While many experts on Putin claim his overarching goal is to reassemble the Soviet Union, Bill Browder, who used to be the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, writes it’s all about the money in his column on the Time. Russia’s goal is not making its peopleʼs lives better, but to enrich senior officials using endemic corruption. As the most senior person becomes the richest, Browder estimates Putin’s estate to $200 billion. Bill operated in Russia between 1996 and 2005 as he ran the biggest foreign investment firm, Hermitage Capital. He exposed corruption in Russian companies to help his business, which led to him being kicked out of the country in 2005. Russian Interior Ministry then raided his office in 2007 to construct a scheme to steal $230 millions from the Russian Treasury. Bill’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky who was working on this case was later detained, tortured and killed in Russian prison. According to Browder, this is just a single example of what is done and how much is stolen by Putin and his cronies. At the same time, such level of corruption is hard to maintain, as people, deprived of basic goods, eventually are getting angry seeing politiciansʼ yachts, jets, and villas in France. Therefore, Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good distraction for Russians to be mad at instead of their own corrupt leadership. And this approach seems to be working with insane Putin’s approval ratings in Russia.
The Economist writes of the cost Ukraine is likely to pay to rebuild the country. As the Russian troops are flattening cities of Ukraine, rebuilding will be no less then a monumental task. Based on the ongoing assessment of damages and lessons from German post world war II economic miracle the Economist looked into prognoses of several economic insittutions. According to the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a network of economists, put the total cost of rebuilding Ukraine in the region of €200bn-500bn ($220bn-540bn). The World Bank reckons that GDP will contract by 45% this year. Even though Ukrainian government is trying hard to limit the damage, post-war rebuilding still would be a challenge. There are three main areas of spending there: clearing affected areas of landmines, food and shelter, and rebuilding damaged infrastructure and industrial facilities. One of the challenges after actually getting the money would be to process them in a non-corrupted manner, another task would be to finally reform country’s economy to ensure anti-corruption work and rule of law, without which no rebuilding would be sustainable.
The Verge informs of White House attempts to turn to a fuel that’s potentially even dirtier than regular gasoline in order to maintain gas prices. E15 is a gasoline blend with up to 15 percent ethanol — a fuel made of plant material. The move is supposed to save Americans money while reducing dependence on foreign oil supplies because ethanol can be made with domestically-grown corn. At the same time, while there are evidences of environmental harm of such fuel, it also would not necessarily be cheaper, as even while the price is 10 cent cheaper per gallon, it has less efficiency.
James Henderson, the director of the energy transition research initiative at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, writes his opinion about the plan EU has to free itself from the russian energy in a column in The New York Times. The European Commission wants to reduce Russian imports by two-thirds in 2022 by turning to alternative supplies and reducing overall gas demand, and this will be painful for customers around Europe and the whole world. On the supply side, the commission’s main objective is to obtain an extra 50 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, and as the market is competitive, this will be not an easy task to achieve. EU will also require to build the new infrastructure, which would be costly and take years. Therefore, beyond seeking alternative sources of gas, Europe will also have to cut gas consumption, the goal is to do so by 9% over this year. This will include focusing more on renewable energy sources – wind and solar facilities. Some of the countries are also rethinking approach to nuclear power, as it would be not only effective, but also will reduce emissions. Customers will also be asked to turn down their thermostats for 1 degree to be more efficient and use heat pumps or rooftop solar panels. The E.U. will also seek to increase the production of biomethane — natural gas generated from waste material — by 3.5 billion cubic meters, an increase of 120 percent over 2021.