in The Hague before the International Criminal Court so far mainly suspects from Africa. You can be prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes. Will Vladimir Putin, who wants to bomb away all doubts about geostrategic Stalinism in Kyiv and Kharkiv and Mariupol, soon be sitting here on the bench of sinners? Chief Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan announces an investigation into whether Russia’s President is a war criminal or has committed crimes against humanity.
Although Ukraine is not a member of the International Criminal Court, the country deserved jurisdiction after Putin’s invasion. Lithuania had previously asked the institution to take action on Putin. And Ukraine itself appealed to the United Nations International Court of Justice, also based in The Hague.
Regarding Putin’s FSB methods, Thomas Jefferson comes to mind: “Only lies need the support of state power. The truth stands up all by itself.”
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The pressure on Russia is increasing everywhere. It seems as if a leper patient has wormed his way into a festival community – everyone is doctoring around about how to get rid of the problem quickly and how to deal with it. Turkey, for example, now generally refuses warships passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles – at least four Russian ships are blocked. Ankara has “warned neighboring countries not to send warships through the Black Sea,” said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Everything depends on the 1936 Treaty of Montreux, which regulates the passage of ships through the Turkish Straits.
Western corporations, on the other hand, are supposed to give up their business in Russia. After the British oil giant BP sold its shares in the Moscow state-owned company Rosneft on Sunday, Shell followed suit the next day. A joint venture with Putin’s super monopoly Gazprom was dissolved. The company’s own participation in Nord Stream 2, the tunnel monument on the Baltic Sea, is also history. “We cannot – and will not – stand idly by,” says Shell CEO Ben van Beurden on the threat of Putin.
(Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
But that’s exactly what his German competitors are doing, according to my colleague Kathrin Witsch. For example, at Eon in Essen, where they want to keep 15 percent of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline – the profits from this go into pension assets. Or Uniper: The co-financier of Nord Stream 2 sells electricity in Russia as “Unipro”. And finally, BASF subsidiary Wintershall Dea continues to produce gas in Siberia together with Gazprom. Here you come to the moment of truth at five past twelve.
Since the professional footballers from Schalke 04 were more agile: The Gelsenkirchen threw out the financially strong sponsor Gazprom. It’s hard to kick with this logo on the chest.
And the associations Fifa (World) and Uefa (Europe) immediately excluded Russia from all international competitions. After Moscow brought the 2018 World Cup into its own country with the obvious use of corrupt methods, Putin and the Russian footballers can watch the World Cup in December 2022 in Qatar on the screen.
Extreme crises create extreme prices. While BP and Shell shares fell sharply, defense stocks are among the big winners. The domestic armaments industry is preparing for a boom in orders. The federal government announced 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr, which was rattling out of the penultimate hole. And promptly Rheinmetall boss Armin Pappberger lures the federal government with ammunition, tracked and wheeled armored vehicles and helicopters worth 42 billion euros.
Rival Hensoldt also assures, in a mixture of love of fatherland and money: “We are able to satisfy the needs of the Bundeswehr.” Yesterday, the most important companies in this industry came to the Ministry of Defense for emergency talks.
Switzerland took a little longer until they, too, decided to implement financial sanctions and widespread bank freezes against Russia and its oligarchs. But now the ruble oath of the Confederates fearing for their neutrality is done.
The Russian currency promptly fell by up to 30 percent on Monday. As a result, the central bank in Moscow doubled its key interest rate to 20 percent. The EU subsidiaries of the Russian market leader Sberbank also collapsed after customers had withdrawn deposits en masse. Putin’s madness backfires on his own people.
The Moscow crash is making oligarchs, who have benefited well from the Kremlin’s kleptocracy, unruly. Billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Oleg Tinkov have already openly criticized the Ukraine raid. And in London, the Russian-born publisher Evgeny Lebedev published an impassioned appeal in his London Evening Standard: “As a Russian citizen, I ask you to stop the Russians from murdering their Ukrainian brothers and sisters. As a British citizen, I ask you to save Europe from war. As a Russian patriot, I ask you to prevent more young Russian soldiers from dying needlessly. As a citizen of the world, I ask you to save the world from annihilation.”
Sanctioned Russians: Igor Sechin, Alexei Miller, Maria Zakharova, Margarita Simonian, Arkady Rotenberg, Boris Rotenberg (from left to right).
The wave of solidarity with Ukraine around the world is impressive. Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen and Margaret Atwood are among the more than 1000 authors who condemned Putin’s war – and who signed an open letter from the organization PEN International. It states: “There can be no free and secure Europe without a free and independent Ukraine.”
Fashion designer Giorgio Armani let his models walk the “catwalk” in Milan without music on Sunday. According to the 87-year-old designer, his decision to give up music is a sign of respect for the people of Ukraine. You don’t want to celebrate, “because something very disturbing is happening around us.”
Rarely has UN Secretary-General António Guterres been seen so emotionally. He called the IPCC’s new report an “atlas of suffering”. The facts are undeniable, “we must act now,” said the Portuguese: “Another postponement of climate protection means death.”
Without Putinism, the climate warning would have made the headlines in many media, so it can be found under “also ran”. The statements are drastic: the 1.5-degree target can only be achieved if emissions are reduced immediately – and not always. German environmental organizations unanimously understood this as a “final call” to save the world.
Main author Rupa Mukerji didn’t want to leave her unsettled audience in the despair hole, praising more than 170 climate-protecting countries and especially the younger generation: “Everyone is concerned and committed to climate protection, that gives me hope.”
And then there’s Henry Kravis and his cousin George Roberts. The grand old gentlemen of the New York private equity giant KKR, which is showing its skills at Axel Springer in Germany. The two founders were each rewarded with more than $100 million in income in 2021, their year of retirement from operations. That’s because of 40 million dividend and 67 million profit share. As always, everything is a matter of proportion. Wall Street bankers might be jealous of the sums, but Blackstone’s rival Stephen Schwarzman smiles wearily: he collected a record sum of $1.1 billion last year.
We marvel at the fruits of capitalism and read Theodor Fontane: “Where there is a lot of money, there is always a ghost.”
I wish you a thoroughly enjoyable, ghost-free day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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