US President Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are at risk due to reports of his "faulty memory" and increasing voter doubts over his mental acuity and ability to perform his duties; Ukraine appears to lack the necessary resources to carry out President Vladimir Zelensky’s ambitious goal of mobilizing 500,000 fresh recruits for the depleted armed forces; and Russia’s ruling United Russia party has invited the president of the Central African Republic to a Moscow forum on the struggle against neocolonialism. These stories topped Wednesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia, according to TASS News Agency.
Vedomosti: Biden’s 'faulty memory,' health issues may be roadblock to his re-election
US Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on February 12 that she is ready to serve as president if circumstances require it. Her interview was published three days after Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report on February 9 that painted an unflattering picture of 81-year-old US President Joe Biden’s cognitive "limitations" and "faulty memory," thus publicly casting doubts on the incumbent chief executive’s ability to perform his duties and win re-election. The two publications have sparked a contentious debate about Biden’s health and ability to successfully go up against old rival Donald Trump in a likely rematch contest for the White House in the November 5 presidential election.
Moreover, Biden’s own campaign team has inadvertently enflamed such speculation, Pavel Dubravsky, political strategist and head of Dubravsky Consulting, believes. In contrast to the proactive Donald Trump, who continues to hold mass rallies around the country, Biden’s rare speeches and carefully scripted public appearances only serve to highlight his verbal gaffes and physical frailty. His re-election campaign headquarters deliberately opted for this strategy in order to avoid scandal, and yet it has only further fueled public doubts about the president’s health and mental acuity, Dubravsky argues.
Among the general US electorate, the Democrats’ voter base also harbors strong doubts about Biden’s candidacy. A joint poll conducted by CBS News and YouGov on December 6-8 showed that 39% of Democrats oppose his running for re-election, while Harris enjoys the support of only 37.5% of the US electorate, according to ABC News’ poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is competing with Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, claimed on Monday that "30 days from now" Biden would no longer be a candidate for the Democratic nomination.
However, the 2024 primary election schedule makes it virtually impossible to recruit and "sell" a replacement for Biden to the voters in time for November’s general election, Vladimir Vasilyev, senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies, told Vedomosti. Dubravsky agrees, saying that should the Democrats decide to switch from Biden to backing an alternative candidate, they would have to do so before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the greatest number of US states hold primary elections, while the deadlines for filing candidate nomination papers in the majority of states have already passed.
The Democratic Party leadership is loyal to Biden both on a nationwide level and locally, and the very system of primaries is designed to "promote" him by any means, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) expert Alexey Naumov said. As regards Harris as a potential replacement for Biden on the November ballot, such a scenario looks even less probable to Naumov, as the vice president’s popularity rating is as low as that of her boss.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Ukraine may lack resources to mobilize 500,000 fresh army recruits
Despite Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s stated ambitious goal of mobilizing up to 500,000 fresh recruits for Ukraine’s depleted armed forces, the actual discussion in Kiev has focused on less grandiose figures. While Sergey Filimonov, the commander of a Ukrainian battalion, said that at least 250,000 people will have to be called up, Ukrainian military expert Pavel Narozhny puts the figure at a more realistic 100,000 to 200,000, as he claimed that the country lacks the necessary financial and technical resources to train and equip a half million fresh recruits.
Ahead of Zelensky’s European tour coming later this week, which was announced by foreign media, the Ukrainian leader recently held a meeting with his new top military commanders.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian media widely quoted the arguments put forward by Filimonov, who opined that this year the Ukrainian military will have to switch to defensive operations instead of going on an offensive. Such a scenario may necessitate the mobilization of at least 250,000 new recruits, Filimonov argued, while Narozhny, who agrees that a new mobilization is inevitable, said that between 100,000 and 200,000 new conscripts may be enough.
Yevgeny Semibratov, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasting at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN), suspects that Ukraine may be increasingly tweaking its mobilization plans for tactical reasons. "First, Kiev announced the intention to mobilize about 500,000 people, which sparked a great public outcry," Semibratov said. According to him, proposals to lower conscription levels were mostly aimed at cooling down social tensions.
At the same time, the analyst continued, Zelensky also had to reduce public criticism of his move to dismiss the popular Valery Zaluzhny as armed forces commander-in-chief, while his successor, Alexander Syrsky, appears to be more reliant on the Ukrainian president and, thus, may prove easier to control than Zaluzhny. "In these circumstances, it is important for Zelensky to shore up external support," Semibratov maintained. In setting off on a new European tour, the Ukrainian leader also hopes to show to his sponsors in EU countries that he now has a new team that is ready to go to battle. While he will hardly be given any significant additional aid, the media still expects him to be supplied with more weapons, say air defense ammunition or jamming systems, the expert concluded.
Vedomosti: Russia’s ruling party invites Central African Republic leader to Moscow forum
Central African Republic (CAR) President Faustin-Archange Touadera, leader of the ruling United Hearts Movement, will be the most prominent participant in a forum of supporters of the fight against neocolonialism to be hosted by the ruling United Russia party in Moscow on February 15-16. Touadera will be visiting Moscow on February 14-16, the CAR presidential office announced earlier. The CAR president last visited Russia to attend the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in July 2023.
At the forum, China will be represented by Liu Jianchao, who heads the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, while Kim Su Gil, chief secretary of the Pyongyang Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK), will represent North Korea. On February 12, the arrival of Touadera was announced by the Russian embassy in Bangui, and on February 13, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Kim would visit Moscow.
The forum will be attended by roughly 400 delegates from 60 African, Asian, CIS, Middle Eastern, Latin American and European countries. A source close to the forum organizers told Vedomosti that the event had been arranged under a tight schedule, which made inviting other prominent foreign participants difficult.
In 2023, Russia held events designed to attract the attention of the Global South, including the Russia-Africa summit and the Russia-Latin America summit, which was hosted by the State Duma, or lower house of parliament. Natalya Piskunova, associate professor in the Department of World Politics at Moscow State University, told Vedomosti that the upcoming forum reflects the trend toward maintaining a stable Russian interest in countries of the Global South and is aimed at deepening ties with Africa, Asia and Latin America. "One can expect to see closer cooperation between the Russian government and political parties through strengthening ties with countries that support the anti-colonial discourse," Piskunova argues.
Izvestia: Russian developers ready to roll out alternative to Tinder
Software developers at St. Petersburg State University have created an online dating platform with an unusual functionality. "The idea is to match people according to voice parameters for which the Cattell [Culture Fair Intelligence] Test is used as an assessment of personality," project leader Yegor Krasilnikov told Izvestia.
To register, a user will be asked to answer several questions using their voice, and give important personal characteristics for the type of partner that he or she would like to meet. Next, the neural network will analyze the answers to identify the best match. Website developers say the platform is now fully ready, and is also available as a mobile app. They are currently looking for sponsors for a faster promotional roll-out.
While such a dating method looks innovative, it could cause mistakes, family coach Natalya Naumova told Izvestia. "However, the platform has a right to exist as an entertaining option for finding a partner," the psychologist said, cautioning that a person’s tastes and opinions, rather than just his or her voice, should be analyzed as well. To Naumova, the project looks more like a toy than a major dating platform.
People now tend to give more thought to dating, and therefore any elements of a psychological test that Artificial Intelligence-based apps will use for matching people would inspire the user’s trust, Natalya Krasilnikova, PR manager at dating social network Mamba, said. She likes the idea behind the test, which she said is widely used across major dating websites.
Vedomosti: Global zinc prices drop 25%
In the past 12 months, zinc prices in the global market have contracted by a quarter, according to the London Metal Exchange (LME). As of February 13, three-month zinc contracts for delivery to China, Japan and South Korea were trading at $2,298, an 8% drop from a month ago.
Zinc and other non-ferrous metals have become more expensive on the LME since March 2020, and the trend intensified after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, as LME zinc prices hit an all-time high of $4,434 per metric ton in April 2022.
In Russia, annual zinc consumption stands at 240,000 to 260,000 metric tons, and the country produced around 200,000 metric tons of zinc in 2023, Boris Krasnozhenov, a securities analyst at Alfa-Bank, told Vedomosti. According to him, Russia imports around 84,000 metric tons of zinc per year, mostly from Kazakhstan (80%) and Uzbekistan (20%).
Krasnozhenov forecasts that, in 2024, a metric ton of zinc will hover around last year’s level of $2,400 to $2,600, primarily due to global surpluses.Yevgeny Mironyuk, a stock market expert at BCS World of Investments, adds that the price of zinc futures depends on wider commodity indices, which are affected by the US Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle. Alfa-Bank estimates that $2,400 per metric ton would be the minimum level for a positive cash flow for many zinc producers in China.
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