MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/. Russia launches major assault on Ukrainian energy and military infrastructure; Dems riding Harris momentum into congressional elections; and militant activities in Pakistan threaten to unsettle whole region. These stories topped Tuesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Izvestia: Russia launches massive attack on Ukrainian energy, military infrastructure
On August 26, Russia carried out massive strikes on Ukraine’s military and energy facilities. The attack was aimed at handicapping the country’s defense industry and undermining the Ukrainian army’s combat capability, said experts interviewed by Izvestia. Reports say that high-precision weapons hit Ukraine’s drone production and military maintenance sites. Besides, the attacks also targeted electrical substations, gas compression plants and storage sites for Western-donated aircraft weapons. As a result, weapons and ammunition supplies to the line of engagement were disrupted.
"It appears that the missiles were fired from Tu-95 and Tu-22 planes. Oniks and Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from ships and, probably, submarines in the Black and Caspian Seas," military expert Gennady Alyokhin said. According to him, the strikes specifically hit repair shops for foreign-made equipment and drone production facilities in Kharkov. "Incidentally, technical experts from NATO countries, namely French, German and Polish nationals, are working there," the expert went on to say. "One of the strikes targeted the airport area in Kharkov, which hosts a hotel where French mercenaries used to stay. This location was hit earlier in the spring, but it seems they have returned," the expert noted.
According to Alyokhin, the enemy is currently redeploying troops and equipment from Kharkov to the Sumy Region, prompting Russian forces to carry out strikes on military convoys heading to the border with Russia’s Kursk Region.
The overall goal of the strikes was to cripple Ukraine’s defense industry and military command system, as well as to destroy ammunition and equipment depots so that Kiev cannot continue military operations, military expert Viktor Litovkin pointed out. "It will be possible to judge their effectiveness by the intensity of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian regions and Kiev’s ability to replenish its stocks of weapons and move reserves to the line of engagement," Litovkin explained. "Strikes on energy infrastructure are supposed to cut power to Ukrainian plants, including both private and state-owned drone production enterprises," the expert said.
Vedomosti: Harris' rising star lifts Democrats' chances of winning Congress
US Vice President Kamala Harris has changed the country’s political landscape since she replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Opinion polls suggest that voters are behind her, Vedomosti writes.
However, it won't be enough for the Democratic candidate to win the presidential election to implement her plans. Her chances of carrying them out hinge on the party taking one or both of the houses of the Congress. According to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, 46.9% of voters currently support the Democrats and 45.2% back the Republicans. The Dems got a boost in late July after incumbent US President Joe Biden decided not to seek a second term in office.
The move to replace Biden with Harris has clearly benefited the Democrats’ congressional campaign, Pavel Dubravsky, head of Dubravsky Consulting, said. He believes that Harris' positive approval ratings play a big role here. Unlike Biden, she can move the needle to help key campaigns in as yet undecided electoral districts.
It will be far harder for the Democrats to win the Senate than the House of Representatives, Viktoria Zhuravlyova, head of the Center for North American Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, noted. "The Democrats are vulnerable in more states than the Republicans, which is why they have to focus on defending their positions rather than winning traditionally Republican states," the expert specified. On the other hand, the party’s chances of taking the House are higher, but far from guaranteed. According to Zhuravlyova, the Democrats’ growing chances of winning the House are due in large part to the fact that the Republicans have been unable to get much done during the two years of their majority in the legislative body.
However, if we look at historical trends and keep in mind that the hype around Harris will gradually subside, the Republicans still have a comparative advantage, Dubravsky went on to say. "Today, it seems that the House of Representatives will lean Republican by a narrow margin, by five to ten seats. This could be a residual effect from Biden’s presidency. I would also predict that the Republican party will take the Senate by one or two seats," the expert concluded.
Izvestia: Militant activities in Pakistan threaten regional stability
Separatist activities in Pakistan may spill over the country's borders, said experts interviewed by Izvestia. A major ethnically motivated terrorist attack recently occurred in the province of Balochistan, where militants from the Balochistan Liberation Army shot over 20 people, most of them Punjabis. The unrest may spread into neighboring Iran.
Terrorist acts like this are not solely driven by Xenophobia. Despite being rich in natural resources, Balochistan is Pakistan’s poorest province. Separatists are particularly angry about the fact that foreign companies have monopolized the market, leaving local residents down and out. They blame the central government for this situation. "I would say that terrorist attacks don’t stem only from ethnic and religious strife but also from the rejection of foreign presence, the province’s economic backwardness and the federal government’s inability to cope with separatism," Vladimir Sotnikov, leading researcher at the Institute Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed out.
It is important to note that the Balochis are a divided people: most of them (about seven million) live in Pakistan, another two million in Iran and over half a million in Afghanistan. "The Balochistan Liberation Army carries out terrorist operations in Iran’s regions, too, because the border is insufficiently protected there. This is why one can say that Baloch separatism has gone beyond Pakistan," Sotnikov emphasized.
In fact, separatism has been a problem for Pakistan since its founding, Boris Volkhonsky, associate professor at Moscow State University’s Institute of Asian and African Studies, noted. In his opinion, the Islamic State terrorist organization, outlawed in Russia, may be involved in the current developments as it is in search of allies among separatist movements. In any case, what is happening in Pakistan may create instability in the country, which has been in a kind of political limbo, particularly following the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
"Political instability persists, so any external blow may worsen things, but much will depend on what position the army takes and on whether the government will be able to take tough and quick measures to cope with the situation. All this may spill over outside the country because the Balochis also live in Iran. Some circles in the West are interested in fanning Baloch separatism. They may play this card against Iran given the clear tensions between Tehran and the West," Volkhonsky concluded.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: US rolling towards recession in 2025, Russia to avert economic fallout
By early 2025, the US will enter a recession, Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes, citing Steve Hanke, founder of the Institute for Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University. Because of sanctions, Russia is not as closely connected with the US as it used to be and will suffer less damage from the recession than other countries, experts said.
According to Hanke, the amount of money floating in the US economy is currently lower than in July 2021. The US Federal Reserve has only seen a contraction in the money supply four times since 1913, and every time, it has led to either a recession or depression. According to the expert, recession in the US may begin even before January, and, given close and extensive ties between the US and many other countries, this will also affect billions of people across the world.
In fact, there are signs that the US recession has already begun, but the country’s elites are still thinking about how "to sell" this narrative to the people and reduce the negative political impact, Pavel Seleznyov, Head of the Department of International Economic Relations at the Financial University under the Russian Government, said. "A search is going on for other disasters that could help downplay the significance of the current crisis. Besides, the groups led by - conditionally speaking - Trump and Harris are fighting over how to manage the crisis. Of course, the Americans will try to shift the burden onto other countries but since Russia in many ways shut itself off from the US economy after February 2022, our country’s situation is better now in terms of potential risks," Seleznyov explained.
However, the Russian economy actively interacts with friendly countries, many of which have well-developed economic ties with the US, the expert pointed out. They are very likely to suffer from the US recession, so Russia will feel it too, even though "not as much as it would have been before 2022," the Seleznyov added.
Still, the threats from low money supply in the US should not be overestimated, financial market expert Nikolay Solabuto said. "Analysts from Johns Hopkins University are right when they say that money is the lifeblood of the economy; the US will need more money and the country’s authorities are quite capable of meeting this need. I don’t expect the US to become a source of major threat to developing countries, including Russia, in the foreseeable future," the expert emphasized.
Vedomosti: Russia's diamond industry adapts to sanctions through strengthened ties with India
Russia increased diamond exports to India by 22% between January and June 2024 year-on-year, Vedomosti writes, citing data from the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Russian supplies are growing amid an overall decline in India’s imports of precious stones. According to the Kimberley Process uniting diamond producing and importing countries, global diamond production dropped by about 8% in 2023.
About 90% of Russia’s diamond production comes from the Alrosa company. In December 2023, the European Union banned direct and indirect imports, purchase and transit of diamonds and jewelry from Russia. The US introduced restrictions in February 2024. Alrosa does not make export details public amid the sanctions but Russia has always sent most of its diamonds to India for cutting.
Boris Krasnozhyonov, head of securities market analysis at Alfa-Bank, points out that sanctions on Russia made Indian diamond cutters nervous, which resulted in surplus stock last year and an overall drop in imports in the fall of 2023. India exports polished diamonds to the US, China and many other countries, Alexander Tokmin, senior personal broker at BCS World of Investments, said.
Maxim Khudalov, chief strategist at the Vector X investment company, notes that India cuts only some of the diamonds that used to be sent to the EU, partially offsetting the decline in Russian exports. He adds that Russian diamonds also reach the Israeli and UAE markets, even though "not directly."
According to Tokmin, further increases in Russian diamond exports to India will depend on global demand for jewelry. The market remains weak at this point due to low demand and the huge supply of Indian diamond cutters, the expert said.
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