Nezavisimaya Gazeta: US seeks effective and safe ways of dealing with the Kremlin

As Western relations with Russia sharply exacerbate, Washington, according to news agencies, has almost prepared a response to Moscow’s proposals on security guarantees, while the US Congress is discussing the "mother of all sanctions bill" which basically declares an economic war on Russia.

NATO’s decision to beef up its contingent in Europe, moving troops to Russia’s borders, and Moscow’s response such as the Baltic Fleet’s emergency drills, have turned up the heat on international politics. Neither experts, nor Western media outlets have a unified opinion for the reasons for the sudden intensification.

However, the foreign media indicated that the security guarantees situation will soon be clarified. Bloomberg reported that the US in general had determined its response to Russia’s proposals. While the US is not going to respond to each question posed in the Russian documents, it is ready to enumerate those spheres where the West is ready to yield, while Russia will have to make concessions in return. Bloomberg’s source also reported that Washington will speak on behalf of the EU as well, with NATO allies holding intense discussions in this regard.

Senior Research Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies Vladimir Vasiliev told the newspaper that the possibility of the US imposing various preventive sanctions is high. Most likely, the measures will include prohibitions on Russian export operations. That said, the expert noted that if Europeans don’t support the US on this issue, then the blow to Russia’s economy won’t be too serious. Still, even a downsized version of the US sanctions will radically change the dialogue between Russia and the US.

"If the US deploys additional troops in Europe and if the export sanctions are introduced, then the storyline itself of talks with Russia changes. There won’t be any time for Russia’s December proposals on security. Maybe, this is precisely where the Biden administration is heading," the expert suggested.

 

Izvestia: Russia not planning to revive its mission to NATO

Moscow will not reinstate its diplomatic mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an informed source told Izvestia. The reason is that the Russian side is not satisfied with the conditions NATO offered, namely, retaining a diplomatic staff of ten, including technical employees. Russia’s Federation Council also thinks that talks on renewing the operation of the Russian mission are not appropriate until progress is reached in the negotiations on security guarantees.

In the fall of 2021, NATO expelled eight employees of the Russian permanent mission and negated another two positions, while Russia announced the closure of its mission and shut down NATO’s information bureau in Moscow. On January 12, following a session of the NATO-Russia Council on Russia’s security proposals, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Western-led bloc would be interested in restoring diplomatic missions.

Russia’s political establishment thinks that the return of Russian and NATO representatives to Brussels and Moscow could be useful while under the current conditions, with no advancement on security guarantees, this would be premature. "The idea is right. Of course, it is necessary to attempt to restore [it], so that there will be normal relations and normal interaction," First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov told Izvestia. "Yet now this is impossible. We haven’t decided on anything. While nobody needs to simply return the diplomats who would sit in these missions simply for the sake of sitting there. This is yet again the same screen which they (NATO members) use in an attempt to dodge the main answers. Right now, it is meaningless since these representatives will have nothing to decide," he explained.

 

Izvestia: West mulls helping Afghans by sidestepping Taliban

The Oslo talks between representatives of a number of European countries with the Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) have concluded. This was the first visit by Afghanistan’s new government to the West since the Taliban came to power. The meeting was initiated by Norway in an attempt to relieve the critical humanitarian crisis plaguing Afghanistan. At the same time, the three-day consultations demonstrated that despite the seemingly sincere desire to prevent a catastrophe in Afghanistan, the West so far does not intend to unfreeze the billions of dollars of the country’s Central Bank assets which is what Kabul’s representatives came to Oslo for in the first place.

After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the already dire humanitarian situation took a significant turn for the worse. Following the takeover, the West froze about $9.5 bln of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets in mid-August 2021, and curtailed financial aid along the lines of international financial institutions that until recently sponsored up to 80% of Afghanistan’s budget.

As a result, the local economy is about to collapse while the country’s population is facing death from starvation. According to the January report of the International Labour Organization, since the Taliban came to power, more than half a million Afghans lost their jobs. According to UN estimates, about 24 mln residents are experiencing a critical shortage of food and as many as 97% of the country’s population of 40 mln may find themselves below the poverty line this year.

"The United States is the main figure in this process, everyone follows it. Its word will be the decisive one, and if there are any advancements in the US in terms of assets and financial aid, the rest will follow. Yet so far the position of non-recognition of the Taliban and the lack of desire to unfreeze Afghan accounts dominate in the US. And the Americans are doing the right thing - the Afghans won’t see this money anyway," Head of the Center of Contemporary Afghan Studies Andrey Serenko told Izvestia.

According to the expert, the way out of the current strategic deadlock may emerge this spring. By then, many observers forecast a rise of the anti-Taliban resistance and the activation of the Islamic State (terrorist organization outlawed in Russia) militants. If Afghanistan’s current government weathers this double blow, confirming its control over the country, the global situation will begin to tilt in their favor, the expert concluded.

 

Kommersant: Central Asian states point finger at one another for regionwide power failure

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are accusing each other of causing the first massive breakdown of Central Asia’s united power grid. Nur-Sultan thinks that the system collapsed due to a shutdown of a power unit in Uzbekistan. Tashkent says that an accident happened in Kazakhstan’s energy network, while another version involves a voltage swing at Kyrgyzstan’s largest hydroelectric power plant.

According to Sergey Rozhenko from KPMG, the regionwide blackout could have been caused by either a power block in Uzbekistan, where the largest units are located, being turned off or by a shutdown of one of the transit power chains in Kazakhstan. The expert thinks that the causes of the accident are of a systemic nature and there is a significant risk of the situation repeating itself.

Alexander Amiragyan of the Strategy Development Center noted that the Central Asian energy system operates under a deficit, particularly in winter, and cannot handle increased energy production and balance an additional load on the system. A surge in energy demand may have been triggered by cold weather and the mining of cryptocurrency, although Kazakhstan insists that it stopped the energy supply to bitcoin farms back on January 24.

Russia’s Energy Ministry thinks that the Central Asian countries should coordinate their energy system more closely, including with Russia’s united power grid. "The energy systems of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan work parallel to each other, including with the Russian united power grid," Russian Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov said. "I think, Kazakhstan and the Central Asian countries should have a closer coordination of managing the power modes," he added.

 

Vedomosti: Why coronavirus quarantine has been cut back to seven days

At a session of the Russian government’s coordination council on fighting the coronavirus infection, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that the duration of the COVID-19 quarantine had been reduced from 14 days to one week, citing a decree by Russia’s sanitary watchdog. The experts polled by Vedomosti called such a decision logical considering the spread of the Omicron strain which has a shorter incubation period than the previous coronavirus strains.

Alexey Pozdnyakov, chief physician of Invitro-Siberia notes that a patient with an infection confirmed by a laboratory should be isolated until full recovery anyway while the quarantine imposes restrictive measures on those individuals who were in contact with those who got sick. "Now this timeframe has been shortened to seven days because the coronavirus does not display such a lengthy incubation period anymore. As for the Omicron strain, the incubation period, on average, may amount to 2-3 days," he noted. Vladimir Sibirsky of the European Medical Center (EMC) concurs: "If a person got sick, he gets sick over these 2-3 days, if not - there is no sense in observing quarantine measures after this period is over."

Associate Professor of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the RUDN University Sergey Voznesensky also notes that the incubation period of the previous COVID strains was considered to be longer, up to 14 days, with an average of 6-8 days, noting that it is significantly shorter with Omicron. The doctor specifies that the shortened quarantine is a necessary measure which allows people to retain their working capacity and remain in the social sphere. According to him, there are certain economic and social consequences of the isolation. "Considering the fact that we cannot stop the development of the epidemic anymore, because we have record high numbers of new cases every day, it doesn’t make much sense either to have high hopes for these anti-epidemic measures," he noted.

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