this area "regulatory imperialism" (de facto neo-colonialism), including on the issue of deforestation and other important issues.

    He's not entirely wrong, and he isn't outright saying that environmental concerns aren't valid, but some of these are also talking points sometimes used by climate change deniers. Medvedev is a pretty astute politician and i wouldn't put it past him to have deliberately given himself sufficient plausible deniability while still including a dogwhistle for that part of the audience that is skeptical of climate change and green initiatives to feel like he agrees with them.

    The part about the creation of economic crises comes in the next paragraph:

    To preserve its "elite" [...] existence, the self-named "golden billion" does not disdain anything. Up to the artificial creation of economic crises. Continues to slow down the allocation of loans through global development institutions and provide support to pro-Western opposition parties.

    Whoever wrote the summary on Twitter for some reason connected these two ideas when they are not really directly connected in the original.

    When reading things like this you always have to be conscious of the bias of the person writing. Conservatives are inevitably going to have bad takes on anything related to climate change and, as they call it, the "green agenda". And as i have mentioned before, the person writing these sitreps is undoubtedly a conservative. It's to be expected that they will include some reactionary cringe every now and then. Doubly so when they are reporting on what a conservative politician said.