🇺🇲🇷🇺 It is reported that the United States is quietly purchasing Russian oil at prices 10-15 dollars higher than its own established price ceiling. This is basically all you need to know about the “crushing American sanctions.”

🚢 🇺🇸 🌍 We got too accustomed to peaceful seas

Say goodbye to the global ‘conveyor belt’

🔶️ Such intensively globalized supply chains are a somewhat recent invention. There once was a time where you could not buy tangerines in Minneapolis in January or receive South Korean face wash through free, next-day shipping. Little, if anything, that we use or eat everyday did not spend some amount of time in a shipping container. “In 1956, the world was full of small manufacturers selling locally; by the end of the twentieth century, purely local markets for goods of any sort were few and far between,” wrote economist Marc Levinson in his seminal book “The Box.”

🔶️ It’s somewhat ahistorical that the world’s oceans have been relatively painless to navigate in the second half of the 20th century, permitting trade to flow around the world. That was not the case for much of human history. “Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased,” wrote Jerry Hendrix, senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute, in The Atlantic last year. “The current reality, which dates only to the end of World War II, makes possible the commercial shipping that handles more than 80% of all global trade by volume — oil and natural gas, grain and raw ores, manufactured goods of every kind.”

🔶️ Such peace can no longer be assumed. It’s unclear whether ongoing diversions from the Suez Canal will become the norm going forward, but it’s clear that things are shifting — and it’s not in the favor of frictionless trade or a U.S. hegemony.

🔶️ “It was almost like you had a conveyor belt from the shoe factory in Bangladesh to the shop in Chicago,” said Simon Sundboell, founder and CEO of Copenhagen-based maritime intelligence company eeSea. “That’s just not happening anymore. You’re in a world that’s going increasingly from American-controlled unipolar to multipolar globally. You’re going to have a much more fraught supply chain, and every BCO [beneficial cargo owner], importer, exporter, and logistics provider is going to have to deal with that going forward. The Houthis are just one step in that.”

https://freightwaves.com/news/we-got-too-accustomed-to-peaceful-seas

🇮🇷 Iran has officially reported that the IRGC naval forces have seized a tanker that was previously captured by the Americans, who previously stole both the tanker and the oil it carried. Now the Iranians have brought it back. It must be understood that the oil pumped into Basra will not be returned either.

The crew of Filipinos and one Greek will be released.

The tanker war in the Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean continues.

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Video from the enemy side.

Aerospace Forces aircraft strike at the Kurakhovskaya thermal power plant.

🇷🇺🇺🇦 AFU militants increasingly began to be blown up by Russian disguised mines, - AFP

▪️“A banknote, a pack of cigarettes, a telephone... This is definitely a trap. <…> We even lost soldiers because of booby-trapped packaging with Pepsi cans,” said a Ukrainian soldier.
▪️Judging by the stories of Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters, Russian sappers try to make original decisions when performing combat missions. They combine anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, as well as bombs dropped from helicopters. According to Kyiv, in some areas the mines are laid less than half a meter from each other.

🇷🇺🇺🇸🛢️ The US resumed imports of Russian oil at the end of last year, and at price much higher than the $60 price cap set by the G7 in Dec 2022.

The relevant data was published by US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

10 thousand barrels for $749,000 is $74.9 per barrel.

📎 Senore_amore

🇺🇸 🇾🇪 🌍 Middle East Braces for U.S. Strikes on Houthis

🔶️ Maritime executives have been told by Western diplomats that targets would likely include missile and drone launch sites, radars and weapons depots around the Yemeni cities of Hodeida and Hajjah. Infrastructure in the capital San’a is also on the list of possible targets, the executives said

🔶️ In addition, the United Nations said early November that a new Houthi naval presence on Kamaran Island near Hodeida and a base farther off shore in the Zubayr archipelago poses a risk to international shipping.

🔶️ Houthi forces have transported some weapons and equipment and fortified others in anticipation of a strike by the U.S. and its allies, a U.S. defense official and a person close to the Houthis said.

🔶️ There are also signs the Houthis and their Iranian allies are gearing up for an escalation. The Behshad, an Iranian spy vessel that security officials previously said would likely be targeted for its role assisting the rebels’ attacks on shipping, left the Red Sea early Thursday for Bandar Abbas, according to shipping consulting firm TankerTrackers.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/middle-east-braces-for-u-s-strikes-on-houthis-aa943b13

https://archive.ph/qlS1O

🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇱🇧 Confidential US report finds Israel unlikely to win against Hezbollah on second front

🔶️ The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would be too stretched by fighting on two fronts, with the air force already overworked by constant raids on Gaza.

🔶️ IDF pilots would face far more dangerous missions going up against Hezbollah’s powerful air defences, the DIA warned, according to a report in the Washington Post.

🔶️ On Sunday, the IDF said it had wrapped up combat operations in northern Gaza and completed the “dismantling” of Hamas’s command structure there.

🔶️ Tens of thousands of troops have already been withdrawn from Gaza, with some already being redeployed to the northern front in the event war breaks out there.

🔶️ Iran-backed Hezbollah has an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, and groups of experienced fighters who have battleground experience in Lebanon and Syria. Its commanders have also advised other Iran-backed militant groups in Yemen and Iraq.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/07/israel-us-intelligence-hezbollah-gaza-conflict/

https://archive.ph/md47E

📢 🇺🇸 🇾🇪 U.S. Officials have Confirmed the beginning of Airstrikes against Houthi Targets in Yemen.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇲🇺🇦 The New York Times reports that US military officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe have failed to quickly or fully account for 39,139 weapons supplied to Ukraine.

As of June last year, the United States provided Ukraine with more than 10,000 FGM-148 Javelin ATGMs, 2,500 Stinger MANPADS and about 750 Switchblade kamikaze drones, 430 medium-range air-to-air missiles and 23,000 night vision devices. All of the above were not properly monitored by US officials, according to a new Pentagon report .

The large number of guns that are missing from government databases “may increase the risk of theft or diversion,” the report said.

The ongoing fighting has made it nearly impossible for Defense Department officials to travel to the front lines to ensure the weapons are being used as intended, according to Pentagon and State Department officials responsible for tracking the weapons.