🔹Hungary's 🇭🇺Foreign Minister P. Szijjártó responded to Ukrainian President V. Zelensky's claim that Hungary's behavior and close relationship with Moscow do not correspond to the behavior of a NATO member.

🔹FM Szijjártó responded saying that Zelensky has no right to decide whether Hungary’s behaviour is in line with its NATO membership. He continued, "the Hungarian people have already paid too high a price for this war" (referencing Ukraine 🇺🇦 disproportionately connoscripting ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia).

🔹The FM also said that the EU is dominated by “an atmosphere of war”, with the vast majority of member states in favor of faster delivery of even more weapons to Ukraine, while “pro-peace players are under serious attack”. Hungary's State Secretary C. Dömötör said the political mainstream in Brussels 🇪🇺 has a “one-dimensional and simplistic view” of Hungary’s position on the war in Ukraine.

🔹Deputy speaker of Hungary’s 🇭🇺parliament, I. Jakab, wants to see “a sovereign European Union independent of other powers and influences … which preserves the European values as laid out in the founding treaty”.

🔹The liberal ALDE party (Liberals and Democrats for Europe) has begun a poster campaign against the Hungarian gov't using a picture with one-third of a pizza, to show that the average salary in Hungary is a third of that in Western Europe. The expectation is to tell Hungarians 🇭🇺 'More Europe = more benefits'. The ALDE is counteracting the Orban gov't recent challenges to Brussels.

Video source - Inessa S (Hungary's president V. Orban speech)

🔹Bulgaria 🇧🇬, Romania 🇷🇴, Hungary 🇭🇺, and Slovakia 🇸🇰, together with Azerbaijan 🇦🇿 signed a MoU in Sofia, Bulgaria to encourage cooperation among the relevant natural gas transmission system operators. The MoU sets out directions of cooperation for the supply of additional gas from Azerbaijan through the upgraded transmission network systems of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia called the "Solidarity Ring".

🔹In a short time and with incremental capacity improvements to the existing infrastructure, the cross-border initiative could transport up to 5-9.5 billion cubic metres per year (bcm/y) of gas from Azerbaijan. The total estimated investment cost of the initiative is around 730 million euros and it could be realised by the end of 2026 with necessary EU 🇪🇺financial support.

🔹Azerbaijani gas is currently exported to Georgia, Türkiye, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, and, starting from this year, Romania. By the end of 2023, Hungary and Slovakia may join the list of buyers if all necessary interconnectors go online.

🔹The amount of Russian natural gas available on the European market will be 60 billion cubic metres lower than last year. 10% of the world's natural gas reserves are in the wider region of Azerbaijan.

Last reported on this channel:

💠 Azerbaijani 🇦🇿 President & Hungarian 🇭🇺 PM signed several intergovernmental documents, on an expanded strategic partnership (including energy) between the two members of the Organisation of Turkic States.

💠 Hungary has agreed with Russia 🇷🇺 to re-route gas transit to Hungary via the TurkStream.

💠 Russia & Türkiye 🇹🇷 have begun working on a proposal for a natural gas distribution hub based in Türkiye.

🔹India's 🇮🇳 External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Russian 🇷🇺 Deputy PM D. Manturov agreed to adopt the Russian financial messaging system — Service Bureau of Financial Messaging System of the Bank of Russia (SPFS) — for cross-border payments. About $2 billion in payments from India to Russia is stuck over the last year, and Russia has decided to stop supplying credit for about $10 billion worth of spare parts.

🔹Another key element of the agreement is to allow acceptance of Indian Ru-Pay cards and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in Russia, and the Russian MIR cards and its Fast Payments System (FPS) in India. With this, the two countries will be able to resolve most of their pending payment issues. Top banking and finance officials from the two countries are working out the details to use these instruments to settle cross-border payments effectively.

Last reported on this channel:

💠 India 🇮🇳 opens 60 special rupee vostro accounts in 18 countries to facilitate rupee payments.

💠 India has been exploring a rupee trade settlement mechanism with Russia 🇷🇺 & adopts new foreign trade policy, to support international trade using the rupee.

💠 BRICS 🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦 nations open to bypassing SWIFT using Russia's SPFS.

💠 Countries are working on an alternative to replace the Russian payment system MIR after the US threatened Türkiye 🇹🇷 & Kazakhstan 🇰🇿.

💠 Experts tell a U.S. 🇺🇸 House Financial Service subcommittee that alternative payment systems to SWIFT pose a serious threat to US national security.

Video source- NewsX

🔹The EU 🇪🇺 is still powering its economy with Russian 🇷🇺 oil despite sanctions, because member states are buying fuel & refined oil products from India 🇮🇳 as the Asian nation imports large quantities of Russian oil for it's refineries. India has not joined the EU/G7 oil price cap and instead has ramped up purchases of Russian oil that Moscow has been offering at discounts.

🔹In 2022-2023, Indian refiners bought almost a million bpd 🛢of Russian oil. New Delhi is now on track to become the EU bloc's largest supplier of refined fuels. Imports of fuel from India to the EU are set to jump above 360,000 bpd, overtaking shipments from Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦.

🔹Morocco 🇲🇦 is purchasing Russian diesel and other refined products at discounted prices and re-exporting the fuel to Spain 🇪🇸at profit. Meanwhile, the Spanish gov't has pledged to ensure that no Russian fuel enters the kingdom.

🔹Ukraine 🇺🇦 is preparing to significantly increase tariffs for transporting Russian crude oil to the EU through its territory via the Druzhba pipeline. Kiev is currently negotiating the hike directly with buyers in Slovakia 🇸🇰, Hungary 🇭🇺, and the Czech Republic 🇨🇿.

Last reported on this channel:

💠 India 🇮🇳 has decreased oil imports from the Middle East amid growing purchases from Russia.

💠 Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft and India's top refiner (IOC) agreed to use the Asia-focused Dubai 🇦🇪 oil price benchmark. India have begun paying for this oil in UAE dirhams instead of USD.

💠 India's Oil Min. - "India is not obligated to buy Russian oil at rates below the price cap imposed by the G7 & other Western nations".

💠 Russia 🇷🇺 now supplies around 35% of India’s total oil imports, it was at 1% before Feb. 2022.

💠 India buying thirty-three (33) times more 📈 Russian oil than a year earlier.

Video source - Mint

🔹Russian 🇷🇺 gold miners boosted output by 26.5% year-on-year in March. Compared to February, gold production jumped by more than 30%. The Q1 '23 figure was 9.1% higher than in the same period of last year. Meanwhile, the production of the key metals silver 🪙, platinum, and palladium in Russia rose by 14.1% in March in annual terms.

🔹China's 🇨🇳 gold production recovers to pre-pandemic level as demand for gold and jewelry jumps in Q1 '23. Gold output of domestic mines reached around 32.72 tonnes in Q1, accounting for nearly half of the country's gold output.

🔹Switzerland 🇨🇭exported more gold to mainland China in March '23 than in any month since July 2022. 67,316 Kgs were exported to China & 17,507 Kgs to Hong Kong 🇭🇰.

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💠 Gold hits 11th straight month of net outflows leaving the COMEX vaults.

💠 Russia’s 🇷🇺 central bank gold bullion holdings jumped by 1 million ounces between Mar. '22- Feb '23.

💠 China 🇨🇳 imports highest volume of gold in 2022, since 2018.

💠Central banks are scooping up gold 📈at the fastest pace since 1967.

💠 Prof. Everisto Benyera on the shift in relationship between Africa, gold & the USD.

💠 BRICS plan an international reserve currency based on a basket of the national currencies, backed by commodities such as gold.

Video source - Sean Foo

🔹 The managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva has said the US dollar 💵 is gradually losing its status as the world’s main reserve currency. According to her, the euro can be viewed as the biggest competitor to the dollar, while the British pound 💷, the Japanese yen 💴 and the Chinese yuan “play a very modest role.”

🔹 The CEO of India's 🇮🇳 Kotak Mahindra Bank, Uday Kotak (Video) has clarified his previous statement calling the US dollar the "biggest financial terrorist in the world". He explained that he was referring to the disproportionate power that a reserve currency holds.

🔹 President B. al-Assad of Syria 🇸🇾 during a meeting with the China's 🇨🇳 Special Envoy for the ME, Z. Jun is quoted saying, — confrontation with the US and the West in general has been taking place mainly in the economic field and that makes it increasingly necessary to ditch the U.S. dollar as a currency for global transactions.

🔹 Bloomberg article tries to disprove Peter C. Earle of the AIER point. Earle's view is that American 🇺🇸 overuse of financial sanctions is to blame. The more the US exploits its power to shut adversaries’ economies out of the dollar payments system, the more other countries want to reduce their exposure to that risk.

Video source - Geopolitics and Empire (CEO Uday Kotak)

🔹In the first visit of an Iranian 🇮🇷 president to Syria 🇸🇾 in more than a decade, Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Damascus on 3 May, for two days of talks aimed at boosting bilateral ties and facilitating post-war reconstruction. Fourteen documents were signed on expanding economic cooperation between the two countries amid attempts to materialize Iran’s active economic presence on the Mediterranean coast.

🔹“A major section of these documents seeks to facilitate trade between the two countries,” the agreements will improve the quality and volume of bilateral trade. Tehran and Damascus are also set to discuss the establishment of a joint bank and joint insurance that will ease trade, one Syrian and one Iranian bank will carry out financial transactions till the the joint institution is set up.

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💠 Saudi Arabia’s 🇸🇦 FM Prince Faisal bin Farhan visited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. First such trip since 2011.

💠 Syria's 🇸🇾 Foreign Minister visits Saudi Arabia, first such trip since 2012.

💠 Tunisia 🇹🇳 initiates procedures that would appoint a new ambassador to Syria.

💠 UAE 🇦🇪 President was visited by the Syrian Preisident. UAE calls for Damascus to be reintegrated into the wider Arab region.

💠 President Assad visited Russia 🇷🇺 to discuss political/economic issues on the Syrian crisis.

💠 Türkiye 🇹🇷 has agreed to fully withdraw its troops from northern Syria following tripartite talks involving Moscow, Ankara and Damascus.

Video source H2 News & AFP

🔹The EU 🇪🇺 has approved controversial plans for the Dutch 🇳🇱 gov't to forcibly buy out livestock farms as part of plans to cut nitrogen emissions. Two schemes (LBV & LBV plus) with a total budget of €1.47 billion euros will be used to compensate farmers for the voluntary closure of their holdings. The schemes are intended targets are about 3,000 small and medium-sized livestock farms.

🔹Only farmers 🚜 that can prove they have been constantly producing over the five years before voluntarily closing down production will be eligible for the schemes. Farmers who decide to close their holdings must guarantee they will not start up livestock 🐄 farming operations elsewhere in the Netherlands or within the EU.

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💠 Over 10,000 Dutch farmers protested in The Hague on March 11th against the nitrogen policy.

💠 Dutch farmers protests end in clashes with police 🚓 & arrests.

💠 The Dutch gov't plans to buy & close down, up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas.

💠 🇳🇱 Farmers Defence Force, representing 8 agro-organisations, (95% of the industry), locked out of the 1st round of negotiations.

💠 Multiple protests previously erupted over the gov't's draconian nitrogen oxides curbing plan.

Video source - Big Picture.

🔹EU 🇪🇺 foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claims Europe does not have a choice but to supply Ukraine with weapons, when he was asked how 500 million euros 💶 needed for European infrastructure is being given to Ukraine (not a member of the EU) for weapons.

🔹The Council of the EU on May 5th, mere hours after Borrell's statement agreed to provide 1 billion euro (USD 1.1 billion) to the Ukraine 🇺🇦 for the purchase of weapons.

🔹Borrel also claimed China’s 🇨🇳 proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine is “not a peace plan. The diplomat insisted that demands made by Kiev are the only viable solution to the crisis, despite Russia 🇷🇺 making clear it will not accept them. “The only thing that can be called a peace plan is Vladimir Zelensky’s proposal,” he stated.

🔹EU bureaucrats & politicians self-righteous smugness and browbeating of the Global South (especially India) for not choosing sides in the Russia-Ukraine war is now being met with criticism from some Indian media.

🔹Today, India's 🇮🇳 FirstPost published an opinion article stating "It is time to call the bluff on Europe’s moral posturing as the conscience-keeper of the world....Europeans demand that countries in Global South and rising powers such as India become a party to punishing Russia at the cost of their own food or energy security".

🔹Recently, Finland's 🇫🇮 Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air published its report stating India is purchasing cheap Russian crude oil 🛢 and converting it into refined petroleum products, which are “laundered” in Europe and G7 countries. This "laundering" accusation was not taken kindly in India.

Video source EUI TV & EuroNews.

🔹 Argentina's 🇦🇷 National Agro-Food Health and Quality Service, Senasa, says the avian influenza (bird flu) cases confirmed thus far are in backyard birds (69), commercial sector (12) and wild (7) since the first case in February 2023.

🔹 Senasa, said despite the birds at Avícola Santa Ana Poultry Producer/Marketer had tested negative, the company was still required to stop egg production and destroy 360,000 eggs 🥚because it was located close to a confirmed outbreak site.

🔹 A controversy has begun between the Argentine Chamber of Poultry Producers and the Center for Poultry Processing Companies. The egg producers called for poultry vaccination 💉 on all farms while chicken producers warn that this measure would affect exports.

Earlier bird flu posts on this channel:

💠 The WHO 🇺🇳 claims preparations in case of an outbreak is required.

💠 Culling chickens due to bird flu along with farm fires increase US egg prices.

💠 Japan 🇯🇵 culls a record 10 million birds due to bird flu.

💠 UK 🇬🇧- Customers are facing limits on how many eggs they can buy.

💠 Spain 🇪🇸 - 2 poultry farm workers tested positive for bird flu.

💠 Millions of chickens euthanized to prevent spread of bird flu at US & UK farms.

💠 Death of seabirds & duck farms in Canada 🇨🇦 linked to bird flu.

Video source - Avícola Santa Ana S.A.

🔹 Kuwait 🇰🇼, UAE 🇦🇪, Myanmar 🇲🇲 and Maldives 🇲🇻 signed a MoU to join the Shanghai Organisation Corporation (SCO) as Dialogue Partners. This was signed at the end of two day Council of Foreign Ministers meeting under India’s presidency on May 4th-5th.

🔹 All SCO FM's agreed to revitalize the SCO-Afghanistan 🇦🇫 contact group. Russia 🇷🇺revived a proposal to integrate the SCO, the EAEU and ASEAN into a greater Eurasian partnership sharing the same geography.

🔹 China 🇨🇳and Russia have agreed to further develop bilateral relations and build the SCO into a platform for mutually beneficial cooperation. China encouraged SCO countries to strengthen cohesion so as to resist color revolutions.

🔹 The reality of international life and differences between states necessitates consistent efforts to address conflicting interests and find common ground where goals do not clash. The SCO provides a platform to achieve this.

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💠 Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 joins the SCO as a dialogue partner.

💠 Iran 🇮🇷 joins SCO as full member. Belarus 🇧🇾 is ready to expedite the fulfillment of international legal procedures for joining the SCO as a full member.

💠 Chinese President Xi Jinping wants China 🇨🇳 to cooperate more with SCO member Turkmenistan 🇹🇲 on energy.

💠 "Interested SCO member states" agreed a "roadmap for the gradual increase in the share of national currencies in mutual settlements", outside western currencies/payment systems

💠 Iran proposed a new currency for trade with SCO members.

🔹 The Arab League readmitted Syria 🇸🇾 today, May 7th, after more than a decade of suspension, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with President Bashar al-Assad in a move criticised by Washington 🇺🇸. The reinstatement of Syria does not mean normalisation of relations between Arab countries and Syria. This is a sovereign decision for each country to make.

🔹 The Arab League Council issued a resolution to form an Arab ministerial contact group to communicate with the Sudanese parties and influential countries, aiming to reach a settlement of the crisis in Sudan 🇸🇩.

Last reported on this channel:

💠 First visit of an Iranian 🇮🇷 president to Syria in more than a decade. 14 documents were signed on expanding economic cooperation.

💠 Saudi Arabia’s 🇸🇦 FM Prince Faisal bin Farhan visited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. First such trip since 2011.

💠 Syria's 🇸🇾 Foreign Minister visits Saudi Arabia, first such trip since 2012.

💠 Tunisia 🇹🇳 initiates procedures that would appoint a new ambassador to Syria.

💠 UAE 🇦🇪 President was visited by the Syrian Preisident. UAE calls for Damascus to be reintegrated into the wider Arab region.

💠 President Assad visited Russia 🇷🇺 to discuss political/economic issues on the Syrian crisis.

💠 Türkiye 🇹🇷 has agreed to fully withdraw its troops from northern Syria following tripartite talks involving Moscow, Ankara and Damascus.

Video source - AL24 News

🔹After Ukrainian President Zelensky signed a “decolonization” law that is geared towards destroying remaining Soviet monuments in Ukraine and renaming streets that have historical Russian names, ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia 🇺🇦 are now at odds with the Kiev regime. In the village of Lisichovo in Transcarpathia, local authorities refused to dismantle the monument to the Soviet “liberator”.

🔹Hungarian 🇭🇺 Prime Minister Viktor Orban says "the losses of Ukrainians are our losses... Hungarians also live there, part of Ukraine is an ancient Hungarian land that now belongs to Ukraine, and Hungarians exist there as an indigenous population". As for the Hungarians in Transcarpathia, Orbán said that they "did not immigrate, they were not blown there by the wind. They have always lived there, this is their homeland, this is their land.

🔹Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, responded to Hungary's reservations of Ukraine joining NATO by saying "after Russia loses the war, countries like Hungary will show absolute loyalty to Kiev".

Last reported on this channel:

💠 Ukraine 🇺🇦 disproportionately connoscripting ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia.

💠 Hungary-Ukraine relations continue to be worsen after a minority law was passed by Ukraine, which is designed to target ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia.

💠 Hungary's 🇭🇺 FM Szijjártó says Zelensky has no right to decide whether Hungary’s behaviour is in line with its NATO membership.

Video source - People Say (The issue at stake is that Kiev passed an education law that deprives Ukraine’s ethnic minorities of the right to study in their mother tongue.)

🔹 Elderly Russians in Latvia 🇱🇻 await to take a basic Latvian language test as a proof of loyalty to a country where they have lived for decades. Speaking Russian instead of Latvian has not been a problem until now. The gov't now demands a language test from the 20,000 people in the country holding Russian passports, mostly elderly and female.

🔹 Last year, Latvia switched off Russian TV channels, crushed a Soviet WWII monument and is now working towards eliminating education in Russian. This has left many of Latvia's ethnic Russians, who make up about a quarter of its population of 1.9 million, feeling they may be losing their place in society, where speaking solely Russian has been acceptable for decades.

🔹 Russian 🇷🇺 citizens under 75 who do not pass the test by the end of the year will be given reasonable time to leave, or they could face a "forced expulsion".

🔹 Last September, Latvia adopted amendments to the state Immigration Law. One of which include the language test and another for existing permanent residence permits issued to citizens of Russia and Belarus 🇧🇾 to be void after September 1, 2023. The the amendments aim to strengthen national security and reduce potential threats.

🔹 Latvia and Liechtenstein 🇱🇮 are unanimous that athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports must not be allowed to compete at the Paris Olympic Games next year.

Last reported on this channel:

💠 Latvia's 🇱🇻 PM K. Karins called on the EU for a crackdown against anyone trying to evade sanctions on Russia.

💠 Explosion on natural gas pipeline that is used to supply Russian gas to the northern part of Lithuania 🇱🇹 and then transport gas onto Latvia.

💠 Russia's 🇷🇺 Gazprom stopped gas deliveries to Latvia due to violations of terms of contractual agreements.

Video source - Geopolitics & Empire