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Western sanctions against Russia have yielded results that are the opposite of their stated goal, metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov has said.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera on Thursday, the Russian billionaire argued that the sanctions regime has so far done more harm to the European Union countries than to Russia.

“They wanted to harm the Russian economy, and here it is growing. They wanted to punish the business elite, and the Russians brought the money back home. The Russian economy is adapting to the sanctions, while neighboring markets are suffering. Europe rejects Russian energy resources and is forced to buy them at a much higher price,” he told the publication.

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Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022. The EU’s economic powerhouse Germany went through a recession last year, while the bloc’s other large economies, France and Italy, posted growth of under 1%.

Following the sanctions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022 that led to a dramatic drop in Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, the bloc started buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US. According to estimates published by Russia's Energy Ministry, American LNG is 30-40% more expensive than Russian pipeline gas.

Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022.

If one thing has remained constant in the ever-shifting propaganda landscape of the Proxy War, beyond its kaleidoscopic narratives and chameleonic claims, it is the ever-present background refrain sung by the mockingbird media chorus that “Putin’s aggression has made Russia increasingly isolated.” I could show you at least a hundred headlines parroting that phrase, “increasingly isolated.” But if Russia gets any more isolated, Putin will be living in downtown Manhattan.

Yesterday, corporate media ran scads of quiet but unavoidable stories about what is surely one of the most, if not the most historic political meeting in our lifetimes. The New York Times’ article was originally headlined, “Putin Welcomes Xi and Other World Leaders to Russia for BRICS Summit.”

In a telling sign of how terrified the deep state blob is about this meeting, the Times stealth-edited its original headline, to smear Putin and to remove any reference to the BRICS. It now reads, “Seeking to Elude Sanctions, Putin and Xi Promise ‘A Just World Order.’” ...

Even the Times seems to recognize that the “increasingly isolated” canard is wearing thin. Consider this remarkable paragraph, wedged late in the story, rife with admissions of the failures both of Western sanctions and anti-Russia Proxy War propaganda:

"For Russia to have 22 leaders and representatives of over 30
countries coming to Kazan two and a half years into this war does
not only show that Putin is not isolated internationally and the
I.C.C. warrant is of limited utility, but also that the war in Ukraine
has become a new normal, something accepted as a feature of
international reality," said Hanna Notte of the James Martin Center
for Nonproliferation Studies in California."

... Ignoring BRICS is what got us here, morons. To be fair, they aren’t ignoring BRICS. Biden’s out-of-control neocons are deploying their entire bag of dirty tricks against the BRICS nations, including blowing up undersea pipelines, creating colorful color revolutions, and funding endless Proxy Wars. Biden’s neocons want us to ignore the BRICS, so we don’t realize that Biden is crashing the American dollar faster than that F-35 the Air Force lost over South Carolina. ...

What else can you call this except failure? How many billions were wasted, with that lackwit Lindsay Graham chortling all the way, calling it the best money America ever spent? Spent for what? To erect an anti-Western coalition of countries bent on creating a more competitive world currency than the dollar? ...

Regardless what you think of Putin, the fact is right now the United States offers the world nothing hopeful like this. Just the opposite. The U.S. has rabbited so far down the deep state’s dirty-tricks hole that our entire foreign policy is now just a vast secretive effort to undermine things other nations are doing, rather than building anything better ourselves.

The core problem is that our current crop of DEI-infused leaders lack the intellectual capacity to build anything. They can’t run a profitable lemonade stand without first regulating their competitors out of business. In other words, the only thing they are good at is breaking stuff.

My fanciful dream is that, if Trump is elected, we might shut down for good the deep-state’s dirty tricks division, and join the BRICS. Maybe we could work with other countries instead of trying to force them to swallow drag queens. Maybe, as a significant BRICS member, we could help build a new, better, more stable, less manipulated, gold-based world currency. Maybe we could finally replace the corrupt, ineffective, cronyist United Nations with something that actually works.

Yesteday BRICS released a comprehensive plan to which its members and applicant members agreed. BRICS is not, in fact, creating any new global currency. Instead, it’s creating an alternative international payments platform, for people buying and selling things across borders, or for when nations trade with each other (to buy weapons, grain, or oil, for three examples).

Right now, everyone must use a common payment settlement system called SWIFT. SWIFT is U.S. created and effectively controlled, even though it is ostensibly privately owned and supposedly located in Belgium. The thought that SWIFT is at all independent is a great gag that everyone at the State Department always guffaws about making them cough champagne up their noses.

For many countries, SWIFT has at least two huge problems. When I say the platform is effectively U.S.-controlled, you can imagine all the implications. Users’ data is supposed to be private, but for some reason everybody thinks the U.S. constantly snoops on where all the money is going to and coming from. (One possibility for why they think that is because Edward Snowden exposed it all in 2013, but I digress again.)

The second, even bigger problem is that the U.S. acts like the spoiled kid at his birthday party, refusing to let the kids he doesn’t like ride the rented pony. In other words, the U.S. forces countries to do things they hate, like teach their kids trans techniques, by threatening to cut them off from SWIFT, or snatching their money as it travels through the collected SWIFT system.

Russia, for example, is cut off from SWIFT under U.S. sanctions. And $300 billion of its money was seized while sitting in a SWIFT clearinghouse bank. The implacable Russians are great poker players, you can’t never tell if they’re at all mad about Biden snatching their $300 billion or exploding their undersea pipelines.

But you can imagine how mad the Russians must be.

The Russians are mad enough to spend their time and money leading a world movement to replace the G-7 and its captive SWIFT system. Which would be horrible for us.

Once BRICS has its own interbanking system, they won’t need to trade in dollars anymore, not unless they need something from the U.S. or from a G-7 country. For complicated reasons, the reduced demand for dollars just from those lost transfers will drastically worsen our debt problem. And maybe more important for BRICS countries, the U.S. won’t be able threaten sanctions to force them to swallow every lunatic social experiment that comes down the liberal U.S. pike.

The BRICS pitched their interbanking system yesterday as a non-threatening “alternative” to SWIFT, rather than any kind of direct competitor. Having choices, they stressed, just improves everyone’s outcomes. But that logic is like claiming that when you parked your taco truck right next to Jose’s taco truck, it is actually better for Jose’s taco trade since diners like different choices of tacos.

Jose is not likely to agree. Jose is likely to go loco. ...

The U.S. could shut this BRICS initiative down easily and immediately. All we need to do is reform SWIFT. If the U.S. stopped using SWIFT to sanction other countries, and SWIFT opened up its system transparently, and the U.S. stopped using SWIFT for spying, then BRICS would be unnecessary.

And everyone would keep trading in dollars.

In other words, we could rescue the dollar. We only need to give up the ‘dirty tricks’ tool we use to force other countries to make their kids sit through drag queen happy hours. But Biden’s neocons won’t try that simple remedy, will they? They’ll let the dollar be destroyed before they give up their economic wonder weapon.

For the first time in history, one of the largest Russian dry cargo ships of the Russian Defense Ministry, which was under sanctions, was destroyed in the Mediterranean Sea by three explosions. Unknown militias began the destruction of the Russian fleet in the world's oceans
An unprecedented event. The Russian fleet suffered a heavy loss in the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the Oboronlogistika company, which works for the Russian Defense Ministry, announced the details of the destruction of one of its largest and most modern dry cargo ships of the Ursa Major type, a Ro-Ro type, with a full displacement of 12,700 tons, which was built in Germany in 2009. Since 2022, the ship has been under US sanctions for participating in aggression against Ukraine. The entire crew is Russian citizens.
According to the report of Oboronlogistika, Ursa Major was carrying on deck two mobile portal cranes with a total weight of 686 tons, manufactured in Germany, Liebherr 420. Russia does not make such cranes, it cannot buy them again in Europe due to sanctions, there is nowhere to buy them quickly, so it had to be transferred to the Far East from Europe.
On December 23, off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea at 1:50 p.m., three explosions occurred on the starboard side near the stern of the ship.
During an inspection of the explosion site, the Russians noticed one of the craters, measuring 50 by 50 centimeters, which was approximately 15-30 centimeters above the waterline.
The crater looked like a minor threat for such a large ship, but there were three hits, and they were aimed with jewelery precision - the explosions completely disabled the ship's power systems, so the Russian sailors were unable to start the backup power supply, pump out water, and organize a fight for survivability. At 15.10 the Russian sailors abandoned the ship, leaving two of their comrades on board, who could not be found. At 23.22 the Ursa Major sank 70 miles south of Cartagena, Spain.
Oboronlogistika announced a "terrorist attack" on the ship.
The Russians have no evidence to establish what and who destroyed such a large ship, which belonged to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
No organization has taken responsibility for what happened.
But from now on, no Russian ship and no cargo on Russian ships will feel safe anywhere in the world's oceans.
These are the most effective sanctions against Russian maritime trade that have been applied since the beginning of the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion.

These are the most effective sanctions against Russian maritime trade that have been applied since the beginning of the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion.