Follow the football, follow the money.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested that Russia be stripped of the 2018 World Cup due to their involvement in downing the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Eastern Ukraine. The Dutch football association has called on Holland to withdraw from the games. It is interesting how telling World Cup locations are to reveal geo-political power and economic opportunism. Putin's recent talks with Latin American nations (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Cuba among others have been discussing gas-deals with Putin) indicates that the Kremlin aims to play wherever they can to gain favour and financial investment with no regard to the violence they breed at home and in neighbouring Ukraine.
European Union ambassadors met for a second day of talks in Brussels to discuss new sanctions against Russia. Diplomats, apparently on condition of anonymity, have stated that the measures could have an impact on Russia's access to capital markets, its defense sector, and its imports of dual-use goods (both military and civilian purpose) and sensitive technologies. The EU sanctions that have been announced so far, impose travel bans and asset freezes on 15 people. The list includes the head of Russia's Federal Security Service and the head of the agency's department overseeing international operations and intelligence.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva estimates that 230,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Ukraine.
An excerpt from an article on Putin's propaganda machine, available here:
As Peter Pomerantsev noted in Foreign Policy: You begin to see a very 21st century mentality, manipulating transnational financial interconnections, spinning global media, and re-configuring geo-political alliances. Could it be that the West is the one caught up in the “old ways,” while the Kremlin is the geopolitical avant-garde, informed by a dark, subversive reading of globalization?
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