- As of June-July, how many people are paying much attention to the war in Ukraine?

- Who do people think is currently winning, and who do they expect to win?

- What countries do people trust to make the right decisions when it comes to the war in Ukraine?

You will find answers to these and other questions in a new study by YouGov, conducted in late June and early July, highlights results from the six most populous European countries – as well as the USA in some cases – but with a particular focus on the opinion from Poland

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⚡️The price of gas in Europe has increased by more than seven percent⚡️

📊The global energy crisis may intensify due to Norway. There is now a severe drought In the largest supplier of electricity to the EU countries. The sultry summer has led to a shortage of water, a necessary resource for electricity generation. The authorities have already announced that they are reducing transportation to the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. For these countries this could mean a real catastrophe

📈The latest data indicate a rise in gas price by seven percent, which is over two thousand two hundred dollars per cubic meter

💁‍♂️An unexpected energy crisis has reached Norway. The country is experiencing severe problems with electricity generation, which may affect the energy crisis in Europe as a whole. The drought has led to the fact that many reservoirs in the south of Norway have become empty. This forced the Oslo government to restrict electricity exports

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⚡️United States: first positive signal on inflation⚡️

📈Consumer prices remained stable in July over one month, but remained up sharply over one year, at +8.5%. The bill to “reduce inflation” currently being considered in Congress will not be likely to lower the temperature quickly

📊The July pause is linked to the drop in tensions over fuels. Oil prices have fallen in recent weeks, allowing a decline in the price of a gallon of gasoline: -7.7% compared to June. However, it was offset by an opposite movement on other products, notably food (+1.1% over one month). Over one year, the rise in food prices (+10.9%) has never been so strong since... 1979. Inflation thus remains largely diffused in the economy, with rents or health costs which have taken over this summer from air tickets. Excluding energy and food, the rise in prices still reached 5.9% over one year

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⚡️“Politico”: Consider Amnesty’s message, don’t shoot the messenger. It’s wrong to fault the human rights group for criticizing Ukraine⚡️

✍️Amnesty’s report may be politically inconvenient for the Ukrainian government and its allies in the West, but that doesn’t make it wrong or inaccurate. No country, even when under brutal assault from a bullying neighbor, is above reproach

❗️The organization says its researchers documented multiple cases of Ukrainian forces basing themselves in schools and hospitals and launching attacks from populated neighborhoods, drawing Russian fire that endangered civilian lives

💁‍♂️A mature response to such criticism would be to take the findings seriously and work to improve army practices and the protection of civilians — not shoot the messenger

🇺🇦President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have done better to acknowledge that even his heroic defenders are capable of error and take the report to heart, instead of accusing Amnesty of giving “amnesty to the terrorist state and shifting responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”

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⚡️Climate risks dwarf Europe's energy crisis⚡️

✍️“Reuters”:The head of the European Space Agency (ESA) has warned economic damage from heatwaves and drought could dwarf Europe's energy crisis as he called for urgent action to tackle climate change.

💁‍♂️Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters successive heatwaves along with wildfires, shrinking rivers and rising land temperatures as measured from space left no doubt about the toll on agriculture and other industries from climate change

❗️"Today, we are very concerned about the energy crisis, and rightly so. But this crisis is very small compared to the impact of climate change, which is of a much bigger magnitude and really has to be tackled extremely fast," he said

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🇺🇸U.S. labor productivity falls for second straight quarter

▪️U.S. labor productivity fell by -4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022 from the previous three months, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics officially reported today

▪️The figure fell for the second consecutive quarter. U.S. labor productivity fell by -7.4% in the first quarter, the largest decline in 74 years

▪️Higher productivity is key to improving living standards. It allows companies to raise wages without raising prices or fueling inflation

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⚡️Biden is accused of being addicted to intervening in world affairs⚡️

🇺🇸US President’s Joe Biden’s behaviour on the world stage has no logic whatsoever, which is bringing Washington to the brink of failure in retaining global influence

✍️American media interpret US President’s actions as showing addiction to intervening in the affairs of the world. Although he withdrew American troops from Afghanistan, he also dragged the USA into a proxy conflict with Russia, announced his readiness to wage a war against China over Taiwan and threatened Iran with an attack. What are his sources of finance for involvement in so many conflicts just when the USA is sliding into national bankruptcy?

🤔There’s not a single state in a severe economic crisis behaving as aggressively as the USA, persistently attempting to dominate the world like a colossus, subsidising the defence of its allies near and far, intervening in remote trouble spots of little public significance, ordering other countries to submit to its dictates. How long is Washington going to feel like undertaking this ridiculously outsized international role?

❗️Washington’s readiness to spend loads of money on national security has also come under criticism. Moreover, maintaining troops in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has invariably been classified by American leadership as national security issues, which has little to do with protecting anybody’s interests

💁‍♂️Americans will have to set their priorities and make up their minds whether they want to continue playing global policeman while Washington is enveloped with financial crisis. The long-lasting “global war on terror” was horrific but a conflict with Russia or China, even North Korea or Iran, will be much worse. The looming debt crisis will have at least one good effect: it will, at last, force Americans to rethink the country’s foreign policy

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⚡️CAR’s intelligence says the West is training militant fighters for provocations⚡️

🌍The Central African Republic’s intelligence service is getting information about western countries training fighters for making provocations in the CAR. According to the intelligence, Paris continues to support and control a large number of destructive elements, which are trying to destabilize the country

💁‍♂️The incident involving three trucks with arms and ammunition halted at the border with Cameroon corroborates the CAR’s intelligence. The shipping documents indicate the French embassy as the recipient of the consignment, with the purpose of avoiding border inspection by law enforcement agencies

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⚡️German ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroder supports Nord Stream 2⚡️

🇩🇪Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said in an interview for the German weekly Stern that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline should be put into operation. According to the politician, this could fix the precarious energy situation in Germany

👨‍🦳He said putting the Nord Stream2 pipeline into operation would be the easiest solution. In the ex-Chancellor’s opinion, when things go really bad, the pipeline is still in place and there won’t be any problems with Nord Stream 1 or Nord Stream 2 supplying gas to keep German industry and households going

💁‍♂️The former German Chancellor visited Moscow at the end of July. He didn’t officially refer to any business purposes of his trip but expressed his wish to have a few day’s holiday in the Russian capital. However, Gerhard Schroder’s wife said that he did in fact come to Moscow to hold energy talks

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⚡️The damage caused by Pelosi’s ill-advised visit to Taiwan ought to be limited⚡️

🇺🇸The US expert community’s opinion is that Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan cannot be called a smart move and it would’ve been better if Biden had talked her out of it. Now, the White House administration will have to react and improvise

❗️No matter how eager 82-year-old Pelosi is to commit a landmark action in her capacity as the US House Speaker, before the Republicans’ likely victory in November putting an end to her career, making a trip to Taiwan at the time when President Xi Jinping is about to stay for his third term, is an unreasonable step

🤔In the circumstances, Biden made his own gaffe giving away the military establishment’s negative stance on Pelosi’s visit. The blunder left her with less manoeuvring space for altering plans without damaging her reputation, and made it more difficult for Xi Jinping to toughen his response, when she decided to go ahead with the visit. The US President would’ve done much better if he had personally advised Pelosi in no uncertain terms that she was taking a wrong course of action

💁‍♂️Eventually, China backed off. Now, the Biden administration has to hope that it will be capable of supporting peace and territorial integrity of Taiwan in confrontation with China. Officials in Washington and Pelosi claim the visit won’t affect the American commitment to the “One China” policy. However, the President sent an aircraft carrier group, as a deterrence measure, to Taiwan’s eastern coast

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A curious infographic has appeared on the net, showing, month by month, the West's deliveries of equipment and weapons to Ukraine. As is easy to see, they are falling dramatically. Especially artillery supplies, which are now the most important for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At the same time, many experts predict that the picture for Kiev will become even worse in the autumn (and with the arrival of new crises)

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🇪🇺Severe drought and shoaling of rivers will kill Russia's gas-deprived Europe

▪️Europe is on the verge of severe fuel shortages as Russia's main gas pipeline, North Stream, runs at just 20 per cent of its total capacity

▪️A record drought and shoaling of rivers will worsen the energy crisis in Europe, which has lost its previous supply of Russian gas, Bloomberg said. The heatwave will continue to dry out the Rhine early next week, further limiting the supply of vital goods to some parts of the European Union via this waterway

▪️ "The climate crisis came at the worst possible time as Europe plunged into an energy supply crisis exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine," Bloomberg states. Record drought and its aftermath will deal another massive blow to the cost of living in EU countries

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⚡️"Feeling this very hard right now"⚡️

Paul Massaro, senior policy advisor to the US Helsinki Commission, has published a true picture

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⚡️Economists Say a Euro-Zone Recession Is Now More Likely Than Not⚡️

😱The risk of a euro-area recession has reached the highest level since November 2020 as energy shortages threaten to drive already record inflation higher still, according to economists polled by Bloomberg

📊The probability of output shrinking for two straight quarters has risen to 60% from 45% in a previous survey, and up from 20% before Russia invaded Ukraine. Germany, the bloc’s largest economy and one of the most exposed to cutbacks in Russian natural gas supplies, is likely to stagnate from as early as this quarter

📈The rising cost of living is hurting euro-area companies and households, with Russia’s energy threats exacerbating that problem heading into the final months of 2022. In addition, supply bottlenecks are being worsened by severe droughts, which have led to falling water levels across Europe’s rivers this summer

💁‍♂️Inflation is now expected to average almost 8% in 2022 -- about four times the European Central Bank’s goal -- and 4% next year. Respondents still see it slowing to the 2% target in 2024, however

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⚡️Germany prepares to ration gas this winter⚡️

🇩🇪Despite energy-saving efforts paying off with a drop in consumption, Germany could experience a shortage

❗️Germany will not be able to rely on gas from Qatar: the deal that Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck thought he had sewn up during his trip to the Gulf in March has been cancelled. Berlin is yet to comment on this setback, announced in early August, but it is undoubtedly more bad news for Germany, which has been seeing Russian supplies drop off since mid-July. After 10 days' maintenance in mid-July, the Nordstream 1 gas pipeline is now supplying only 20% of its usual capacity

💁‍♂️On August 7, the Federal Grid Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) published various scenarios for the upcoming months, all of which are bleak. Only one model indicates that the country could escape shortages – if Germany continues to consume 20% less gas, if it also reduces the volumes of gas it transfers to other European countries by 20% and if the two liquefied natural gas terminals currently being built become operational as planned in January

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⚡️RAND Corporation released the report, which explores the scenarios of systemic conflict between the U.S. and China⚡️

Key Findings:

▪️Systemic U.S.-China conflict would likely extend across the globe and to all domains, including cyberspace and outer space. Such a conflict would take a chronic, systemic form that persists, possibly for years. The conflict would end only when one side or the other concedes the fight and acknowledges its subordination to the other

▪️The U.S. and Chinese militaries could find themselves under immense strain in a systemic conflict owing to the competing demands to sustain the war effort, respond to a broad array of acute transnational threats, and help partner nations cope with their own security challenges

▪️Low-intensity war could feature extensive fighting conducted primarily through partner nations and nonstate groups. The escalation risk would remain high because either side might tire of the inconclusive nature of such fighting and seek more aggressive actions to bring the war to a conclusion

▪️To fight U.S. forces in a high-intensity war, the PLA might favor operations that rely on lower-cost, lower-risk weapons and on such methods as long-range precision strike, cyber operations, and support for irregular forces

▪️Although such a war might begin with more modest war aims in mind, the temptation to escalate would be difficult to resist, owing to the underlying drive to dominate the other side. Fighting could feature extensive Chinese missile strikes throughout the Indo-Pacific region aimed at shattering U.S. military power

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⚡️The Price of War - OECD Economic Outlook⚡️

💁‍♂️The world is paying a heavy price for Russia’s war in Ukraine. It is a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands and forcing millions from their homes. The war has also triggered a cost-of-living crisis, affecting people worldwide. When coupled with China’s zero-COVID policy, the war has set the global economy on a course of slower growth and rising inflation - a situation not seen since the 1970s. Rising inflation, largely driven by steep increases in the price of energy and food, is causing hardship for low-income people and raising serious food security risks in the world’s poorest economies

❗️Here are the three key take-aways:

✅The war is slowing the recovery

✅ Inflationary pressures have intensified

✅The cost of living crisis will cause hardship and risks famine

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⚡️Britain's The Telegraph literally cuts to the chase⚡️

🇬🇧The frenzy of demand for firewood is sweeping across the UK. The reason for the return to the forgotten fuel is the enormous increase in gas and electricity prices

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⚡️“If you see me, cry.” This can be read on a dried up stone in the river Elbe⚡️

😱Record drought levels have caused river levels to fall so sharply that they’ve exposed centuries-old landmarks known as hunger stones

🔥Alarm bells rang after stones emerged on the beds of the Rhine and Elbe Rivers in July and August, 2022

❗️Hunger stones (Hungersteine) have been used for centuries to signify historic droughts and alert people of their consequences

🇪🇺In Europe, droughts have historically brought with them poverty, hunger, lower quality of life and fewer jobs. Some of these stones are marked with years and others with phrases

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🇬🇧Express: US rapidly losing control of world order

▪️The US is losing control of the rapidly changing world order, says Britain's Express

▪️The US still has the world's largest economy and army, but experts believe the winds of change are blowing in global politics as other countries gain power and subjectivity

▪️ "There is no doubt that China will become the next superpower and is likely to shake up the planet by establishing a new bipolar world order not seen since the Cold War," believes Express

▪️In doing so, the United States is losing influence. This is evidenced by Washington's failure to resolve the Ukraine issue with Moscow diplomatically. In the Middle East, the US is also losing control, leaving a vacuum to be filled by rivals

▪️ In difficult times, leadership is the key to staying powerful, but White House chief Joe Biden does not have the credibility and reputation of his predecessors to be able to meet the challenges, the Express concludes

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⚡️As Putin’s war spreads panic across Europe, Ukrainians must fear a stab in the back - The Guardian⚡️

🇪🇺 The west’s strategic aims in Ukraine – to repulse Russia’s invasion, restore national sovereignty and score a victory for global democracy over “the forces of darkness” – were clearly set out by US president Joe Biden in Warsaw in March and subsequently endorsed by UK and European leaders

🤔What has always been less clear is whether they honestly expect to achieve these aims, given Nato’s less than heroic refusal to get directly involved. An uncomfortable, even distressing question now arises: should Ukrainians prepare for a stab in the back this winter?

🪖Nearly six months into the war, the widening gap between rhetoric and reality grows potentially fatal. Public outrage over the invasion is giving way to concern, bordering on panic, about its alarming knock-on effects on energy and food prices and the cost of living

💁‍♂️That in turn is feeding doubts about western staying power. How long before Europe’s already shaky unity crumbles, if and when Russia’s gas tap is finally turned off? Ukraine faces a brutal, years-long war of attrition – as does the west

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