The Trump presidency is not yet inaugurated. He seems, however, poised to increase risks for nuclear weapons build-up and proliferation. A US president threatening long-standing allies is unheard of, and it will influence friends and foes alike.

🧵 In Russia, Putin has already made clear his readiness for brinkmanship. Since 2014, he has repeatedly reminded and threatened the world with nuclear retaliation. Russia is developing new missiles, and has upgraded its existing arsenals.

🧵A few years ago I started research on the prevalence of conspiracy theories in Russian security and policy circles. It turns out things are perhaps more extreme than we thought. Igor Ananskikh, a Duma MP, recently published an article which is the nuttiest 💩I ever read.

https://twitter.com/agents_media/status/1736394500086333746

His first claim is that the world is governed by a small cult, a world government, on behalf of an alien reptilian civilisation. This was apparently revealed by a US case officer. To hand over Earth to the aliens, the cult first needs to destroy Russia.

🧵MFA spox Maria Zakharova states Russian conditions for ‘peace’ in Ukraine:

- West stops military support to Ukraine
- West & Ukraine accepts ‘new territorial realities’
- Ukraine ceases all military activities
- Ukraine is fully ‘demilitarised’ and ‘de-nazified’
…

https://twitter.com/ru_rbc/status/1733531983412670918

- Military of Ukraine is removed from ‘Russian territory’
- Ukraine accepts status as non-aligned
- Status of Russian language is guaranteed

This is quite some list of 💩demands. Stated just after Putin, meeting with Russian war criminals based in Donbas, confirmed he will

Russia’s escalation in the Black Sea, threatening to attack civilian cargos of grain, is extremely serious and a threat to global food security. Before the war, Ukrainian farmers fed around 400 million people. Here are a few things Western allies can consider: 1. Engage with countries in Latin America and Africa. Explain that the only European country threatening their well-being today is Russia. Offer tangible support. Nudge those sympathetic towards Russian narratives to alter their position.

Sweden’s membership in NATO is the last step in a change process overturning a Baltic security regime which has existed not since 1991, but since 1721. Before this, the Baltic Sea was a Swedish sea, Swedish peace reigned from the Gulf of Finland to Greifswald. Losing the Baltic… …provinces to Peter the Great changed the security logic of both Sweden and Russia. For Sweden, preserving the Baltic as an open sea was key, a ‘mare liberum’. For Russia, the policy was ‘mare clasum’, the principle that only military vessels of literal states are allowed to…

In the 90s, Yeltsin turned off the gas to Estonia, “to teach them a lesson in geopolitics”. Natural gas has been used by Moscow as a tool of influence and support for friendly neighbours, but also for intimidation. This history is the context of yesterday’s Nordstream attacks. We will know better soon what happened yesterday, but the general lesson is this: NS1 and NS2 were never just about business for the Kremlin. Russia already had its network of pipelines across Ukraine and Belarus, which btw are still working fine, since the 70s. As Yeltsin said…

Considering recent developments along the border of Ukraine, here are some findings from our paper on sanctions. Firstly, financial sanctions have had a strong effect on Russia's economy, where they were intended to impact. That is, on increasing interest rates.

https://twitter.com/MartinKragh1/status/1382290590600138752

As a result, credit expansion is limited, and costs for servicing government debt have increased. It matters little that Russia has low debt, if costs of servicing that debt is more and more expensive.