RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/03/14/path-forward-david-malpass-president-world-bank-group/

MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. My guest today is David Malpass, the president of the World Bank. The world economy has been a rollercoaster the last two years, first with the COVID pandemic, now with terrible violence and disruption of the Ukraine war. Mr. Malpass is going to help us see our way through this turmoil. Thank you so much for joining us today on Washington Post Live, Mr. Malpass.

MR. MALPASS: Thank you for having me, David. Good to see you.

MR. IGNATIUS: So, sir, I want to begin with the Ukraine war. On March the 1st, a week into the war, you issued a joint statement with Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, warning that the war was creating–and I’m quoting here–“significant spillovers to other countries” and that disruption of financial markets will continue to worsen should the conflict persist and that sanctions that were then being imposed will also have a significant economic effect. We’re now in the third week of this war, and I want to ask you to give us an assessment of the damage to the international economy so far and what’s ahead given current trends.

MR. MALPASS: We can see there’s a massive impact, David. It extends from energy and food supplies to the long-run problems of rebuilding or of reconstruction of all of the destruction that’s going on in Ukraine. So in addition to our horror at the human catastrophe, we have to look at the global economy and see that it’s a big negative. There’s the lost supply from Russia and Ukraine. But there’s also hoarding, which I’ve talked about, that people need to really avoid that, because that in itself drives up prices, and that has the biggest impact on the poor. What our–one of my focuses and the focus of the World Bank is on poorer countries around the world and the people in those countries, and they are immediately affected by the rise in prices that’s occurring now.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/hanging_81_high_in_saudi_arabia.html

While much of the world is coping with the fallout from the Russian-Ukrainian almost-war, inflation, ever-increasing energy prices, supply chain issues, more crime, now you have, now you don’t WuFlu coronavirus, oil-rich U.S. supplier Saudi Arabia, announced Saturday that it had executed 81 people in one day on a variety of terrorism-related offences, exceeding the total number of executions in the kingdom  the whole of last year.

All had been “found guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported, saying they included convicts linked to the Islamic State group, or to Al-Qaeda, Yemen’s Houthi rebel forces or “other terrorist organisations.”

They had been plotting attacks on vital economic sites, or had targeted or had killed members of the security forces, or had smuggled weapons into the country, the SPA added.

Saturday’s announcement marks the kingdom’s highest number of recorded executions in one day, and more than the total of 69 executions in all of 2021.

Incidentally I couldn’t find any reference to this on the SPA site, but it could just be me.  But all is okay because they were tried in Saudi courts with judges.

https://www.investigativeproject.org/9150/the-strange-alliance-between-russia-and-chechen

As Russian casualties in Ukraine continue to mount, numbering in the thousands, Moscow is turning to Syrian and Chechen Islamic fighters as strategic assets. “We do believe that the accounts of them, the Russians, seeking Syrian fighters to augment their forces in Ukraine,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. “We believe there’s truth to that. […] we’re in no position to refute the accounts that they might be seeking to recruit Syrian fighters.”

Chechnya is a land-locked region located in the North Caucasus, a member republic of the Russian Federation, a strictly conservative state with a majority of Sunni Muslims. Chechnya attempted to form a breakaway independent state after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia suffered a humiliating defeat in 1996, which was reversed by a fierce crackdown in 2000. The Russian authorities went on to establish a pro-Russian regime in 2003, managing to gain the support of a great faction of Chechen warlords.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen strongman and close Putin ally, has served as head of the Chechen Republic since 2007. The Kremlin-backed leader has imposed strict Islamic social norms encouraging polygamy and promoting dispatch of his Islamic fighters abroad.

Known in Russian as Kadyrovtsy, those fighters have been deployed in special operations in Lebanon, Georgia and Syria as strategic assets of Russian foreign policy. They have also taken part in counterinsurgency cooperation programs between Russia and China.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18329/russia-putin-ukraine-invasion

Those who believe Putin is trying to reestablish Russia as a great power say that once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus to other former Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.

“The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.” — Aleksandr Dugin, Russian strategist, “Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia.”

“Make no mistake: For #Putin it’s not about EU or NATO, it is about his mission to restore Russian empire. No more, no less. #Ukraine is just a stage, NATO is just one irritant. But the ultimate goal is Russian hegemony in Europe.” — Jan Behrends, German historian.

“Normally wars that take place between states are about conflicts they have between them. Yet this is a war about the existence of one state, which is denied by the aggressor. That’s why the usual concepts of peacemaking — finding a compromise — do not a apply. If Ukraine continues to exist as a sovereign state, Putin will have lost. He is not interested in territorial gain as such — it’s rather a burden for him. He is only interested in controlling the entire country. Everything else for him is defeat.” — Ulrich Speck, German geopolitical analyst.

“Because the primary threat to Putin and his autocratic regime is democracy, not NATO, that perceived threat would not magically disappear with a moratorium on NATO expansion. Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as a whole if NATO stopped expanding.” — Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Robert Person, a professor at the United States Military Academy.

“I don’t think that this war is about NATO; I don’t think this war is about Ukrainian people or the EU or even about Ukraine; this war is about starting a war in order to stay in power. Putin is a dictator, and he’s a dictator whose intention is to stay in power until the end of his natural life. He said to himself that the writing’s on the wall for him unless he does something dramatic. Putin is just thinking short-term … ‘how do I stay in power from this week to the next? And then next week to the next?'” ­— Bill Browder, American businessman and head, Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.

Nearly three weeks have passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, but it still is not clear why he did so and what he hopes to achieve. Western analysts, commentators and government officials have put forward more than a dozen theories to explain Putin’s actions, motives, and objectives.