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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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End of the line for corporate sovereignty

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Back in the 1950s, a new, democratically elected Iranian government nationalized foreign oil interests. The UK and the US then backed a coup, deposing the progressive government with one more hospitable to foreign corporations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian_oil_industry

This nasty piece of geopolitical skullduggery led to the mother-of-all-blowbacks: the Anglo-American puppet regime was toppled by the Ayatollah and his cronies, who have led Iran ever since.

For the US and the UK, the lesson was clear: they needed a less kinetic way to ensure that sovereign countries around the world steered clear of policies that undermined the profits of their oil companies and other commercial giants. Thus, the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) was born.

The modern ISDS was perfected in the 1990s with the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The ECT was meant to foam the runway for western corporations seeking to take over ex-Soviet energy facilities, by making those new post-Glasnost governments promise to never pass laws that would undermine foreign companies' profits.

But as Nick Dearden writes for Jacobin, the western companies that pushed the east into the ECT failed to anticipate that ISDSes have their own form of blowback:

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/energy-charter-treaty-climate-change/

When the 2000s rolled around and countries like the Netherlands and Denmark started to pass rules to limit fossil fuels and promote renewables, German coal companies sued the shit out of these governments and forced them to either back off on their democratically negotiated policies, or to pay gigantic settlements to German corporations.

ISDS settlements are truly grotesque: they're not just a matter of buying out existing investments made by foreign companies and refunding them money spent on them. ISDS tribunals routinely order governments to pay foreign corporations all the profits they might have made from those investments.

For example, the UK company Rockhopper went after Italy for limiting offshore drilling in response to mass protests, and took $350m out of the Italian government. Now, Rockhopper only spent $50m on Adriatic oil exploration – the other $300m was to compensate Rockhopper for the profits it might have made if it actually got to pump oil off the Italian coast.

Governments, both left and right, grew steadily more outraged that ISDSes tied the hands of democratically elected lawmakers and subordinated their national sovereignty to corporate sovereignty. By 2023, nine EU countries were ready to pull out of the ECT.

But the ECT had another trick up its sleeve: a 20-year "sunset" clause that bound countries to go on enforcing the ECT's provisions – including ISDS rulings – for two decades after pulling out of the treaty. This prompted European governments to hit on the strategy of a simultaneous, mass withdrawal from the ECT, which would prevent companies registered in any of the ex-ECT countries from suing under the ECT.

It will not surprise you to learn that the UK did not join this pan-European coalition to wriggle out of the ECT. On the one hand, there's the Tories' commitment to markets above all else (as the Trashfuture podcast often points out, the UK government is the only neoliberal state so committed to austerity that it's actually dismantling its own police force). On the other hand, there's Rishi Sunak's planet-immolating promise to "max out North Sea oil."

But as the rest of the world transitions to renewables, different blocs in the UK – from unions to Tory MPs – are realizing that the country's membership in ECT and its fossil fuel commitment is going to make it a world leader in an increasingly irrelevant boondoggle – and so now the UK is also planning to pull out of the ECT.

As Dearden writes, the oil-loving, market-worshipping UK's departure from the ECT means that the whole idea of ISDSes is in danger. After all, some of the world's poorest countries are also fed up to the eyeballs with ISDSes and threatening to leave treaties that impose them.

One country has already pulled out: Honduras. Honduras is home to Prospera, a libertarian autonomous zone on the island of Roatan. Prospera was born after a US-backed drug kingpin named Porfirio Lobo Sosa overthrew the democratic government of Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

The Lobo Sosa regime established a system of special economic zones (known by their Spanish acronym, "ZEDEs"). Foreign investors who established a ZEDE would be exempted from Honduran law, allowing them to create "charter cities" with their own private criminal and civil code and tax system.

This was so extreme that the Honduran supreme court rejected the plan, so Lobo Sosa fired the court and replaced them with cronies who'd back his play.

A group of crypto bros capitalized on this development, using various ruses to establish a ZEDE on the island of Roatan, a largely English-speaking, Afro-Carribean island known for its marine reserve, its SCUBA diving, and its cruise ship port. This "charter city" included every bizarre idea from the long history of doomed "libertarian exit" projects, so ably recounted in Raymond Craib's excellent 2022 book Adventure Capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

Right from the start, Prospera was ill starred. Paul Romer, the Nobel-winning economist most closely associated with the idea of charter cities, disavowed the project. Locals hated it – the tourist shops and restaurants on Roatan all may sport dusty "Bitcoin accepted here" signs, but not one of those shops takes cryptocurrency.

But the real danger to Prospera came from democracy itself. When Xiomara Castro – wife of Manuel Zelaya – was elected president in 2021, she announced an end to the ZEDE program. Prospera countered by suing Honduras under the ISDS provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreements, seeking $10b, a third of the country's GDP.

In response, President Castro announced her country's departure from CAFTA, and the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes:

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

An open letter by progressive economists in support of President Castro condemns ISDSes for costing latinamerican countries $30b in corporate compensation, triggered by laws protecting labor rights, vulnerable ecosystems and the climate:

https://progressive.international/wire/2024-03-18-economists-the-era-of-corporate-supremacy-in-the-international-trade-system-is-coming-to-an-end/en

As Ryan Grim writes for The Intercept, the ZEDE law is wildly unpopular with the Honduran people, and Merrick Garland called the Lobo Sosa regime that created it "a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity":

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

The world's worst people are furious and terrified about Honduras's withdrawal from its ISDS. After 60+ years of wrapping democracy in chains to protect corporate profits, the collapse of the corporate kangaroo courts that override democratic laws represents a serious threat to oligarchy.

As Dearden writes, "elsewhere in the world, ISDS cases have been brought specifically on the basis that governments have not done enough to suppress protest movements in the interests of foreign capital."

It's not just poor countries in the global south, either. When Australia passed a plain-packaging law for tobacco, Philip Morris relocated offshore in order to bring an ISDS case against the Australian government in a bid to remove impediments to tobacco sales:

https://isds.bilaterals.org/?philip-morris-vs-australia-isds

And in 2015, the WTO sanctioned the US government for its "dolphin-safe" tuna labeling, arguing that this eroded the profits of corporations that fished for tuna in ways that killed a lot of dolphins:

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/24/wto-ruling-on-dolphin-safe-tuna-labeling-illustrates-supremacy-of-trade-agreements/

In Canada, the Conservative hero Steven Harper entered into the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, which banned Canada from passing laws that undermined the profits of Chinese corporations for 31 years (the rule expires in 2045):

https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-oks-potentially-unconstitutional-china-canada-fipa-deal-coming-force-october-1

Harper's successor, Justin Trudeau, went on to sign the Canada-EU Trade Agreement that Harper negotiated, including its ISDS provisions that let EU corporations override Canadian laws:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-eu-parliament-schulz-ceta-1.3415689

There was a time when any challenge to ISDS was a political third rail. Back in 2015, even hinting that ISDSes should be slightly modified would send corporate thinktanks into a frenzy:

https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/20/eu-proposes-to-reform-corporate-sovereignty-slightly-us-think-tank-goes-into-panic-mode/

But over the years, there's been a growing consensus that nations can only be sovereign if corporations aren't. It's one thing to treat corporations as "persons," but another thing altogether to elevate them above personhood and subordinate entire nations to their whims.

With the world's richest countries pulling out of ISDSes alongside the world's poorest ones, it's feeling like the end of the road for this particularly nasty form of corporate corruption.

And not a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/27/korporate-kangaroo-kourts/#corporate-sovereignty

Image: ChrisErbach (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UnitedNations_GeneralAssemblyChamber.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #isds #investor state dispute settlement #steven harper #canada #canpoli #ukpoli #honduras #prospera #roatan #Energy Charter Treaty #ect #eu #rockhopper #world bank #charter cities #cryptocurrency #libertarian exit #Xiomara Castro

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head-post · 19 days

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European Parliament committees voted for EU withdrawal from Energy Charter Treaty

Parliament’s trade and energy committees voted for the EU’s withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) on Tuesday, with 58 MEPs in favour, eight against, and two abstaining, according to Euractiv.

The ECT is an international treaty signed by 50 countries to promote co-operation between states on energy issues and to attract and protect investment in energy enterprises in post-Soviet countries.

The trade committee’s rapporteur on the file, Anna Cavazzini, hailed the vote as “a major step in the right direction” and welcomed the EU’s expected withdrawal from the “climate-hostile” ECT.

The Parliament’s vote followed the European Commission’s proposal for a coordinated EU withdrawal from the treaty, tabled last month after several EU countries simultaneously withdrew from the Energy Charter Treaty or announced their intention to withdraw from the ECT. Lead energy committee MEP Marc Botenga stated:

The Energy Charter Treaty allows fossil fuel multinationals to sue states and the EU if climate policies affect their profits. In the midst of a climate crisis, this is a contradiction, in addition to being very costly for taxpayers.

Read more HERE

#world news #world politics #news #europe #european news #eu politics #european union #eu news #european parliament #energy charter treaty #energy #energy efficiency #energy update #ECT

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biglisbonnews · 9 months

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Portugal announces withdrawal from Energy Charter Treaty Portugal’s Environment Minister Duarte Cordeiro annouced this week that the country has started withdrawing from the Energy Charter Treaty, in line with a proposal tabled by the European Commission two weeks ago. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/portugal-announces-withdrawal-from-energy-charter-treaty/

#energy charter #Energy Charter Treaty #Frédéric Simon #Energy – EURACTIV.com

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rjzimmerman · 2 years

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Excerpt from this story from Climate Change News:

A British oil company has won over €190 million ($190m) in compensation from the Italian government for blocking a planned project off Italy’s Adriatic coast.

After tens of thousands of Italians protested against the Ombrina Mare oil drilling project in 2015, the Italian government banned oil drilling within 12 miles of Italy’s shoreline. This prevented the project going ahead.

Represented by no-win-no-fee lawyers, the developer Rockhopper sued the Italian government under the controversial Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).

Despite investing just $40-50m in the project, the company claimed for foregone profits estimated at $200-300m. An ECT tribunal awarded €190m ($190m) plus interest.

The company’s share price doubled on the news. CEO Samuel Moody said he was “delighted” and the award would help Rockhopper drill for oil in the Falkland Islands.

Paul De Clerck from Friends of the Earth Europe said: “It is scandalous that Italian citizens are now expected to pay Rockhopper €250 million for not destroying the Italian environment and the climate. It is all the more perverse that they get 8 times more than what they invested.”

Cleodie Rickard, trade campaigner at Global Justice Now, agreed, adding: “We need to get rid of this shadowy legal system that poses a threat to the climate – not in ten years time as governments are proposing at the moment, but right now… the UK and countries across Europe should exit the ECT in a coordinated withdrawal and put an end to the risk of being sued.”

The ECT is an energy investment treaty created after the end of the Cold War. It was designed to protect energy investments from arbitrary seizures in the former Soviet Union. Lately, fossil fuel investors have repurposed it to challenge climate policies that effect their profits.

British gas company Ascent Resources is suing the Slovenian government over its requirement for an environmental impact assessment to frack near a water source.

#Energy Charter Treaty #Italy #England

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alicemccombs · 2 months

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#Energy Charter Treaty (ECT)#climateactionnow #healearth

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clarabosswald · 2 months

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NYT OPINION: Israel Is Falling Into an Abyss | David Grossman

[Art by Dror Cohen; excerpts chosen & emphasis added by me]

The renowned kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem coined a saying: “All the blood flows to the wound.” Nearly five months after the massacre, that is how Israel feels. The fear, the shock, the fury, the grief and humiliation and vengefulness, the mental energies of an entire nation — all of those have not stopped flowing to that wound, to the abyss into which we are still falling.

[...]

But Israelis of my generation, who have been through many wars, are already asking, as we always do after a war: Why does this unity only emerge in times of crisis? Why is it that only threats and dangers make us cohesive and bring out the best in us, and also extricate us from our strange attraction to self-destruction — to destroying our own home?

These questions provoke a painful insight: The profound despair felt by most Israelis after the massacre might be the result of the Jewish condition into which we have once again been thrown. It is the condition of a persecuted, unprotected nation. A nation that, despite its enormous accomplishments in so many realms, is still, deep down inside, a nation of refugees, permeated with the prospect of being uprooted even after almost 76 years of sovereignty. Today it is clearer than ever that we will always have to stand guard over this penetrable, fragile home. What has also been clarified is how deeply rooted the hatred of this nation is.

Another thought follows, about these two tortured peoples: The trauma of becoming refugees is fundamental and primal for both Israelis and Palestinians, and yet neither side is capable of viewing the other’s tragedy with a shred of understanding — not to mention compassion.

[...]

Who will we be — Israelis and Palestinians — when this long, cruel war comes to an end? Not only will the memory of the atrocities inflicted on each other stand between us for many years, but also, as is clear to us all, as soon as Hamas gets the chance, it will swiftly implement the goal clearly stated in its original charter: namely, the religious duty to destroy Israel.

How, then, can we sign a peace treaty with such an enemy?

And yet what choice do we have?

The Palestinians will hold their own reckoning. I as an Israeli ask what sort of people we will be when the war ends. Where will we direct our guilt — if we are courageous enough to feel it — for what we have inflicted upon innocent Palestinians? For the thousands of children we have killed. For the families we have destroyed.

And how will we learn, so that we are never again surprised, to live a full life on the knife’s edge? But how many want to live their lives and raise their children on this knife’s edge? And what price will we pay for living in constant watchfulness and suspicion, in perpetual fear? Who among us will decide that he does not want to — or cannot — live the life of an eternal soldier, a Spartan?

Who will stay here in Israel, and will those who remain be the most extreme, the most fanatically religious, nationalistic, racist? Are we doomed to watch, paralyzed, as the bold, creative, unique Israeliness is gradually absorbed into the tragic wound of Judaism?

These questions will likely accompany Israel for years. There is, however, the possibility that a radically different reality will rise up to contend with them. Perhaps the recognition that this war cannot be won and, furthermore, that we cannot sustain the occupation indefinitely, will force both sides to accept a two-state solution, which, despite its drawbacks and risks (first and foremost, that Hamas will take over Palestine in a democratic election), is still the only feasible one?

This is also the time for those states that can exert influence over the two sides to use that influence. This is not the time for petty politics and cynical diplomacy. This is a rare moment when a shock wave like the one we experienced on Oct. 7 has the power to reshape reality. Do the countries with a stake in the conflict not see that Israelis and Palestinians are no longer capable of saving themselves?

The coming months will determine the fate of two peoples. We will find out if the conflict that extends back more than a century is ripe for a reasonable, moral, human resolution.

How tragic that this will occur — if indeed it does — not from hope and enthusiasm but from exhaustion and despair. Then again, that is the state of mind that often leads enemies to reconcile, and today it is all we can hope for. And so we shall make do with it. It seems we had to go through hell itself in order to get to the place from which one can see, on an exceptionally bright day, the distant edge of heaven.

#jumblr #ישראבלר #the full piece has also got excellent bits on the israeli pov #especially pre-october 7th and during october 7th #israeli authors and artists have been consistently coming up with the best and clearest opinion pieces on this nightmarish mess

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purpleweredragon · 1 year

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All countries must withdraw from the treaty to stop unfair protection for polluters’ profits.

Exit the Energy Charter Treaty today and stop its expansion to other countries. The treaty allows coal, oil and gas corporations to obstruct the transition to net zero. Urgent climate action cannot be made slower or more expensive by fossil fuel firms.

Over a million people across Europe have asked their governments to withdraw from the treaty. Counties including Germany, France and Spain already have. Please sign this petition to demand the UK withdraws too.

#climate crisis #uk #cop27 #climate change #fracking #big oil

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ukrainenews · 1 year

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Daily Wrap Up February 21, 2023

Took an unplanned break there, sorry.

Under the cut:

Russia’s decision to suspend the New Start arms control treaty makes the world a more dangerous place, the secretary general of Nato has said. “More nuclear weapons and less arms control makes the world more dangerous,” Jens Stoltenberg said, urging Russia to reconsider its decision. “This is one of the last major arms control agreements we have,” he said, and “just another example” of a move away from the international rules-based order.

At least one Russian rocket slammed into a busy street in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing six people as Vladimir Putin delivered a speech marking a year of war in Ukraine, local officials said. Ukraine's military and city authorities said 12 others were wounded in the attack, which a Reuters correspondent on the scene shortly afterwards said left a pool of blood on the pavement beside a mangled bus stop.

Poland will deliver 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in the “next two or three weeks” once the training of the Ukrainian troops is complete, the country’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Ukraine’s energy sector said on Tuesday it has managed to stabilise the electricity grid after over three months of power cuts following Russia’s bombardment.

“Russia’s decision to suspend the New Start arms control treaty makes the world a more dangerous place, the secretary general of Nato has said.

“More nuclear weapons and less arms control makes the world more dangerous,” Jens Stoltenberg said, urging Russia to reconsider its decision. “This is one of the last major arms control agreements we have,” he said, and “just another example” of a move away from the international rules-based order.

Speaking alongside him, the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the Kremlin’s decision to abandon the New Start treaty was “another proof that what Russia is doing is demolishing the security system that was built at the end of the cold war”.

Vladimir Putin announced he was suspending Russia’s participation in the New Start treaty with the US in a long speech in which he blamed the west for starting the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels shortly after the Russian president had finished speaking, Stoltenberg said:

A year ago President Putin launched his illegal war against a peaceful neighbour. The facts are clear for all to see. Nobody is attacking Russia. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is the victim of aggression and we are supporting Ukraine’s right to self-defence, a right which is enshrined in the UN charter. It is President Putin who started this imperial war of contest, it is Putin who keeps escalating the war.

When the war ends, Stoltenberg said, “long-term arrangements for Ukraine’s security” would be needed “to break the cycle of Russian aggression”.

He was speaking alongside Borrell and Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, as the trio held their first trilateral meeting of its kind. According to Kuleba, they discussed military training, weapons and procurement, with a pledge to help Ukraine “procure weapons and ammunition most effectively” and ensure they were delivered to the battlefield.

Borrell said he had written to EU defence ministers, who are meeting in early March, asking them to provide more ammunition to Ukraine from their stockpiles and speed up new supplies – which, he said, several countries were already doing. “The time parameters of what we have to do is measured in weeks, not months,” Borrell said.

Kuleba said Ukraine’s government would “thoroughly examine” a peace plan due to be presented by China later this week, saying the two countries shared a belief in the principle of territorial integrity.”-via The Guardian

“At least one Russian rocket slammed into a busy street in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing six people as Vladimir Putin delivered a speech marking a year of war in Ukraine, local officials said.

Ukraine's military and city authorities said 12 others were wounded in the attack, which a Reuters correspondent on the scene shortly afterwards said left a pool of blood on the pavement beside a mangled bus stop.

The blast also badly damaged a line of shop-fronts behind the bus stop, took down power cables and shattered windows on the opposite side of the street.

Photographs posted online by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier shown corpses lying in the street.

"This time of day it’s very crowded here so there are probably many casualties," Viktoria, a woman waiting for a bus who declined to give her last name, told Reuters.

"It’s really scary. They also shoot where we live."

Local authorities said Kherson came under fire from multiple rocket launchers as the Russian president delivered a speech describing the West as the aggressor in Ukraine and depicting his country as not waging war on the Ukrainian people.

Russia did not immediately comment on the events in Kherson, where the Ukrainian military said about 20 rockets were fired at the city.

Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians in its "special military operation", but cities across Ukraine have been devastated in missile and drone attacks and thousands of civilians have been killed.

"The Russian army is heavily shelling Kherson. Again mercilessly killing the civilian population," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

"The world has no right to forget for a single moment that Russian cruelty and aggression know no bounds."

Ukraine recaptured Kherson in November after eight months of Russian occupation, forcing Russian forces to abandon the only regional capital they had captured since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.

The city of Kherson and surrounding areas are now under almost constant bombardment from Russian forces on the opposite side of the Dnipro River.”-via Reuters

“Poland will deliver 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in the “next two or three weeks” once the training of the Ukrainian troops is complete, the country’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Łukasz Jasina, the spokesperson for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Warsaw supported sending fighter jets to Kyiv but that there was still some way to go in achieving a consensus among NATO countries.

“Exactly like it was with the tanks, we hope that this coalition will be big enough to support Ukrainians more and more. Jets are very useful in Ukrainian war,” Jasina said. “Still, I’m an optimist,” he added. “But we are a member of NATO, and we want to reach agreement in all such issues to participate in this together because the alliance is stronger when we are together,” the spokesman said.”-via CNN

“Russian troops are conducting offensives in the areas of Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Shakhtarsk, and Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported in its evening update on Feb. 21.

On the same day, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on national TV that the Russian military was not succeeding with a "major offensive" in the east.

"The phrase 'great'... has faded. The 'great offensive' they planned has lasted for 8-10 days, but the enemy has no success," Danilov said. "Today, there are five areas on which they are attempting to attack, but our fighters, representatives of the entire security and defense sector, are courageously defending our state."

The General Staff also wrote that Ukraine's Air Force had carried out four strikes on Russian temporary military bases over the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Russian forces targeted multiple settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts over the same period, according to the report.

In particular, Russia launched 30 attacks on Kherson's civilian infrastructure using multiple launch rocket systems. At least six people were killed and 12 injured in the Russian shelling of civilian areas of Kherson on Feb. 21, according to the Southern Operational Command.

The U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Feb. 20 that "regardless of the reality on the ground," Russian forces would likely claim the capture of Bakhmut around the anniversary of the full-scale invasion.

According to the General Staff, "despite significant losses," Russia doesn't give up its intention to occupy the entire Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.”-via Kyiv Independent

“Ukraine’s energy sector said on Tuesday it has managed to stabilise the electricity grid after over three months of power cuts following Russia’s bombardment.

On Monday night, streets and parks across the capital Kyiv were lit for the first time since November. Until now, Kyivians were had become used to walking in the pitch black, using their phone lights or torches to guide them. Many people wore reflective armbands so that cars would see them crossing the street. Dog walkers purchased light-up, rechargeable dog collars. Even Kyiv’s main streets and roads only had intermittent lighting throughout the winter and traffic lights would regularly be turned off.

Through January and late December, most Ukrainians had electricity for between four to eight hours a day.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state energy company, said in a statement that the situation was stable and the country had almost stopped importing energy.

“Due to favourable weather conditions and the gradual increase in daylight hours, power plants that rely on renewable energy sources and operate mainly during the day have increased their output,” the company said on Telegram.

No region in Ukraine was currently subject to cuts due to the grid’s lack of of capacity, it said, which had been the case up until last week. It warned, however, that blackouts and cuts were still possible if consumption increased as in Odesa and Lviv regions where repair work continues to “eliminate restrictions”.”-via The Guardian

#daily update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #NATO #Bakhmut #shakhtarsk #Avdiivka #Poland

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mariacallous · 1 year

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Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that revokes an earlier law he himself had signed in May 2012, during his third presidential term in Russia. What has just been revoked is a vision of Russia’s foreign policy that contained specific instructions to the government on cultivating cooperative relations with foreign countries, based on respect for the neighbors’ sovereignty and the promise of cooperation with various world regions. The new decree, effective February 21, 2023, disposes with that framework, appealing to Russia’s “national interests” in connection with “deep changes taking place in international relations.” Here are just some of the foreign policy provisions that Putin’s new decree overturns.

Vladimir Putin’s 2012 decree on foreign policy contained specific instructions to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, including “consistent implementation” of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty signed in 2010 by Russia’s then-president Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama. (In 2021, Russia and the U.S. extended the treaty to February 2026.) Putin signed the new decree on the same day he addressed Russia’s Federal Assembly, when he said that Russia was suspending its participation in New START.

But other foreign policy provisions are also being overturned in one fell swoop, as pointed out by Russian media. Policies that are no longer guaranteed by the Russian law include:

establishing external conditions that favor Russia’s long-term development;

affirming the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, which require cooperation between states, based on equality and respect for the member states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity;

active work on resolving the situation in Transnistria based on respect for Moldova’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and neutrality;

active cooperation with Belarus within the framework of the supranational Union State;

active assistance in the strengthening of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as modern democratic states;

promoting the creation of a single economic and civic space spanning from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast, including efforts to lift the EU short-term visa requirements for Russian nationals and collaboration in developing a unified European energy complex;

fostering a stable and predictable relationship with the U.S., based on the principles of equality, non-intervention, and respect for mutual state interests, along with further efforts to relax reciprocal visa requirements;

deepening trust and equal strategic partnership with China, as well as strategic partnerships with India and Vietnam and mutually profitable cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand;

developing a relationship with NATO in proportion to the alliance’s willingness to consider Russia’s national interests.

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