© REUTERS/Heiko Becker/TASS
Top stories from the Russian press on Friday, April 21st, prepared by TASS
Today’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base to discuss ways of breaking through Russia’s defenses; the West weighs its shriveling options for yet more sanctions packages against Russia even as sanctions saturation nears; and adherents of US-style globalization suffering high anxiety about latest threats to the global liberal order. These stories topped Friday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Latest Ramstein meeting to decide how to break through Russia’s defenses
Thursday’s unexpected visit to Kiev by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, which took place on the eve of a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany to be held later on Friday, may have been connected with the North Atlantic Alliance’s plans for supporting a Ukrainian counteroffensive currently in the works. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Alexey Reznikov, discussed the priority status of today’s meeting by phone. Prior to his arrival in Kiev, the NATO chief urged the West to send more weapons to Ukraine so that its armed forces could break through Russia’s defenses.
Back in late March, the Pentagon reported that the first group of 65 Ukrainian servicemen had completed training on air defense systems in the United States and returned to Europe, a military expert, retired Colonel Vladimir Popov, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. He argues that Washington has also provided Ukrainian troops with munitions for the Patriot air defense system, more HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, and 155mm and 105mm artillery guns since Washington announced its latest $2.6 billion military assistance package for Kiev two weeks ago.
Popov finds it concerning that the new package announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday again contains JDAM guidance kits. It is noteworthy that Ukrainian forces lack sufficient combat aircraft, nor has it ever been reported that Ukrainian warplanes could be reequipped for such JDAM bombs with US support. However, the fact that such weapons are being officially delivered to Ukraine again may suggest that Ukraine’s air force already has aircraft that can deliver bombs like JDAMs, even though no such instances have yet been reported, Popov said. The Ukrainian military command may be saving JDAM munitions for a counteroffensive, or else Kiev may be getting ready to use heavy unmanned aerial vehicles, like the Soviet-made Strizh, other drones that the US may have already delivered to Kiev, or even drones that have recently been developed by Ukrainian defense contractors, he argues. "Third, the United States is considering transferring its F-15 or F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine; these aircraft already have the necessary equipment to fire JDAM munitions at targets," he added.
Another military expert, retired Lieutenant-General Yury Netkachev, pointed to a recent report by the Financial Times that said that today at Ramstein Kiev’s allies would discuss the replenishment of ammunition for Ukrainian air defense systems. According to him, the FT was right to say that Kiev "is not as capable as it needs to be in maintaining control over its skies." Ukraine does not have enough air power, which adds risks to its counteroffensive. Kiev's allies will likely try to reduce those, and we will soon see if they can succeed in doing so, Netkachev concluded.
Vedomosti: West to pick - sanctions pause or tougher application of current restrictions
Western media have been discussing both the parameters of and the need for additional anti-Russian sanctions. On April 20, the Financial Times said, citing sources, that European officials have virtually reached the ceiling for imposing further sectoral sanctions on Russia. Under the 11th package of sanctions, the list of sanctioned individuals and legal entities will be expanded and measures against any circumvention of existing restrictions will be tightened, EU officials told the FT.
The FT report that the EU has nearly exhausted the potential scope for imposing sanctions on Russia should be viewed with caution, Ivan Timofeyev, program director at the Russian International Affairs Council, warned Vedomosti. While conceding that, with every new package, European restrictions have had increasingly less bite for Moscow and that the Europeans either find it harder to agree on them or the measures themselves fail to yield the desired political effect, the expert contends that there is still room for expanding sanctions. The EU can still blacklist more individuals and widen its export controls or impose more import bans, he said.
"While formally, these would not be new sanctions, they may well have qualitative effects. Say, if more banks get blocked. Nor is banning evasion schemes harmless either. <…> This message should not be viewed as a signal that the EU will refrain from imposing more anti-Russian sanctions," Timofeyev argues. Commenting on a report by Bloomberg, the expert acknowledged that a complete ban on Russian exports to Western countries could technically be imposed, too, adding, however, that "the added value from such a ban would be extremely low," he said.
The previous ten packages of anti-Russian sanctions have created a new reality, but they have not led to any change in course by Russia, Pavel Timofeyev, a senior researcher at IMEMO, told Vedomosti. Obviously, the EU will have to consider further steps, [namely] whether it should increase the destructive potential in its relations with Russia, or expand or deepen the sanctions pressure, he said. Europe is feeling the effect of sanctions on itself and is attempting to analyze the potential further consequences, according to Timofeyev. The EU will likely remain on pause until summer so as to watch the situation on the battlefield in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, he said. Nevertheless, the EU still has some more room to tighten its sanctions policy against Russia, and could even completely stop issuing visas, he warned.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Globalists seeking to hold back tide of paradigm shift
American elites are worried about the collapse of the global liberal order, which hitherto has guaranteed them decades of prosperity. The leading Western countries have blithely ignored trade or financial rules, instead opting for the blunt force of bans, sanctions or arbitrary tariffs to protect their interests. The anxiety of US elites is reflected in a recent Bloomberg opinion peace, titled "Mend the liberal economic order before it’s too late." The news agency acknowledged that the destruction of the global liberal order has come at the hand of the United States itself, thanks to whose obstruction the WTO has become defunct, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been transformed into a military instrument for the Ukrainian conflict.
The US has done a lot to undermine globalization, Alexey Portansky, professor at the Higher School of Economics, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The trade war with China launched by former US President Donald Trump remains in effect under the Biden administration, under whose watch relations with US partners in the EU have also cracked, he said. US actions have prompted a number of large European companies to move production capacities to America, thus threatening the EU with deindustrialization, the expert said.
The stability of the global economic regime, which was established by the US and Britain soon after WW II, has long been an issue, Artyom Kiryanov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Economic Policy Committee, told the newspaper. "Not a single political regime can last forever, and now its end is being brought closer through the efforts of the US itself, as well as by the fact that countries in the so-called periphery - Africa and Latin America - no longer wish to follow the old rules," he said. Bloomberg is the mouthpiece of Wall Street conservatives who would like to reinstate the old rules, but we will obviously see a certain degree of localization replacing globalization, as that set of rules that long benefitted the "global one percent" have been discredited, he argues. Under these circumstances, Russia, acting as a great power, is uniting those forces that stand against the old ways, he concluded.
Alexander Shirov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economic Forecasting, believes that the global economy will likely become slightly more regional in the medium term, while developed countries will play an increasingly less prominent role in global decision-making.
Izvestia: Why Starship’s failed launch was still a success
SpaceX’s Starship, the first recoverable, largest and most powerful booster rocket in human history, lifted off from the launch pad on Thursday only to explode at an altitude of 38 km. Despite this setback, Elon Musk’s SpaceX described the launch as a success. Experts interviewed by Izvestia agree because the rocket is both extremely powerful and was built using innovative technology.
"Anything could have caused the accident," Alexander Zheleznyakov, a space industry expert, told Izvestia. "It is not clear yet what the causes exactly were. As in any accident, one should not jump to conclusions yet, but rather wait until the telemetry information is processed. However, the launch did take place, and that was a success for Musk, for he was not counting on anything more," the expert said.
The booster rocket is special, because its thrust is twice as powerful as that of any spacecraft ever built, while its total estimated carrying capacity should be enough to take astronauts to the Moon, as NASA plans, or, possibly, to Mars, as Musk has been dreaming, Andrey Ionin, correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics said.
Another feature of the new engineering approach is that either of the two stages of the Starship rocket can land "on its tail," Anton Alekseyev, CEO of the New Space aerospace corporation, added. There are plans to take people to the Moon under the NASA Artemis program, and therefore the rocket is designed to deliver cargoes and people to low near-Earth, Sun-synchronous and geostationary transfer orbits, while the efficiency of the product will determine the future for interplanetary flights to the Moon and Mars, he said.
However, Ionin warns, building a rocket for such flights is just one of several problems, and it will be much more difficult and important to arrange the process toward exploring these objects, a task that Musk has not even embarked on.
Vedomosti: 45th International Film Festival kicks off in Moscow
On Thursday, the 45th Moscow International Film Festival opened. The new selection team, led by Ivan Kudryavtsev, has managed for the second time to come up with a diversified program with a vast international representation. However, no world-class stars have arrived for the festival, while almost all major premieres are Russian films.
The event has tilted more toward Asia, which manifests itself both in the competition and the business programs. The jury is being presided over by Indian producer and film director Rahul Rawail. Although jury membership is geographically dominated by Russia and Asian nations, Latin America is also in the mix. The jury includes Russian actors Alexey Guskov and Svetlana Ivanova, Kazakh actress Samal Yeslyamova, who won the Best Actress award at the 71st Cannes Film Festival for her role in "Ayka," and Colombian film director and screenwriter Ciro Guerra.
The films on the documentary program reflect the U-turn that global documentary cinematography has made in the past four to five years. That revolution was prompted by both the arrival of a new generation and the role of the latest media, Grigory Libergal, who selected films for the non-fiction competition, told Vedomosti.
"This substantiates what we have been constantly saying. While the evolution in motion pictures has more or less stopped or halted, at least for today, art documentaries have been progressing at full speed," the expert contends.
