Energy News Beat

Across the advanced economies, the politics of net zero are colliding with reality, yet most politicians seem oblivious to the dynamics at play.

The inconvenient truth is that the clean energy transition is not unfolding as foretold. Three decades and trillions of dollars in subsidies later, wind and solar still represent single-digit percentages of global energy demand, which continues to grow. Demand for hydrocarbons, meanwhile, remains at over 80 per cent of the total. Exxon and Chevron recently invested a combined US$110 billion in long-term U.S. oil and gas development, driving home the reality that liquid hydrocarbons will be as indispensable post-2050 as they are today.

Across the Indo-Pacific, home to 75 per cent of the world’s population and 60 per cent of its manufacturing, coal use is growing, not shrinking. In the rich West, supposedly indispensable additions to transmission infrastructure and other key components of large-scale electrification remain political pipedreams — as illustrated by the International Energy Agency’s improbable call for 80 million kilometres of new/upgraded wiring globally by 2040, enough to wrap around the globe 2,000 times and requiring US$600 billion in annual investments by 2030. Back here on Earth, the reality is that across Europe all-important grid connections are routinely caught up in years-long waitlists, while in North America permitting legislation makes building interstate/interprovincial power-sharing infrastructure virtually impossible.

Our governments holding forth sanctimoniously about imagined climate-driven severe weather events while imposing large-scale use of wind and solar is insanity with serious consequences — among them, rolling-blackouts across the U.S. and Europe, with mounting loss of life. British Columbia’s NDP government’s anticipated five-year 400 MW/year generation program, the equivalent of two large utility plants, is to be produced solely by intermittent renewables, which is physically impossible.

As early as 2018, key industry executives warned that the renewables sector risked an Enron-style collapse because of its insatiable subsidy-dependence. That unwinding is now happening across the wind, solar and EV industries, and it’s driven by dynamics unlikely to be reversed.

As demand falters, skyrocketing costs are outstripping even massive subsidies. When investors see this, the market cap of key companies craters. SolarEdge Technologies, a bellwether, is down 70 per cent. Investco’s renewables fund is off 40 per cent, while Canadian Solar’s proposed major investment in the U.S. is clearly in jeopardy.

Unmanageable costs and permitting quagmires have triggered the cancellation of wind-power projects on both sides of the Atlantic, causing investors and banks to retreat. Faced with crippling technical problems, growing warranty exposure and companies like Shell walking away from multi-billion-dollar projects, industry leaders Orsted, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa are in structural financial crisis, their shares down by 30 to 60 per cent. Siemens Energy’s recent request for a $16-billion bailout prompted BP’s head of renewable energy to say the industry was “broken.”

EVs have always been net zero’s sentinel technology. Politically styled as virtuous, revolutionizing trendsetters, they are in fact, and ironically, the very embodiment of the clean energy narrative’s magical thinking, wrapping potent negative externalities in a sleek shell. But politicians neglected to check with mainstream buyers, who in growing numbers are deciding these expensive marvels are not for them, while the affluent early adopters who have carried the industry near saturation. A surprising number of original buyers are signalling their next vehicle will be gas-powered. Markets for used EVs are in freefall, confirming the growing disenchantment.

With influential analysts belatedly realizing Tesla is an overvalued car company, not a technology miracle, its stock has dropped 25 per cent. Other EV start-ups face impossible refinancing odds. VW is closing down an entire production line. Ford is pulling back $12 billion in EV investments and Honda and GM are cancelling a $5-billion EV co-development program. These are all unmistakable market signals.

Detroit has effectively decided that, even with all the subsidies the Biden administration is providing, it can’t afford to both build EVs and pay its new settlement with the UAW. Tesla shelving its Mexican expansion will in turn likely prompt ever-cautious Toyota to reconsider a proposed $8-billion U.S. investment.

Here at home these developments lay bare the Trudeau government’s decision to lavish money on battery factories in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec for the stunning incompetence and breathtaking policy hubris it is.

Americans might be stuck with a Biden-Trump rematch
Will Ottawa’s fiscal update trim spending and debt?
E-procurement saves money, cuts corruption

What we are witnessing are not bumps in the road to an inevitable clean energy transition but evidence of socio-economic realities unravelling the politics of net zero — including the fiction that we must urgently and radically re-engineer our societies to stop a supposed climate catastrophe that in fact isn’t.

Henry Geraedts worked in venture capital internationally. His PhD is in international political economy, with an interest in strategic aspects of energy and technology.

Source: Finance.yahoo.com

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Opinion: Net-zero policies colliding with economic reality appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Like all of us, I wear many hats.

In my professional life, I’m the CEO of ExxonMobil, one of the largest investor-owned companies in the world.

By training, I’m an engineer, which in many ways is how I still see myself – as someone who solves problems.

And in my personal life, I’m a father and grandfather – who cares about his family, their quality of life, and their futures.

Which means, I care very much about our environment and the health of our planet.

The Challenges We Face

My views on the climate challenge are informed by all of these perspectives, as is my commitment to finding solutions.

I’m fully aware that there are many who question ExxonMobil’s commitment because of what was said over 30 years ago or what they think Exxon knew back then.

Frankly, I’m more interested in what ExxonMobil knows today.

So, allow me to share this with you – here’s what ExxonMobil knows:

Climate change is real,
Human activity plays a major role,
And, it is one of the major problems facing the world today – the need to address the very real threat of climate change.

But it’s not the only one.

Here’s another global problem, equally important – the need to continue producing affordable energy to maintain and raise living standards around the world.

Three billion people fall short of modern living standards, and far too many remain trapped in extreme poverty with no access to electricity or clean cooking fuels.

The global North-South divide will only be bridged when we commit to solving the world’s energy and emissions challenges simultaneously.

Oil and gas are at the center of both. Combusting them is a leading source of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the societal cost, and it’s real.

At the same time, the societal benefits of oil and gas are unmatched in human history. They’ve done more to grow economies, eradicate poverty and improve quality of life than anything else.

The Role of Energy Companies in the Energy Transition

If some of you are surprised by the clarity of ExxonMobil’s position on the climate challenge, even more noteworthy is the scale of our effort to address it.

If you were to list the biggest challenges facing humankind, addressing energy poverty and climate change are at the top.

And if you list the companies with a realistic chance to help improve access to energy and “bend the curve” on emissions, ExxonMobil would also be at the top.

To understand why, it’s important to grasp where the bulk of the world’s energy-related emissions come from. It’s not from the passenger vehicle sector that gets so much of the attention – cars and light trucks only account for 10% of energy-related CO2 emissions.

More than 80% come from commercial transportation, heavy industry, and power generation.

Wind and solar have great utility as a source of low-carbon electricity, but they just can’t get the job done in these hard-to-decarbonize sectors.

We need to open the aperture to a much broader set of solutions.

While renewable energy is essential to help the world achieve net zero, it is not sufficient – wind and solar alone can’t solve emissions in the industrial sectors that are at the heart of a modern society.

The technologies ExxonMobil is pursuing can.

Consider carbon capture and storage, where we capture emissions at the source, transport them by pipeline and permanently store them deep underground.

Just in the last year:

We’ve signed carbon capture and storage agreements with a steel company, a fertilizer company, and an industrial-gas company.These three projects alone, will reduce CO2 emissions by the same amount as replacing 2 million cars with EVs. This is roughly the total number of electric vehicles on U.S. roads today.
We’ve also secured exclusive rights to CO2 storage in Indonesia and Malaysia.With the right policy, we can create regional solutions for many of the industrial economies in Asia that don’t have large geologic formations suitable for storage.
We’ve announced the world’s largest, low-carbon hydrogen plant, capable of producing 1 billion cubic feet per day.This single plant could produce nearly 10% of the Biden administration’s 2030 low-carbon hydrogen goal.
We’re pursuing a dozen low-emission biofuels projects to meet what could be a 400% increase in demand by 2050.
And, as we announced on Monday, we’re making a major investment in lithium production, which is essential to the world’s effort to electrify as much of the economy as possible.

All of this – and more – is supported by our investment of approximately 17 billion dollars over six years …and our almost $5 billion dollar acquisition of a company with the largest pipeline system in the U.S. for transporting and storing CO2.

When it comes to developing additional solutions, beyond wind, solar and EVs, nobody is investing more.

On an annualized basis, our spend is more than one third of the budget of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Think about that: One company, investing a third as much as the U.S. agency responsible for environmental protection.

World-scale problems like climate change, need world-scale companies to help solve them – like ExxonMobil.

Time to Get Serious

Despite progress toward net zero, serious obstacles remain. Many of the ideas being put forward to accelerate the energy transition are not based in economic, technological, or political reality.

To get serious about net zero, the world needs to get real.

We cannot replace overnight an energy system that took 150 years to build. The size and complexity are simply too vast.

Those who would tear down the existing energy system have the wrong problem statement. The problem is not oil and gas. It’s emissions.

Never before have we stopped using an energy source because of the byproduct it produces.

We successfully dealt with smog and acid rain by addressing harmful emissions, not by banning cars or shutting down power plants.

The solutions to climate change have been too focused on reducing supply.

That’s a recipe, for human hardship and a poorer world.

Leaving oil in the ground does nothing to stop the demand for it. It simply raises the price and makes it harder to alleviate poverty around the world.

The global North grew vastly wealthier because of economic growth powered by oil and gas.

The story is very different in the global South.

In non-OECD countries, income per person is still only 11,000 dollars a year.

No country has ever joined the developed world without access to oil and gas. The countries of the global South have every right to lift their people out of energy poverty and into the global middle class.

What Serious Looks Like

At the moment, net zero by 2050 remains an aspiration.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency have both made clear that the world is not on the path to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Pledges are not enough. The world needs a plan.

To get serious, three things are needed: supportive public policy, significant technology advancements, and a smooth transition from government subsidies to market-based mechanisms.

The governments of Asia-Pacific, and elsewhere, need to embrace constructive policy to encourage the shift to a lower-emissions future.

As a business leader who spends his time solving challenging large-scale problems, I’d like to suggest, some guiding principles:

Don’t pick winners and losers.
Don’t focus on an answer that fails to solve all aspects of the problem.
For really complex issues like climate change… keep all viable solutions in play – even if they don’t align with your beliefs or ideology.

And, most importantly, leverage the power of competitive markets.

Market incentives for carbon reduction like a price on carbon, or policy incentives such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, will drive innovation and engage all relevant players – leading to better solutions, faster.

We should allow technologies and companies to compete – and let the best solutions win.

For example, the IRA made the playing field for carbon capture more level by raising the incentive for CO2 removal to 85 dollars a ton. I say “more level” because the subsidy for electric vehicles is still 450 dollars a ton – or five times as high.

Technology-agnostic subsidies can kick-start a range of low-emission solutions, but they must have an expiration date.

No government can afford to subsidize the energy transition forever.

Beyond incentives, we need a concentrated effort on advancing technology.

Collaboration is key. In simple terms, governments fund research, universities and labs conduct it, and companies develop and deploy it.

And we need an all-of-the-above approach. It’s far too early in the process to rule out any technology.

The final element critical to long-term success is market-based mechanisms.

When carbon reduction is economic, it will be everywhere.

Right now, that’s not the case. Low-carbon energy from solar to biofuels remains dependent on government support. Ultimately, the world must shift to market-based incentives to drive emissions lower.

As a practical matter, the world will need government policy to make this happen.

Let me close with this.

Oil and gas companies reliably provide affordable products essential to modern life.

Making them into villains is easy. But it does nothing – absolutely nothing – to accomplish the goal of reducing emissions.

In fact, it puts the reliable supply of energy at risk…destabilizing global economies, degrading people’s standards of living, and, as we saw in Europe, actually raising emissions.

The better approach – the constructive approach – is to harness the industry’s capabilities for change.

Put us to work. We’ve got the tools – the skills, the size, and the intellectual and financial resources – to bend the curve on emissions.

That’s what ExxonMobil Knows.

Thank you very much.

Source: Corporate.exxonmobil.com

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, talks about reframing the climate challenge during the APEC CEO Summit appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Podcasts are always fun, and today is no exception. I had the opportunity to visit with Kevin Hokett, President, and Noah Dean, Business Development of American Safety Services. We were live at the Permian International Oil Show, and It was a blast.

Kevin and Noah’s experience in the oil and gas market is huge. We covered everything from team roping, authoring books, and how to keep the low-cost energy flowing. Also a huge shout out to Kieth Stelter, Chief Strategy Officer and podcast host for pulling this together!

Also, thank Brian Stubbs at Air Compressor Solutions and Rey Trevino with Pecos Operating! Brian and Rey were instrumental in getting the live events rolling.

Follow and connect with Kevin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-hokett-840b867b/

Follow and connect with Noah here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-dean-701740231/

Follow and connect with Keith here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-stelter-575b9312/

Follow and connect with Brian here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianstubbs/

Follow and connect with Rey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reytrevinoiii/

Check out American Safety Services HERE: https://www.americansafety.net/

Check out Air Compressor Solutions HERE: https://acsir.com

Check out Pecos Operating HERE: https://pecosoperating.com/

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 

ENB

Energy Dashboard

ENB Podcast

ENB Substack

The post #154 Kevin Hokett, President, American Safety Services – Live in the Permian Oil Show – Saving lives everyday. appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

In 2021 the Guardian ran a series of adverts claiming the newspaper was “not funded by billionaires”, and “our readers’ backing gives us the independence to hold the powerful to account”. Not perhaps all the powerful. The Guardian is backed by a number of billionaire philanthropic foundations, including the European Climate Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund. According to the investigative journalist Ben Pile, an additional $12 million grant from the Gates Foundation is equivalent alone to $116 for every reader of the print version.

This information is contained in a sensational and wide-ranging report from Pile that lifts the lid on the extraordinary influence a few wealthy individuals have recently gained in directing public policy across many political issues, including medicine, climate and Net Zero. Funding mainstream media plays a large part in driving public policy, and the amounts of money involved are staggering. So are the clouds of smoke produced to hide the scale of the subsidy. Pile notes that although the Guardian has run many articles denouncing the lack of transparency around the funding of Right-of-centre civil society organisations and the influence of ‘dark money’, neither the newspaper nor many of its backers detail their own funding relationships.

The Guardian is not the only mainstream media outlet in the U.K. to benefit from cash injections from Bill Gates. The BBC collects a handsome $58 million, while sizeable gifts have been pocketed by the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times.

Climate-related grants between 2013-2021 by principal and strategic foundations are estimated to total $2.7 billion. This compares with an average 2018-2022 annual income for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a critical climate and Net Zero think tank demonised by green activists, of $470,238. All this green largesse buys a lot of the useful smoke. The European Climate Fund, for instance, funds InfluenceMap which suggested in 2018 that the five largest oil companies spent $200 million a year on “narrative capture and lobbying on climate”. Earlier investigative work by Pile revealed that most of the claimed expenditure was based on speculation and estimation. Meanwhile, InfluenceMap’s own 11 funders were shown to have spent $1.2 billion on funding climate change campaigning and lobbying.

The latest Pile report is published by Together and Climate Debate U.K. and is titled ‘“Clean” Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics‘. It focuses on the “big bucks” behind the U.K. anti-car policies and air pollution panics. Its range is wide and the Daily Sceptic will report on some of the issues it raises in subsequent articles. But the main gist of its sensational findings is that a few ‘philanthropists’ now have “extraordinary influence” in global agencies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, and their interest aligns academic research and non-governmental organisations of all kinds. In the process, they exclude the wider society and promote and often implement policies that have no grassroots support.

In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan chairs the C40 group of world mayors. Backed by billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg and Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn, the group promotes a variety of lifestyle changes surrounding restriction of diet, travel and many other personal freedoms. It claims to represent “over 82 million people from diverse global contexts and around one fifth of the global economy”. Pile observes that it seems extremely unlikely that eight million Londoners have even heard of C40, let alone agree to its radical visions for the reorganisation of their lives.

Air pollution policies such as London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone are said to be “proxy battles” of the climate war. Organisations involved in air pollution policies are wholly funded by climate change interests. “There are no grassroots air pollution campaigns of consequence,” states Pile. The public has been excluded from politics, he continues. Experts that depart from the policy agenda are routinely excluded from the public debate by research agendas, editorial policy and cancel culture. This deprives the public of debate about costs and trade-offs of far reaching policies. As an example it can be noted that the move to full Net Zero by 2050 was nodded through the British Parliament during the death throes of a May Government desperately seeking what was considered at the time as a virtuous legacy.

It is all possible because well-funded green organisations have worked to form a cross-party consensus. At the local level, continues Pile, air pollution policies have been imposed on populations without due democratic process. This of course has ended in London with a Labour Mayor punching down hard on car ownership among the less affluent members of society. Independent local organisations are “overwhelmed” by extremely well-funded and well-connected green organisations’ campaigns, he notes.

Source: Dailysceptic.org

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Billionaire Funds the Guardian to Tune of $116 Per Reader of Print Edition appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

U.S. energy experts are warning of the economic and national security implications of President Biden’s pact with China this week to move towards shutting down fossil fuel production in favor of green energy.

The State Department announced this week it had struck a deal with its Chinese counterparts pledging to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” with green energy sources like wind and solar power. The nations, which account for nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions, also agreed to “deepen policy exchanges” on reducing carbon emissions in various sectors, like power, industry, buildings and transportation, across their economies.

But the agreement — in which the nations further pledged to “sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030” — was criticized over its potential impact on U.S. consumers. Experts also noted that China has rarely followed through on international accords and stands to financially benefit from such an agreement since it controls much of the world’s green energy supply chain.

“The agreement speaks heavily about advancing — doubling down and tripling down on renewables, wind and solar. The majority of them are made in China,” Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“So, you’re basically writing an agreement that guarantees China a customer and guarantees their manufacturing sector decades of purchasing. Of course China would love this agreement. And their obligations — they’ll just ignore that. They’ve ignored every other obligation,” Turner added. “It is basically guaranteeing China decades of wealth, guaranteeing America is going to buy their products.”

The post Experts raise alarm after Biden strikes agreement with China to shut down fossil fuels appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Kiev’s propagandists are trying to deny the reality that Russia is gaining the edge on the battlefield

Failed blitzkrieg

The purpose of the video is simple – it intends to turn the narrative around, implying that the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) wasn’t actually a defeat, but a victory. The idea is that the Ukrainians deceived the Russians, and while Moscow deployed its reserves – including elite airborne divisions – near Rabotino, the AFU continued preparations for a real offensive. This would give people hope that Kiev’s newly formed units, armed with Western equipment, have not been defeated, but continue training. Finally, Ukrainians need to believe that they have outsmarted the Russians, who were easily deceived – in other words, they need to believe in their intellectual superiority.

Why does Ukraine need this narrative? Essentially, the lies will distract a certain number of people from the current state of affairs, which AFU Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny and former presidential aide Alexey Arestovich have been talking about for quite some time and described as a protracted war of attrition.

Based on the ideas expressed by some members of the Ukrainian establishment, we see that the failed counteroffensive put an end to Ukraine’s hopes for an early end to the war – which could have been ensured by defeating the Russian army near Melitopol, cutting off the land corridor to Crimea and reaching the Crimean isthmus. According to Arestovich, this is what Ukraine originally counted on.

Ukrainians expected such a blitzkrieg when Zelensky and other officials initially announced the counteroffensive. This could have prevented the war from turning into a war of attrition, which, according to Zaluzhny, is strategically advantageous to Russia.

The destruction of Leopard and Bradley tanks near Rabotino was important not just from a military point of view, but also psychologically. The AFU’s inability to break the so-called Surovikin Line of defense forced ordinary Ukrainians to abandon hopes of a return to peaceful life.

In the fall of 2023, when the conquered territories turned into a muddy mess, many Ukrainians began wondering ‘what’s next?’. People asked themselves whether they were ready to continue living in conditions of constant, even if less intense, war.

The idea of a blitzkrieg fell through after the AFU’s failed attempt.

A tale of the creative class for the creative class

This tempted Ukraine to create an imaginary reality, one where there was no counteroffensive and all the killed Ukrainians and destroyed military equipment were simply part of a cunning plan. This way, Kiev could preserve its own picture of the world – a world without existential fears, a permanent humanitarian crisis, and continuous mobilization. And, more importantly, the country wouldn’t need to reassess its forces and methods of action.

Moreover, the psyop concept has become profitable for a certain segment of Ukrainian society – the so-called information class, which before the war used to earn money in the field of politics, the nonprofit sector, marketing, and PR.

These people want to control Ukrainian society. From ordinary civilians, they have turned into authoritative soldiers of the information front.

They have always catered to the Ukrainian elites, selling them narratives and means of public communication. Now, when Ukraine is at war and refuses to hold democratic elections, the only way they can maintain their influence is to serve the needs of the war – without even having the necessary education and knowledge for it.

For this reason, they attempted to treat the failed summer counteroffensive as if it were another normal project, while completely ignoring the thousands of lives lost during the operation.

In reality, this garbage thrown into the Ukrainian media space exists only in order to be ridiculed.

How it really was and will be

Everyone found out about the real counteroffensive in the Melitopol direction when Kiev lost dozens of units of Western equipment in early June. The Russian army made sure to record plenty of video footage confirming this.

Ukrainian society was frustrated by these videos and the lack of statements from officials. A week later, however, the authorities and media were forced to admit what had happened.

Then, as the Ukrainian army advanced towards Rabotino, the Vremevsky ledge, and in the Artyomovsk direction, it issued many hopeful statements and counted every square kilometer of Russian territory that it managed to occupy.

The problem, however, was that this territory was won at a huge cost – the ‘exchange rate’ was very unfavorable for Ukraine, forcing the AFU to throw one brigade after another into battle. A classic example was the entry into battle of the 82nd Brigade, which allowed Ukraine to capture Rabotino. At that point, however, its operational reserves were depleted.

At the time, however, pro-Ukrainian experts discussed the ratio of equipment losses (supposedly in the AFU’s favor), the fighting which allegedly depleted the enemy’s resources (when Russia’s Seventh Air Assault Division was transferred from Kherson to the Zaporozhye Region, Ukrainians perceived this as a herald of victory), and counted the number of kilometers to the end of the minefields, after which AFU units trained according to NATO standards would surely defeat Russia’s Soviet-legacy forces.

By the end of the summer, however, the AFU still could not break through the Russian defense. It got stuck near the Vremevsky ledge, and then transferred marine brigades to carry out amphibious operations across the Dnieper River in another operational direction.

Gradually, the Russian Armed Forces intensified their offensive in the Kupyansk, Liman, and Artyomovsk directions. In October, Russia’s large-scale assault on Avdeevka forced the Ukrainians to deploy the 47th Mechanized Brigade – the same unit that launched the offensive on Rabotino in June.

The transition to positional warfare – which Russian experts noted back in the winter of 2022-23 – became obvious to the Ukrainians only six months later. As a result, they began arguing with their Western backers over the supposedly insufficient and untimely military assistance. In parallel, the Ukrainians promised that if they received aviation, their next counteroffensive would certainly be more effective. Finally, Zaluzhny wrote an article in which he admitted that unless the army manages to break through enemy lines soon and things go back to maneuver warfare, Ukraine will suffer a strategic defeat.

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Why is Ukraine now claiming its disastrous counteroffensive was only a smokescreen? appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

A demonstration outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington has turned violent

The post Pro-Palestinian protest leads to lockdown at US Capitol appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko has been sentenced to jail for seven years after being found guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military by replacing a handful of supermarket price tags with messages criticising the war in Ukraine.

The 33-year-old, known as Sasha, is one of thousands of Russians to be detained, fined or jailed for speaking out against Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour amid an escalating crackdown on free speech and opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

Skochilenko was arrested in her native St Petersburg in April 2022, after an elderly customer at the supermarket found the slogans on the price tags and notified the police.

“The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling,” one read, in reference to Russia’s brutal siege of the southern Ukrainian city. Another said, “Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war.”

Judge Oksana Demiasheva delivered the verdict on Thursday hours after Skochilenko, who has a congenital heart defect and coeliac disease, had made a final statement to the court, asking for compassion and to be set free.

As well as the prison term, the artist was banned from using the internet for three years.

Skochilenko, wearing a colourful T-shirt decorated with a large red heart, reacted with shock to the sentence, covering her face and wiping away tears.

Supporters shouted “shame” and “we’re with you Sasha”, the AFP news agency reported.

Skochilenko’s lawyers left without giving any comment.

Skochilenko’s arrest came about a month after authorities adopted a law effectively criminalising any public expression about the war that deviated from the Kremlin’s official line.

Human rights group Memorial – now banned in Russia – said police spent 10 days interrogating supermarket staff and inspecting security camera footage before arresting the artist.

“They sometimes give less for murder than for five price tags in a supermarket,” Boris Vishnevsky, a politician linked to the opposition Yabloko party, told AFP.

“Hopefully, someday, the pendulum will turn the other way.”

Skochilenko was accused of committing what the state prosecutor described as a serious crime out of “political hatred” towards Russia. He had asked for her to be jailed for eight years.

Skochilenko admitted to swapping the tags but denied that the text written on them was false. She said she was a pacifist who valued human life above all else.

“How weak is our prosecutor’s faith in our state and society if he thinks our statehood and public safety can be ruined by five little pieces of paper?” she said in court.

“Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You’re not trying an extremist. You’re not even trying a political activist. You’re judging a pacifist,” she said.

Skochilenko’s friends and supporters said the verdict was a disgrace [Olga Maltseva/AFP]

Amnesty International condemned the verdict.

“Her persecution has become synonymous with the absurdly cruel oppression faced by Russians openly opposing their country’s criminal war,” it said in a statement.

Memorial has designated Skochilenko a political prisoner and has launched a campaign calling for her release.

She has already been in detention for nearly 19 months, meaning that her overall term will be reduced by more than two years, since every day served in a pre-trial detention centre counts as 1.5 days of time served in a regular penal colony.

But she has struggled in custody due to pre-existing health conditions, and her need for a gluten-free diet, according to her lawyers and her partner.

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that monitors political arrests and provides legal aid, a total of 19,834 Russians have been arrested between February 24 2022, when Russia began its invasion, and late October 2023 for speaking out or demonstrating against the war.

Also on Thursday, opposition politician Vladimir Milov was convicted in absentia of spreading false information about the army and sentenced to eight years. Milov, who was once Russia’s deputy energy minister and is now an ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has left the country.

Alexandra Skochilenko convicted of spreading ‘false information’ after replacing five tags with Ukraine war criticism.

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

​

The post Russian artist jailed for seven years over anti-war price tag protest appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Paul Kessler died after falling and hitting his head during duelling protests earlier this month.

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

​

The post Man arrested over Jewish protester’s death during pro-Palestinian rally appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Belarus has been collaborating with Moscow in the forcible transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied Ukraine in a programme “directly overseen” by the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko, according to research from Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The report (PDF), released on Thursday, said at least 2,442 children aged between six and 17 years old had been taken to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022 until the end of October this year.

“Russia and Belarus are targeting children for removal from Ukraine, coordinating their transport from occupied Ukraine through Russia to Belarus, and subjecting children to re-education, sometimes including military training, sometimes including military training,” the Yale HRL researchers said.

They said Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had “jointly directed and co-funded” the deportations with Putin under the Union State initiative that was first agreed back in 1996.

“Belarus’s direct involvement in Russia’s forced deportation of children represents a collaboration between Belarus’s authoritarian leader [Alexander] Lukashenka and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, with various pro-Russia and pro-regime organisations facilitating the deportation,” they said.

Putin is already the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over Moscow’s alleged forcible transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories, along with the country’s Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.

Taking children under the age of 18 across a border without the consent of a parent or guardian is illegal under international humanitarian law.

Kyiv, which estimates some 19,000 children have been abducted, has already said it is investigating Belarus’s alleged involvement in the policy.

In September, Belarus’s state media published photos of dozens of Ukrainian children arriving in the country from the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia regions for a “three-week holiday”. The children were shown getting off a train carrying backpacks and suitcases, mostly looking solemn.

Alexei Talai, the head of the charity leading the programme, said Lukashenko had described it as an “important humanitarian project” that needed to continue. Talai was also mentioned as a facilitator in Thursday’s report.

The Yale HRL is part of The Conflict Observatory, which receives funding from the United States.

“These revelations of Belarusian involvement are part of a broader campaign directed by Russia,” the US State Department said in a statement.

“Members of Russia’s military and government have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukraine’s civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families. The United States will continue to pursue accountability for actors involved in abuses connected with Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

Moscow has denied allegations that it is involved in forcible transfers or separating children from their families.

The Yale HRL report said the children had been taken from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, parts of which are occupied by Russia.

They were put on trains to Rostov-on-Don in Russia before being transported to Belarus.

It said more than 2,050 of the children had been taken to the “Dubrava children’s camp” in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.

The researchers said it was not clear how many of the children it had documented remained in Belarus.

Yale researchers say more than 2,400 children have been deported from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

​

The post Belarus linked to forcible transfer of Ukrainian children: Study appeared first on Energy News Beat.