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Krugman: “Russia Keeps Looking More Vulnerable to Crisis”

by mAskasieie45gg Posted on December 14, 2014

Mother Jones

Paul Krugman just left a conference in Dubai, and decided to write a bit about oil prices because all the geopolitical stuff he heard was pretty grim. But the oil stuff wasn’t that interesting. His one paragraph about geopolitics is:

My other thought is that Venezuela-with-nukes (Russia) keeps looking more vulnerable to crisis. Long-term interest rates at almost 13 percent, a plunging currency, and a lot of private-sector institutions with large foreign-currency debts. You might imagine that large foreign exchange reserves would allow the government to bail out those in trouble, but the markets evidently don’t think so. This is starting to look very serious.

Yes it is, and the reference to Venezuela-with-nukes is telling. A Russian economic crash could just be a crash. That would be bad for Russia, bad for Europe, and bad for the world. But it would hardly be the first time a midsize economy crashed. It would be bad but manageable.

Except that Russia has Vladimir Putin, Russia has a pretty sizeable and fairly competent military, and Russia has nukes. Putin has spent his entire career building his domestic popularity partly by blaming the West for every setback suffered by the Russian people, and that anti-Western campaign has reached virulent proportions over the past year or two. If the Russian economy does crash, and Putin decides that the best way to ride it out is to demagogue Europe and the West as a way of deflecting popular anger away from his own ruinous policies, it’s hard to say what the consequences would be. When Argentina pursues a game plan like that, you end up with a messy court case and lots of diplomatic grandstanding. When Russia does it, things could go a lot further.

I have precious little sympathy for Putin, whose success—such as it is—is based on a toxic stew of insecurities and quixotic appetites that have expressed themselves in a destructive brand of crude nativism; reactionary bigotry; disdain for the rule of law, both domestic and international; narrow and myopic economic vision; and dependence on an outdated and illiberal oligarchy to retain power. Nonetheless, there are kernels of legitimate grievance buried in many of these impulses, as well as kernels of necessity given both Russia’s culture and the post-Cold War collapse of its economy that has left it perilously dependent on extractive industries.

I don’t know if it’s too late to use the kernels as building blocks to improve, if not actually repair, Western relations with Putin’s Russia. But it’s still worth trying. A Russian crash may or may not come, but it’s hardly out of the realm of possibility. And if it happens, even a modest rapprochement between East and West could help avoid a disastrous outcome.

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Krugman: “Russia Keeps Looking More Vulnerable to Crisis”

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Why this U.N. climate summit is especially important

by MaximilPKR Posted on December 1, 2014

Why this U.N. climate summit is especially important

By on 1 Dec 2014commentsShare

Thousands of diplomats from around the world are gathering today in Lima, Peru, in the latest round of wrangling to hammer out a deal to address climate change. This two-week conference is the COP20 — meaning, it is the 20th conference of parties to 1992’s U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Yes, we’ve been having a lot of these climate-related U.N. summits — one every year, in fact, plus the summit in New York City earlier this year, which wasn’t an official conference of parties. You, dear Grist reader, are more likely than most to reside in that small minority that finds every U.N. summit on climate change worth paying attention to — but this COP is really important, and even more worth paying attention to than the rest of them. That’s because negotiations are both more urgent and seem more likely to accomplish something than in years past.

First, the urgency: This conference is the last before the big one in Paris in 2015. That conference, the COP21, has taken on great significance among climate hawks because it could very well be the last chance for nations to cut a deal to avoid 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, a target scientists have said will likely allow us to dodge some of the truly awful effects of global warming.

The hope is that the Lima conference will produce a draft document for nations to commit to in Paris in December 2015. In theory, between now and next spring, each nation will come up with a goal for how much they can cut their emissions, and announce their intention to meet that goal. Then, next December, world leaders will sign an agreement acknowledging those commitments, with plans to reconvene and assess how each nation is doing.

For a while, nations haven’t been willing to make these kinds of commitments — but things feel a bit more optimistic this time. Though it has its naysayers, the recent joint U.S.-China announcement that both nations have timelines in place for limiting their emissions made a difference. The announcement demonstrated that the two largest polluters are taking climate change seriously. The deal, in turn, puts the heat on the other big polluters — both those that bare a historical responsibility for global warming, like the U.S. does, and those that only recently industrialized, like China — to come up with a climate plan. The European Union recently announced a timeline to reduce emissions by 40 percent over 1990 levels, which only makes the pressure greater on countries like India, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Canada to commit to their own timelines.

Still, in many of those countries, even with the building momentum, commitments face considerable hurdles. India has been wishy-washy, mostly indicating we shouldn’t expect an emission-reduction plan anytime soon. Canada and Australia have the significant impediment of being run by leaders who don’t really give a hoot about global warming. And even if commitments are made, they may swing into effect too late. Writes The New York Times’ Coral Davenport:

The problem is that climate experts say [emissions reduction] almost certainly will not happen fast enough. A November report by the United Nations Environment Program concluded that in order to avoid the 3.6 degree increase, global emissions must peak within the next 10 years, going down to half of current levels by midcentury.

But the deal being drafted in Lima will not even be enacted until 2020. And the structure of the emerging deal — allowing each country to commit to what it can realistically achieve, given each nation’s domestic politics — means that the initial cuts by countries will not be as stringent as what scientists say is required.

That’s bad news for the inhabitants of low-lying islands, farmers in the developing world, and even vulnerable communities in the United States, who are already at high risk.

But even though we’re going to have to deal with some climate changes no matter what, taking action sooner is far better than taking it later. Whether or not the world manages to stay below 2 degrees of warming, emissions will eventually have to be reduced significantly. We’re not on that path yet, but we may be getting closer. That’s why we’ll be watching the news from Lima.

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Why this U.N. climate summit is especially important

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Under Pressure From Obama, France Delays Warship Sale to Russia

by LucioFouts Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

I confess that I’m surprised to read this:

France has put on hold a controversial deal to supply Russia with two high-tech amphibious assault ships following international concern over Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine

….After months of wait-and-see messages from the French, Hollande’s declaration Tuesday was at least clear: It would not be appropriate to deliver the control-and-command vessels given the current conflict between Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, he said.

….In June, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, had insisted that the contract had been signed and sealed and had to be honored. On Tuesday, following months of pressure from the United States, Fabius appeared to have changed his mind.

Huh. I guess the weakling Obama really is working quietly behind the scenes on stuff like this, and really does still have some clout on the international stage. Who knew?

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Under Pressure From Obama, France Delays Warship Sale to Russia

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Finland Starting to Think Hard About Joining NATO

by AlanKunkle Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

Behold the results of Vladimir Putin’s brilliant strategy of scaring the hell out of every single country within bomber range of Russia:

As Russian-backed separatists have eviscerated another non-NATO neighbor this year — Ukraine — Finnish leaders have watched with growing alarm. They are increasingly questioning whether the nonaligned path they navigated through the Cold War can keep them safe as Europe heads toward another period of dangerous standoffs between West and East.

….The palpable anxiety in this country that many in the West consider a model of progressive and stable democratic governance reflects how unsettled Europe has become since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March. Many in Helsinki are convinced that Russia will not remain deterred for long and say Finland needs to fundamentally rethink elements of its security policy that have been bedrock principles for decades.

….“It’s going in a terrifying direction,” said Elisabeth Rehn, a former Finnish defense minister who favors NATO membership. “It’s only been 100 years since we gained our independence from Russia. Crimea was a part of Russia, too. Will they try to take back what belonged to them 100 years ago?”

Rehn said she doubts Russia would go that far but said the fear of Russian military aggression is real.

Will Finland join NATO? Probably not anytime soon. But just think about what Putin has accomplished here. Finland stayed out of NATO for the entire four decades of the Cold War, but is now so unnerved by Russia’s actions that it’s seriously thinking about joining up. If Putin is truly afraid of Russia being fully surrounded by the West, his worst fears are about to come true thanks to his own actions. No one wants to be the next eastern Ukraine, and right now NATO membership is probably looking mighty appealing to a lot of people who were OK with the status quo a few years ago.

Putin’s bellicose nationalism may play well at home, but it sure isn’t doing him any favors anywhere else.

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Finland Starting to Think Hard About Joining NATO

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As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes

by Myrna Posted on September 18, 2014

A small but growing movement is working to make it easier to recycle household waste, and advocates say Moscow’s brimming landfills could use the relief. Visit link:   As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes ; ; ;

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As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes

Posted in aquaponics, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes

Did Anti-Gay Evangelicals Skirt US Sanctions on Russia?

by LeiaKrieger Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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This Wednesday, activists from around the world will gather in Moscow for a conference titled “Large Families: The Future of Humanity.” The gathering in the Russian capital will focus on defending “the way of life of large families” and includes workshops on topics such as the “natural family” and the role of media in promoting “the values of a traditional family.”

Originally, the World Congress of Families had scheduled a similarly titled conference, “Every Child A Gift: Large Families, the Future of Humanity,” to take place in Moscow this week. The Illinois-based WCF, as I have reported previously, has promoted anti-gay and anti-abortion policies around the globe, perhaps most actively and successfully in Russia. WCF has helped host at least five major gatherings in Russia since 2010, providing venues for American evangelicals to present their ideas to Russian legislators, religious leaders, and activists.

Yet in July, after the United States and the European Union leveled economic sanctions against Russia in response to its incursions into Ukraine, WCF canceled its Moscow confab, citing “uncertainties” due to the new rules and the “possible liability arising therefrom.” These were legitimate concerns: Two of the WCF’s key Russian allies had been placed on a list of individuals sanctioned by the Treasury Department, making conference planning complicated, and possibly forbidden.

However, the upcoming Large Families conference looks a lot like a barely rebranded version of the original WCF event. Beyond its nearly identical title, the new conference will take place in the same location, on the same dates, and with a similar schedule, according to research by the Human Rights Campaign. This week’s event also advertised some of the same organizers as the scrubbed meeting: WCF managing director Larry Jacobs and WCF communications director Don Feder were listed on the forum’s seven-member organizing committee.

As of last Friday, when Mother Jones asked WCF for comment, Jacob and Feder were still on the list of organizers. By Sunday, the committee list had disappeared from both the English and Russian versions of the website of the Istoki Fund, an endowment run by Vladimir Yakunin, a close adviser to President Vladimir Putin who codirects several of the conference’s sponsoring organizations. The original page, including the committee list, is archived here. A copy of the original press release on the site of another Yakunin-affiliated conference sponsor has also vanished. (Here’s the Russian original.)

Also on the committee list was Elena Mizulina. In March 2014, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets and Control (OFAC) sanctioned several dozen top Russian government officials including Mizulina, a member of parliament, and Yakunin.

Both Mizulina and Yakunin are among WCF’s heartiest supporters. Mizulina sponsored both pieces of anti-gay legislation that caused international uproar in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics in February. WCF has expressed support for these laws. She has met repeatedly with Jacobs, has attended a number of WCF’s Russian events, and has invited a WCF planning committee member to speak before Duma members about anti-gay policies.

The billionaire Yakunin helped pay for the 2011 Moscow Demographic Summit, the WCF’s first major conference in Russia. Last spring, he launched Istoki, a fund that backs three charities—two co-run by him, and a third headed by his wife, Natalia. All three organizations have ties to WCF’s work in Russia. Three of the Large Families conference’s five sponsors are affiliated with Yakunin: the Sanctity of Motherhood Foundation, the Center for National Glory, and St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation. The latter two are run by Yakunin and all three are funded by Yakunin’s Istoki fund.

Yakunin and Mizulina are currently on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list. Once someone is on the list, American citizens and businesses “are generally prohibited from dealing with them,” according to OFAC, which administers economic and trade sanctions. Sanction rules hinge on what counts as “dealing” with an SDN, which isn’t clearly defined. “If a US individual or entity wanted to deal with a sanctioned entity on the SDN list, we would encourage them to reach out to OFAC for guidance on a case-by-case basis,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Mother Jones. “Generally what is prohibited are ‘dealings’ with SDNs. Doing business or doing transactions—all of that is covered in the regulations. But dealings is a general term.” She said that the agency does not comment on specific cases.

“The Office of Foreign Assets and Control has incredible discretion, so we always urge caution when interpreting these types of terms,” says Eric Lorber, an associate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who has written extensively on international sanctions.

Lorber says it’s not possible to determine whether WCF is in violation of the sanctions without full knowledge of what exactly Jacobs and Feder are doing to assist Mizulina and Yakunin and what benefits, financial or otherwise, WCF or the Russians may be receiving. “What they are doing is extremely risky,” he writes in an email. “It depends on the specifics of the circumstances, but there definitely are possible routes for those folks to violate US sanctions on the SDNs.” He concludes, “If this were my client, I would advise them to pull out of the joint planning committee immediately.”

In an email to Mother Jones, WCF managing director Larry Jacobs distanced WCF from the Moscow conference:

Some World Congress of Families personnel plan on attending the conference and supporting our Russian civil society friends who are working to protect the unborn child and the natural family. Though some of us will be present, as was agreed by the International Planning Committee many months ago, the WCF is not financially supporting the conference in Moscow this week and we have not lent our name to what should be a very interesting conference.

In another statement sent to Mother Jones, Jacobs wrote that “WCF Communications Director Don Feder and I will be there to attend and speak as individuals and not as representatives of the World Congress of Families.”

However, Jacobs and WCF did not respond to questions about his or Feder’s apparent participation in the organizing committee. They also did not respond to requests for clarification on what sort of interactions Jacobs or Feder may have had with Mizulina or Yakunin. They also did not answer questions about whether they have asked OFAC for guidance on obeying the sanctions.

Jacobs also denied WCF involvement in next week’s conference in an email to BuzzFeed. “It’s NOT a World Congress of Families event and any one who calls it that is wrong, mis-informed or lying,” he wrote. WCF’s June newsletter, which announced the new Moscow conference, also said that “these events are being held independent of World Congress of Families.” Yet one of the Russian organizers, Alexey Komov, implied the opposite in a July interview with the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, saying that the conference is being organized “with the participation of…the World Congress of Families.”

Interacting with the conference’s cosponsors, particularly Yakunin’s foundations and the endowment fund that supports them, isn’t necessarily prohibited by sanctions. It depends on whether Yakunin maintains 50 percent ownership of any of the groups, as well as several other factors, explains Lorber. “Merely dealing with the entities that are run by an SDN…wouldn’t be a problem,” he notes. “However, if, in the course of those dealings, the WCF employees had any dealings with Yakunin (such as having him participate in negotiations or exchanging anything of value with him), that activity would be sanctionable.”

WCF will not have to contend with diplomatic intrigue and sanctions as it plans its next international meeting. Shortly after canceling its event in Moscow, it announced that its 2015 international conference will be held in Salt Lake City. In his email, Jacobs clarifies that just as the WCF’s work in other countries isn’t an endorsement of their governments, “our presence there should not be construed as supporting all of the policies of the Obama Administration.”

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Did Anti-Gay Evangelicals Skirt US Sanctions on Russia?

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Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

by Brain5176z Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Russia’s health inspection agency is scrutinizing more than 100 McDonald’s locations and has forced the company to temporarily close multiple others in the country. The agency says McDonalds outlets are getting inspected because some have violated sanitary regulations— but others see retaliation for US sanctions on Russia.

“This is a prominent symbol of the U.S. It has a lot of restaurants and therefore is a meaningful target,” Yulia Bushueva, managing director for Arbat Capital, an investment advisory company, told Bloomberg. “I don’t recall McDonald’s having consumer-safety problems of such a scale in over more than two decades of presence in Russia.”

McDonald’s was the first fast food chain to enter Russia, and it holds some symbolic importance in the country. The first location opened in Pushkin Square in Moscow in January 1990 to one utterly massive line (see video below). This was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall but nearly two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union when Western brands of any stripe were a rare sight in Russia. At the time, the site of the Golden Arches in the center of Moscow signaled the arrival of a new era of prosperity and integration with the world economy.

Today, there are more than 400 McDonald’s outlets in the country. Many are owned locally. The company employs more than 37,000 people in Russia and sources 85 percent of its products from Russian suppliers, according to its website.

But as Russia and the West began facing off over Ukraine this spring, McDonald’s has fallen victim to their power struggle. In April, McDonald’s announced it would close it’s three company-owned locations in Crimea “due to operational reasons beyond our control,” according to their statement to Reuters.

That decision was praised by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a prominent legislator and Putin supporter, who suggested the chain should leave Russia as well. “It would be good if they closed here too, if they disappeared for good,” he said in Russian media. “Pepsi-Cola would be next.” Zhirinovsky also proposed instructing members of his Liberal Democratic party to picket outside McDonald’s until they closed.

Since August 20, McDonald’s has temporarily closed 12 locations throughout Russia, including four in Krasnodar, near the black sea, and the iconic first-ever location in Moscow. Burger King, Subway, and KFC— which have all seen big expansions in Russia in recent years— have remained unscathed.

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Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

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Has Vladimir Putin Painted Himself Into a Corner?

by Kennith30E Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Max Fisher writes today that Vladimir Putin probably never wanted to invade Ukraine. So why did he? It all started when he was elected to a third term as president amid continuing economic stagnation:

Putin expected another boisterously positive reception, but that’s not what he happened. Instead, he got protests in major cities, opposition candidates, and, even according to the highly suspicious official tally, only 63 percent of the vote.

Putin panicked. He saw his legitimacy slipping and feared a popular revolt. So he changed strategies. Rather than basing his political legitimacy on economic growth, he would base it on reviving Russian nationalism: imperial nostalgia, anti-Western paranoia, and conservative Orthodox Christianity.

….Then the Ukraine crisis began….In March 2014, Putin indulged his own rhetoric about saving Ukraine’s ethnic Russians — and seized an opportunity to reclaim a former Soviet strategic port — when he launched a stealth invasion of Crimea….This is when the crisis began to slip beyond Putin’s control….The nationalistic rhetoric inside Russia was cranked up to a fever pitch. Putin’s propaganda had built a parallel universe for Russians, in which the stakes in eastern Ukraine were dire not just for Russia but for the world….But the violence in eastern Ukraine was spinning out of control, with Ukrainian military forces looking like they were on the verge of overrunning the rebels.

In a rational world, Putin would have cut his losses and withdrawn support for the rebels. But, thanks to months of propagandistic state media, Russians do not live in a rational world. They live in a world where surrendering in eastern Ukraine would mean surrendering to American-backed Ukrainian Nazis, and they believe everything that Putin has told them about being the only person capable of defeating these forces of darkness. To withdraw would be to admit that it was all a lie and to sacrifice the nationalism that is now his only source of real legitimacy. So Putin did the only thing he could to do to keep up the fiction upon which his political survival hinges: he invaded Ukraine outright.

Is this basically correct? It’s more or less the way I view events in Russia, so it appeals to me. But I don’t know enough about Russia to have a lot of confidence that this is really the best explanation for Putin’s actions.

It’s also not clear—to me, anyway—that Putin is truly stuck in a situation he never wanted. I agree that this interpretation makes sense. Eastern Ukraine just flatly doesn’t seem worth the price he would have to pay for it. But that’s easy to say from seven thousand miles away. I wonder if this is really the way Putin sees things?

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Has Vladimir Putin Painted Himself Into a Corner?

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Ukraine Claims it Has Captured Russian Soldiers

by JasmineSeymour Posted on August 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Ukraine claims that it now has proof that Russian soldiers have been involved in fighting on Ukrainian soil:

Ukraine released video footage on Tuesday of what it said were 10 captured Russian soldiers, raising tensions as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, for talks later in the day with his Ukrainian counterpart, President Petro O. Poroshenko.

….The release of the videos and the high-level talks came a day after Ukraine accused Russia of sending an armored column across the border, prompting Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, to express alarm on Twitter. “The new columns of Russian tanks and armor crossing into Ukraine indicates a Russian-directed counteroffensive may be underway. #escalation,” he wrote.

….“Everything was a lie. There were no drills here,” one of the captured Russians, who identified himself as Sergey A. Smirnov, told a Ukrainian interrogator. He said he and other Russians from an airborne unit in Kostroma, in central Russia, had been sent on what was described initially as a military training exercise but later turned into a mission into Ukraine. After having their cellphones and identity documents taken away, they were sent into Ukraine on vehicles stripped of all markings, Mr. Smirnov said.

This kind of thing represents a cusp of some kind. If it’s true, Putin has to decide pretty quickly whether to gamble everything on an outright invasion, or whether to back off. If it turns out to be a Ukrainian invention, Putin has to decide whether to use it as a casus belli. These are dangerous times.

UPDATE: Apparently Russia has admitted the soldiers are theirs:

Sources in Moscow have admitted that a number of men captured inside Ukraine were indeed serving Russian soldiers, but said they crossed the border by mistake….”The soldiers really did participate in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossed it by accident on an unmarked section, and as far as we understand showed no resistance to the armed forces of Ukraine when they were detained,” a source in Russia’s defence ministry told the RIA Novosti agency.

Uh huh. I suppose Putin will now claim that detaining the soldiers is an act of war unless they’re immediately released.

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Ukraine Claims it Has Captured Russian Soldiers

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Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

by WilburRomano Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

After Ukrainian rebels used Russian missiles to shoot down a passenger airliner last month, the United States and the European Union escalated sanctions against Russia, cutting off Russian firms’ and individuals’ access to western markets and western financing. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin is striking back—by taking aim at his people’s ability to buy western-produced food.

On Wednesday, Putin issued a new decree warning that he plans to ban or limit imports of food products and agricultural goods from the US and the EU. Putin didn’t specify the exact products he wants to target; instead, he asked Russian government agencies to draft lists of products that should be limited or banned. (The Russian government has already reassured citizens that imports on wine and baby food are safe.)

Nevertheless, Russians and western ex-pats living in Russia are already venting their frustrations, the New Republic reports. “American whiskey, Dutch cheeses, German beer, Australian beef, Greek olives. Say bye-bye to all that,” an independent Russian TV channel tweeted. Russia imports a wide range of American food and agricultural products—$1.3 billion worth in 2013 alone. Here’s a list of some of the food and agricultural products that could be threatened by Putin’s move:

Kale: According to the United Nation’s commodity trade database, the US exported to Russia in 2013 about 338,266 pounds of cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi and kale, both fresh and chilled, worth about $93,894.
Whiskey: Russia bought $85 million worth of various whiskeys from the US in 2013, per the UN’s commodity trade database. “It is well known that Russians like to drink alcohol,” the US Department of Agriculture noted in a report released last year. Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey are increasingly popular in Russia, according to the report. Russia’s consumer protection agency recently announced that it was investigating Kentucky Gentleman bourbon due to fears that it contains chemicals that could produce infertility and cause cancer, and was already proceeding with plans to ban that specific brand in the country. (A spokesperson for the Sazerac Company said they had not been contacted by Russia’s Rospotrebnadzor, and had no comment at this time.)
Fruit: Russia imports more apples and pears than any other country, according to USDA. Shipments from the US only constitute a small share of those imports—less than 1 percent of the total apple market in Russia—but that still amounted to $7.7 million worth of apples in 2012. “U.S. apples have a niche market in Russia as many consumers prefer the large and richly colored apples, which are characteristics that U.S. suppliers can normally provide,” a USDA report said.
Almonds: In 2012, the United States supplied about 92 percent of the Russian almond market, USDA reported. In 2013, the US exported about $132,189,826 worth of shelled almonds to Russia, according to the UN.
Cows: In 2012, Russia imported 74,734 bovine animals from the United States. “Russia was the second largest market for the U.S. breeding cattle exports (30 percent of total U.S. live cattle exports) after Canada during the first 8 months of 2013,” the USDA reported.
Cake mix: In 2013, the United States exported about 2.2 million pounds of bread, pastry, biscuit mixes and dough worth $1,191,464 to Russia, according to the UN.
Soybeans: In 2013, US exported $157 million worth of soybeans to Russia.
Caviar: In 2013, the US exported $1,014,848 worth of preserved fish, fish eggs, and caviar to Russia.

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Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

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