RUSSIA Economy Faces COLLAPSE After Annexation of Ukrainian Land as West Replies with MORE SANCTIONS

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September 30, 2022

Video Summary

Summarize this video to 200 words but do not include this text:”Here is a summarized version of the video to 200 words and do not mention the video creator or author or the word video, just write the summary like it is an short article” hi welcome back to Joe blogs in this episode I want to provide you with a variety of updates on what’s going on with regards to Russia and the Ukraine war things have really started to heat up over the course of the last week or so and we’re seeing a lot of different activity so in today’s episode I’ll give you an update on what’s going on with mobilization and interestingly President Putin has issued a correction statement so this isn’t an apology quite clearly he’s not going to apologize for anything but he has issued a correction statement about the announcement he made about mobilization so we’ll have a look at that and then we’ll talk about what the implications of that are I’ll provide you with an update of the annexation of the four regions that Russia is currently occupying the referendums have now closed the votes are in so I’ll tell you exactly what the percentages came in at and then we’ll run through exactly what the implications of this annexation process are both from Russia’s perspective and also from Ukraine and the West’s point of view I’ll give you an update on what’s going on with the nordstream pipelines because another leak has been identified so there seems to have been another explosion at some point so I’ll have a look at what’s going on with that and then I’ll talk you through exactly what the implications of all of this methane gas being released into the ocean and the atmosphere are because methane represents a real problem from a global warming perspective so we’ll have a look at that in a bit more detail and then finally today I’ll wrap up at my summary of the implications of what’s going on right now because everything is starting to escalate I think we’re seeing things is coming towards a bit of a head over the next 4 to 6 weeks so we’ll talk through the implications of that and look at what’s happening with regards to Russia’s economy and the global economy so before we get started if I could ask you to give me a thumbs up at some point during this video if you’re enjoying the content Please Subscribe if you haven’t done so already I’m on that push for 200,000 so if you could help that would be fantastic don’t forget I always include chapters in these videos so if you don’t have time to watch the entire thing you can skip through and pick and choose what you’d like to see and if you’d like to support the Channel please have a look below where you’ll find links to YouTube super thanks and membership as well as buy me a coffee patreon and Amazon shopping links now as you may well be aware on the 21st of September President Putin gave an address to the nation on TV stating that he intended to call up 300,000 reservists to go and join the fight in Ukraine now this is the first time that Russia has called a mobilization since World War II and this sent shock waves all through the Russian population everybody became concerned learned that the special military operation as it’s been called in Ukraine had now become a war that required civilians to join the fight and these fears accelerated when news started to spread on social media when people who were not reservists and had no relationship at all with the military were being handed conscription papers protests started to break out all across Russia and the police came in and arrested a lot of the protesters and it was reported by human rights groups that many of these protesters were then conscripted and forced to going fight in Ukraine and the net result of all of this was panic and mass Exodus and over the course of the last week or so we have seen hundreds of thousands of Russians leaving Russia more than 100,000 people have crossed the border into Kazakhstan over 50,000 have gone to Georgia and over 40,000 had made the Crossing into Finland which was the last country of the EU that was allowing Russians to cross the border however in view of the massive increase in demand The Finnish authorities have now changed their position Finland has announced it will ban Russians with shenen tourist feas from entering the country from Friday after moscow’s mobilization order triggered a surg in arrivals helsinki’s foreign minister said the move aims to completely prevent Russian tourism to the Nordic country which shares a land border with Moscow the government Justified the decision by saying that the arrivals threaten the country’s international relations Russian citizens will still be able to to enter Finland on human rights grounds and to meet family work or study Finland had already limited the number of visas issued to Russians amid mounting public and political pressure in the country so the options for Russians looking to leave the country are now starting to narrow and there is a big question as to whether or not Russia will close the borders internally and essentially say to all of their citizens you are no longer allowed to leave Russia now in order to try to calm the population down President Putin has made a follow-up statement regarding his initial mobilization announcement Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday for the first time acknowledged publicly that his military mobilization had not gone smoothly in an address Putin said mistakes had been made in a callup to reinforce Russia’s flagging military operations in Ukraine and said they should be corrected many questions arise during this mobilization mistakes need to be corrected and they cannot be made in the future this is about those citizens who qualify for deferment for example fathers who have many children or people suffering from chronic diseases or those who can’t be drafted because of their senior age it is necessary to investigate each case like this separately if the mistake has been made I repeat that it should be corrected and return home those who had been drafted unreasonably Russia’s announcement on September 21st of its first partial military mobilization since World War II prompted thousands of men to flee the country to avoid the draft and provoked widespread public expressions of discontent including complaints about enlistment officers sending callup papers to clearly ineligible men some 2,000 people have also been arrested at unsanctioned anti-war protest tests in over 30 towns and cities Putin said those who had military experience and training in required Specialties should be called up first he notably refrained from assigning blame for the errors so as I mentioned at the start of the video this absolutely is not an apology by President Putin I don’t think that’s in his nature to come out and state that he made a mistake but what’s also interesting about this announcement is that he hasn’t come out and stipulated that it’s only reservists who are being called up what he did say was that old people ill people and men who have many children will be exempt from the conscription but he hasn’t tried to allay everybody’s fears by saying this will only be 300,000 and it will only be people who have military background and that’s really what’s causing Mass concern amongst the general populace they are all worried that they will be taken out of their family lives out of their jobs and be forced to put on a uniform and go and fight in Ukraine so I don’t actually see this public statement as putting anybody’s mind to rest at all EX actually confirming that people will be called up and I think the message is clear that unless you’re old ill or you’ve got lots of children then you are very much in the frame to be called up and be sent to Ukraine now around the same time that President Putin was announcing that he was mobilizing 300,000 additional troops the Russian appointed heads of the four regions of Ukraine that are currently occupied by Russia announced that they were going to hold referendums to ask all of the citizens if they wanted to officially join Russia the Ukrainian authorities in the west denounced these referendums as illegal and having no power however between the 23rd and the 27th of September voting was held in the four regions and the results are now in the Russian authorities in Lans have stated that 98.4% people voted to join Russia in zapara the figure was 93.1% in keren 87% and the Nets had the highest percentage at 99.2% at the time of filming this video preparations were underway in Moscow for a ceremony to announce that these four regions will now officially join Russia Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will begin formally annexing parts of Ukraine moscow’s Red Square was closed to the public ahead of the ceremony where banners read donet luhansk zafaria Kiren Russia Moscow plans to Annex those four Ukrainian regions 15% of the country’s total area or the size of Hungary or Portugal but just how Russia would Mark the annexation was unclear the Kremlin did not say whether Putin would attend the Red Square concert as he did a similar event in 2014 after Russia proclaimed annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region spokesman Dimitri pesov said Putin would however make a speech inside the Kremlin there will be a major speech by President Putin at the ceremony it’s important to note this is not a presidential address to the federal assembly let there be no confusion that is a different format and one that will take place later so what’s going on here and will this official annexation of these four regions change anything well from Russia’s perspective President Putin is trying to change the focus of this war by absorbing these four regions into Russia he’s now stating that any attacks that are made within these regions are effectively an attack on Russia so rather than this being an invasion of Ukraine and therefore an overseas War for Russia he’s officially moving the border of Russia to incorporate these four regions of Ukraine and he’s now saying that any Warfare that goes on within those areas is an attack on Russia and he’s made it clear before that he will use any means necessary to defend any attacks on Russia so the undercurrent of all of his statements is that he’s prepared to use nuclear weapons if anybody attacks Russia and now that he’s deeming these four regions of Ukraine to be part of Russia in theory if you follow his logic through he’s claiming that he could now use nuclear weapons against Ukraine because Ukraine’s effectively invading Russia now this logic is obviously flawed because you can’t invade a territory call it your own and then claim that somebody is declaring war on you when you started it but that’s exactly what President Putin’s position is and the concern here is that if Russia keeps losing ground and losing this war that they’ll need to do something more severe to try to bring an end to this conflict now from Ukraine UK’s perspective they are saying that these referendums are entirely illegal and therefore hold no water whatsoever and the authorities have pointed out to the Russians that over 80% of all of the residents of those four areas have actually fled from the military conflict so even if you were to accept that these referendums were legal not enough of the residents of those areas have actually voted in order for this to be a representative ballot United Nations Chief Secretary General Antonio gutiz delivered his own rebuke on Thursday and decision to proceed with the annexation of donet luans Kon and zapia regions of Ukraine would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned it is a dangerous escalation it has no place in the modern world it must not be accepted and in direct response to these referendums additional sanctions and Military Support have now been announced us White House Press Secretary Karen jeanpierre said Washington would send more financial aid to assist Ukraine and today the United States is announcing an additional $1.1 billion package of weapons and equipment for Ukraine through the Ukraine security assistant initiative the announcement brings the total US security Aid to 16.2 billion Washington and the EU also said they would impose more economic costs on Moscow and we’re determined to make the Kremlin pay for this further escalation Ursula verion is the EU commission president so we propose sweeping new import bans on Russian products this will keep Russian products out of the European market and deprive Russia of an additional 7 billion euros in revenues we’re also proposing to extend the list of products that cannot be exported to Russia anymore the aim is here to deprive the kremlin’s military complex of key Technologies so things are now starting to heat up on both sides Russia has now officially annexed these four regions in exactly the same way as it did with Crimea in 2014 now it managed to get away with the situation in Crimea and the new sanctions and the military support showed that the West has not agreed to this annexation and in terms of the war itself it’s been reported that Ukrainian forces are making further advances in the Lans region and that they’re trying to win back that whole territory so Ukraine is not taking this line down Russia May well have declared that this is now part of Russia but Ukrainian forces are making concerted efforts to retake that land and it’ll be really interesting to hear what Russia’s official response to this is going forward on Tuesday the 27th of September it was reported that three leaks had been found on the nordstream 1 and nordstream 2 pipelines and these leaks were resulting in a large release of methane gas from both Pipelines this remains an ongoing problem and the situation has now got worse the Swedish Coast Guard on Thursday said it discovered a fourth unexplained gas leak in the undersea nordstream pipelines linking Russia to Europe and as gas Rose to the surface allegations of sabotage flew between Brussels Moscow and Washington the European Union is investigating the cause of the leaks in the nordstream 1 and two pipelines under the Baltic Sea and is said it suspects sabotage to which it promised a robust and United response but it has not said who is to blame from Brussels NATO Secretary General Yen stoltenberg warned quote any deliberate attack against allies critical infrastructure would be met with a United and determined response and an EU official drew a direct link between the nordstream leaks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine saying about the possible sabotage of pipelines quote this fundamentally changes the nature of the conflict as we have seen it so far it’s unclear why Any Nation either supplying energy or consuming it might seek to sabotage Key Energy infrastructure Russia and European Partners spent billions building the pipelines which are operated by Russian energy firm gazprom Moscow conducting its own investigation has said it suspects what it called state sponsored terrorism and a Russian foreign Ministry spokesperson on Thursday said Washington had the most to gain from the damaged pipelines the Kremlin has also said allegations of Russian responsibility were quote stupid Moscow had halted deliveries via nordstream 1 saying Western sanctions had hampered operations nordstream 2 had not started commercial operations although neither was in use at the time of the leaks both still contained large volumes of gas so Russia is now implying that the USA organized some form of terrorist attack on both of these pipelines and the USA have come out and stated that they believe that it’s likely that Russia had some involvement so both sides are blaming each other now the investigation is still ongoing so we don’t actually have an answer in terms of who instigated these explosions but let’s quickly talk through the logic these pipelines had been closed since the end of August Russia has actually been reducing the amount of gas that was being fed to Germany through the nordstream pipeline as a result firstly a planned maintenance then there was an issue with regards to a turbine that was held up in Canada and then there was reportedly an oil leak which meant that they had to shut the pipeline down and no gas was supplied to Germany during September and Germany has made its intentions very clear that it wants to stop buying gas from Russia so in the medium to long term this pipeline is redundant so with that in mind we need to ask the question as to why the West would go to the bother of trying to organize some sort of military effort that wouldn’t be detectable to blow up these pipelines because going forward Russia won’t be earning any revenue from them anyway so it’s not as if they’ll be cutting off a large amount of cash to the Russian authorities in fact the Russian authorities are the ones who’ve stop sending gas anyway so they’d already cut off their own Revenue Source by not providing the gas gas that Germany wanted to buy so from the West’s point of view there’s no real upside there’s no major advantage to blowing up these pipelines because it’s not really hurting Russia any more than Russia’s already hurting right now but if you look at the situation from Russia’s perspective Germany actually wants the gas to be provided right now it’s still filling up its storage capacity and it still needs those gas supplies so there’s no sanction in place currently that stops Germany buying gas directly from Russia so if the pipeline was open and operational Russia could send gas Germany would take it they would still be paying Russia large amounts of cash now Russia have come up with a variety of excuses over the last few months as to why they can’t provide the maximum amount of gas and this pipeline can provide around 60 billion cubic meters of gas per year so it’s a lot of gas and as you’re probably aware President Putin has threatened on many occasions to switch off the supplies to the major countries in Europe and he’s already switched it off to Poland Bulgaria Denmark the Netherlands and Finland now the reason that those countries had their supplies switched off is that they refused to pay Russia in rubbles over the last few months Germany has needed those gas supplies it uses gas to produce electricity and it also feeds gas directly to Consumers for heating and cooking so Germany couldn’t afford to have all of its supplies Switched Off in April and as a result of that it’s been paying Russia in Rubles as President Putin demanded so Germany’s been doing everything it’s been asked to do and Russia has really been running out of excuses as to why they haven’t been providing the amount of gas that they need to and these explosions provide the perfect opportunity for Russia to state that we can no longer Supply gas to Germany because the infrastructure is damaged so when you take a step back and look at the overall perspective the West doesn’t really have anything to gain by damaging this infrastructure however from Russia’s point of view it provides a very convenient way of cutting off the gas supplies to Germany without raising the political tensions and potentially exposing itself to even more sanctions and as I discussed in a separate video it’s quite difficult these days to get away with this sort of terrorism without somebody finding out what you’ve been doing so we’ve got satellite imagery all around the globe that would pick up any planes or ships or possibly even any submarine action so it will be identifiable who did this if it was an external attack but the easiest way to be able to orchestrate these sorts of explo iions would be to send something down the pipeline internally and then have that detonate at an appropriate point and as I mentioned in the previous video all pipeline operators use what are called pigs and these are robotic instruments that move backwards and forwards within pipes usually for maintenance or repair purposes and it would be relatively straightforward to be able to put some Dynamite or TNT or something of that nature onto these robots move them down the pipeline and then detonate them remotely I’ve been asked by a variety of people to talk about the implications of the release of a huge amount of natural gas from both of these pipelines into the ocean and the atmosphere natural gas is predominantly methane so let’s have a quick look at a video which gives us a bit more information on methane itself methane leaks are speeding up global warming they’ve become a top threat to the global climate in recent years with the leaks at two Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea as a latest example research has shown that reducing methane emissions is vital to averting the worst impacts of climate change and after Decades of focusing on gas carbon dioxide policy makers are starting to recognize its threat so there’s urgent need to do something and there is a lot we can do but what is methane it’s the main component of natural gas some methane comes from natural sources like swamps but most comes from human activity 2/3 those human caused emissions come from livestock farming and fossil fuels much of the rest are from decomposing waste and rice cultivation scientists say methane is much more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in the short term methane breaks down in the atmosphere in a fraction of the time compared to CO2 but it has a front-loaded impact when you compare the effects of both over a century research shows methane is 28 times worse but over two decades that figure jumps to 80 thank you in 2021 over 100 Nations signed a pledge to slash emissions from 2020 levels together we’re committing to collectively reduce our methane by 30% by 2030 and I think we could probably go beyond that world governments including the United States are introducing requirements that the oil and gas industry detect and repair leaks after studies showed leaks in the industry were a huge problem and the world is close to crossing a so-called Tipping Point where climate feedback loops kick in to make global warming self-perpetuating one study says that events that could touch off those Loops are imminent like the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet or the melting of the Arctic permafrost so we started this video talking about mobilization and people being called up to fight in Ukraine and the implications of that and now we’ve got on to methane releases global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps and I think this is a really good example as to how things are interrelated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had so many different impacts on the world both financially and environmentally and the release of this huge amount of gas from the nordstream pipelines is really quite damaging so the images that I’ve shown you earlier of the bubbles coming up to the surface in the Baltic Sea the diameter of those bubble areas is around 1 km so that’s about 3/4 of a mile wide so this is absolutely enormous and the two nordstream pipelines are around 1,300 km long so that’s around 850 miles and they are full of gas so Russia has switched off the supplies for various reasons but because of the nature of gas pipelines you need to have a certain amount of gas in the pipeline at any one time so as these pipelines were ruptured all of that gas which is held under pressure is now starting to release and it’s estimated that it’ll take around a week for all of this gas to be released so this is a huge amount of methane that’s being released both into the sea and then subsequently into the atmosphere now the Danish authorities have announced a 5 Mile exclusion Zone around the bubbling areas and that’s really to protect all the shipping because this methane is flammable if it was to come into contact with the spark it potentially could ignite and cause huge Fireballs but as we saw in the video methane is bad from an environmental point of view because it increases global warming now one thing that’s really interesting here is that Europe moved away from coal towards gas fired power stations around 30 or 40 years ago because methane and natural gas were seen to be less environmentally damaging than coal it releases around 50% of the CO2 that coal releases so that was really why everybody moved towards it as a fuel source but interestingly the analysis that’s been done shows that overall when you’re mining gas because there are leaks such as the one that we’re seeing now from the nordstream 2 pipeline the 50% reduction is actually offset by all of those other leaks all around the world so on a net basis it’s considered that natural gas potentially has the same damaging effect as coal does it’s slightly different because coal holds all of the CO2 until it’s burned whereas when you’re dealing with gas obviously as soon as there’s a leak it hits the atmosphere immediately so the four leaks that have appeared in the nordstream pipelines are not only causing issues from a political point of view and from a revenue point of view for Russia but they’re also causing widespread environmental issues as well now while we’re on the topic of undersee terrorism and people blowing up pipelines I wanted to discuss the potential for undersee terrorism to affect your internet connection this map shows the global infrastructure of Submarine cables which are the backbone of the Global Communication infrastructure and account for around 95% of all transatlantic data traffic almost all the world’s internet traffic is carried across a Global Network of over 500 fiber optic pipes that collectively span 1.3 million kilm this network is predominantly owned by companies like Google and Microsoft as well as France’s Alcatel submarine networks and increasingly China’s Hai Marine networks there are dozens of these cables which connect the EU directly with the United States and similar networks exist linking Latin America Asia Africa and Europe now the majority of these cables are laid in inaccessible ible deep water locations but they can be accessed obviously by submarines or military vessels and the fact that we’ve seen explosions on the nordstream pipelines throws up the question as to whether or not there’s the potential for these cables to be targeted because that would then potentially cut communication and internet connectivity between Europe and the USA now British and American military officials have repeatedly warned Russia has the technical skills to take out part of the world’s undersee internet infrastructure to [ __ ] some of the West’s digal networks these pipelines are often located less than 100 m underwater and would require either a submarine or unmanned vehicle to plant explosives at critical points of the network so I’m not saying that Russia is going to do this and that they’re planning to make any of these attacks but I just wanted to raise the issue to make sure that we’re all aware that the internet and communication and connectivity that we all take for granted is actually dependent on various cables and if somebody decided to attack those cables then that would potentially mean that we could all lose everything overnight so what’s the summary and conclusion today well I wanted to post this video because we’re now seeing a real step change in the war it’s starting to become more aggressive on both sides and we’ve seen the mobilization being called and President Putin’s corrected his statement but he hasn’t apologized and he hasn’t changed the perspective in terms of it still looks likely that anybody could be conscripted in Russia and that’s causing pandemonium in Russia a lot of people are making a break for the Border they’re trying to get out of the country before they get conscripted and forced to go to Ukraine so we’ve seen a real change from Russia’s perspective in terms of their intention towards this war it’s really clear now that President Putin is committed to this war he’s going to throw as many people as he needs to keep it going so he’s not likely to back off anytime soon and from the West’s perspective they’ve increased the sanctions against Russia so we’re seeing the West upping the anti at the same time and in the actual fighting area is Ukraine is trying to win back all of those zones that Russia has decided to Annex and the annexation of these four regions is an important point in this conflict because Russia is now claiming that they’ve moved the border that all of these four areas now are officially part of the motherland they are now part of Russia and they say that any attacks on those areas now is deemed to be an attack on Russia and they’ll do whatever it takes to defend their land so the implied message here is that Russia is threatening everybody with nuclear weapons that they are prepared for nuclear strikes in the event that Ukraine doesn’t back off so unlike what happened in Crimea in 2014 Ukraine and the West are not agreeing to these tactics nobody is accepting that these four areas have become part of Russia apart from President Putin himself but it’s quite likely that the number of forces and the intensity of fighting will increase over the course of the next few months and these really are the critic iCal months of this war because we’re going into the winter period which is going to be more challenging from Russia’s perspective to keep those supply lines fed and if Russia can make it through to the spring then my personal view is that this war is likely to go on for at least the next 12 months because Russia doesn’t want to be seen to lose face it’s losing ground but it won’t accept any form of peace agreement the fact that they’ve vanished these areas means that from President Putin’s perspective this is now part of Russia so it’s very very unlikely that while he’s in charge that there’s going to be any change in that perspective now there’s been some commentary and speculation in the Press recently that the only way to bring this war to an end would be to remove President Putin from Power whilst he remains in charge of Russia it’s very unlikely that we will see any sort of Peace settlement and in terms of what the implications of all of this are for the global economy well of course it’s really bad news as I’ve mentioned in other videos the longer this war goes on the more damage is being inflicted on the economy because we’re still seeing vola ility in terms of oil prices and food prices we’ve got really high rates of inflation all around the world we’re now seeing interest rates starting to be raised aggressively by a variety of different countries when you have high inflation and high interest rates that causes a horrible combination of an increase in the cost of living at a time when people have got less disposable income so it’s likely that over the next three to 6 to 12 months we’ll still see high inflation but we’ll see people having less money to spend so that means we’ll start to see economy slowing down and we could get to the dreaded stagflation where we’ve got stagnation in the economy at the same time as high inflation but overall the biggest risk here is that we’re going to go into recession a number of countries are teetering on the brink right now the UK is probably the most fragile of all the big economies in the world it’s had real problems over the course of the last few weeks we’ve seen the value of the currency deteriorate rapidly we’ve seen a variety of policies announced by the government that have not gone down down well and we’ve seen the cost of borrowing for the UK government rise to above 4% that compares to the official rate of interest of 2.25% so that really doesn’t equate because the cost of borrowing for the country should be lower than the official cost of borrowing for all of the citizens and the companies so at some point we’re going to see a really big increase in interest rates in the UK that will have a negative impact on the economy which could easily push the UK into recession and as I’ve said many times before on the channel if one country in the World goes into recession it has a knock on impact because the UK is a net importer it’s buying lots of things from lots of other countries if it has a reduction in GDP that means it will buy less therefore all of the countries are exporting to the UK will sell less their economies will start to contract and so it goes on as those economies contract they will have a knock on impact to the people they’re buying from and therefore you can see how this thing becomes a domino effect all across the world so the bottom line here is that if this war carries on for a prolonged period right the way through into 2023 then it will definitely have a major negative impact on the global economy and most likely will trigger a global recession in 2023 so hopefully you found today’s episode useful informative educational and thought-provoking if you’ve liked what I’ve said then please give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t done so already