The Joe Biden Government's favorite word when announcing sanctions against Russia is “devastating”. Today, the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine and with the death of the Russian dissident leader, Alexei Navalny, still recent, Washington has once again used the magic word to explain that it has sanctioned 500 Russian people and entities. As is usual, the impact of the sanctions will be, at least in the short term, minimal.

At least, Biden's measures do not have the surreally symbolic nature of those imposed by Rishi Sunak's British Government on six jailers at the prison where Navalny died, and which include the freezing of his deposits and assets in the United Kingdom and the ban on travel to that country. At first glance, the chances of two colonels and four lieutenant colonels in the Russian Army who run a “penal colony” in the Arctic going to London to shop or to watch the Wimbledon tournament seem slim.

The details of the sanctions imposed by the United States have not yet been made public, but they extend to senior officials in both the Russian political apparatus and the private sector.. They also include companies that are not linked to the defense sector, as the increasing militarization of the Russian economy makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between manufacturers of military and civilian equipment.. It is possible that the measures will also impact entities of US allies, such as India and Turkey, which continue to trade with Russia and are one of the lifelines of that country's economy.

In general, the sanctions have failed due to the attitude of Western companies, especially European ones, which instead of exporting directly to Russia do so through third countries, such as Georgia or Kyrgyzstan.. Russian oil is transported on ships chartered by Greek shipowners, and there have even been Western companies that have insured these shipments..

The Russian economy recovered in 2023 the GDP it had before the invasion of Ukraine, although its growth is hardly sustainable over time given that it is based on unleashed public spending and currency reserves that are collapsing..

The North American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, made clear this Friday in Buenos Aires the intention of Joe Biden's government to support Argentina and have a close relationship with Javier Milei, although the United States also set subtle limits for the new Argentine president in the face of to his visit to the ultra-conservative CPAC conference this Saturday in Washington.

“I am extremely pleased on behalf of President Biden with the meeting we just had with President Milei and so many members of his cabinet,” said Blinken in the Argentine capital, where he arrived after the G20 Foreign Ministers' Summit held on Wednesday and Thursday in Rio de Janeiro. “From my point of view it was incredibly positive, productive, detailed.”

“We see extraordinary opportunities in Argentina, Argentina has what the world needs, we want to be partners with Argentina as it helps feed and provide energy to the world. And the work that is being done to stabilize the economy is absolutely vital, we want to do whatever is necessary to help them,” added the head of US diplomacy.

There was expectation in Buenos Aires for what Blinken could say ahead of Milei's trip this Friday to Washington to participate in the CPAC on Saturday, where he will meet with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and could potentially meet with former North American President Donald Trump, Biden's rival in the presidential elections in November of this year.

“I cannot speak about his program and his future meetings,” said Blinken before once again praising the ultraliberal who has governed Latin America's third-largest economy since December 2023.. Not talking about what a president does implies, in turn, the claim that this president, Milei, does not refer to what others do in the internal politics of his country, in this case Biden and Trump.

Local media such as “Clarín”, signed by the influential columnist Marcelo Bonelli, pointed out that “the United States is not going to help Milei if the president 'plays the internal game' of Washington in favor of Trump”. “Ambassador Marc Stanley already had a private dialogue with Milei, about his participation in the conservative Convention. Milei made a commitment to the ambassador: 'In the forum I will not talk about internal politics of the United States.'”

Milei needs the support of the United States to obtain fresh money from the IMF, a figure important enough to advance the main promise of his electoral campaign: the dollarization of the devastated Argentine economy.

This same week, the “number two” of the IMF, Gita Gopinath, visited Buenos Aires and, according to Bonelli, left two messages for Milei: “The IMF does not want dollarization and made an allusion that the flirtation with Donald makes noise in Washington. Trump.”

Blinken did not reveal the United States' position on the dollarization of a medium-sized economy such as Argentina's, a step far superior to the dollarization faced by small countries such as Panama, Ecuador or El Salvador.

“Dollarization depends on Argentina, of course we hope to discuss a plan, but it is Argentina's decision. And we support Argentina's agreement with the IMF, which can be a very important anchor.”

Milei has already demonstrated fierce pragmatism: after years of devoting all kinds of insults to Pope Francis, the first Argentine and Latin American to become head of the Catholic Church, he embraced him and admitted having been wrong in his assessments.. If not sharing a meeting or even a photo with Trump helps him advance his objectives, it is likely that the Argentine head of state will avoid seeing the Republican.

Blinken, who appeared at a press conference with his counterpart, Diana Mondino, also spoke about the hottest topics of the moment: Ukraine and Israel. “I have been doing this job for more than 30 years and I can't think of any other time in the world with such extremely complex challenges,” warned Blinken, who once again rejected that the Israeli operation in Gaza is a “genocide,” as the president denounced. from Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“We have been clear about the Uyghurs, Rohinggas and other cases. Very recently the International Court explained why this is not the case in the Gaza case. Leaving that aside: we are determined that the conflict in Gaza ends as soon as possible so that October 7 does not happen again, but neither does the suffering of the Palestinians.. We are focusing on freeing the hostages and achieving a ceasefire. And lasting peace for all.”

“There should be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza, the size of Gaza cannot be reduced. There is a group of countries that is working on a plan. The new settlements are not consistent with achieving lasting peace or with international law. They weaken and do not strengthen Israel's security,” emphasized the head of the State Department.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, which this Saturday marks two years, he insisted that “Russia's aggression is against the principles of the international system.”. “There will be a growing and long-term impact on Russia, its ability to modernize its production and industries. “More than a million people, many of the most educated in science and technology, have left Russia, and that will have a strong impact in the long term.”

Blinken also referred to the suspicious death of opponent Alexei Navalny in a prison in northern Russia.. “We are taking strong measures against Russia after the death of Navalny and on the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. We are also acting specifically against three people involved in Navalny's death.. What I saw during my time in Munich and in Brazil was indignation at what Russia has done to Mr. Navalny. “It is important that the House of Representatives approve financing for Ukraine in order to continue resisting Russian aggression so effectively.” .

Russian authorities do not want a public funeral for Alexei Navalny, and are willing to steal the body from his family if necessary. The team of the deceased leader of Russian dissidents, whose death has been a week since, denounces that an agent called Navalny's mother, Liudmila Navalnaya, on Friday and gave her an ultimatum: or accept a secret funeral in three hours without public farewell, or his son will be buried in his own prison.

Navalny's mother has refused to negotiate, saying officials are not authorized to decide how and where her son should be buried.. The opponent's family demands that the law be followed, according to which investigators are obliged to deliver the body within two days of determining the cause of death.. According to the medical documents he signed, these two days expire on Saturday.

Amnesty International has said authorities should release Navalny's body and allow access for an independent investigation into the cause of his death.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's best-known political opponent, died suddenly on Friday, February 16, in the Arctic prison where he was serving sentences totaling more than 30 years.. His mother, 69, has been demanding for days that authorities release his body for burial in a way that allows his friends, family and followers to pay their respects.

The Kremlin has said it had nothing to do with his death and that the circumstances are being investigated.. Both Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and the opposition's team denounce that it was the government that ordered his murder.

Liudmila Navalnaya insists that the authorities must allow the funeral to take place in accordance with normal practice. The Russian authorities know that a public funeral would represent a great demonstration of discontent with the Government, something now prohibited.

Mass arrests

The human rights group OVD-Info estimates that more than 400 people were detained in the days after Navalny's death for trying to honor him in public.

Already in a 95-second video published on Thursday, Liudmila Navalnaya said that the authorities were trying to “blackmail” the family and threaten them into accepting a private burial: “I want you, for whom his death has been a personal tragedy, have the opportunity to say goodbye to him,” he proclaimed, addressing Navalny's supporters in Russia.

Putin avoids mentioning Navalny's name every time and has not commented on the matter in public since his death. The regime hopes that this surname will be buried as soon as possible.. He refuses to be involved, but avoids offering the clues contained in the body.

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions demanding the handover of the opponent's body.. Navalny's adviser Ivan Zhdanov said Liudmila's lawyers had filed a legal complaint alleging “rape of the body of a deceased person.”

Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich wrote: “I want to appeal not only to the Kremlin. “I want to ask all the people, all of us, to keep saying and repeating that they must return the body to his mother.”

Navalny was jailed on charges he and his entourage consider false in January 2021, upon his return from Germany, where he was recovering from a near-fatal nerve agent poisoning in 2020 in Russia. Once in prison, new charges were brought against him and his illegal prison sentence was extended to 19 years.

“He was systematically denied adequate medical treatment and sent to punishment cells on 27 occasions for prolonged periods, more than 300 days in total, for alleged disciplinary infractions, such as having an unbuttoned button,” denounces Amnesty International, for whom his conditions of detention “amounted to a violation of the rules prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Russian military propagandist Andrei Morozov (Murz) sang of Russian military glories in the invasion of Ukraine, but his criticism of the poor state of the army and the high human cost of the Russian advance first cost him his popularity.. And finally, life. Murz committed suicide after angering the most radical propagandists. His sin: saying that Russia lost 16,000 soldiers in the assault on Avdivka.

The figure of the propagandist or “military correspondent” in Russia is fundamental in the day-to-day life of a front opaque by censorship, where at the same time the regime needs to access information outside of military reports and share it with the Russian public interested in how is the fight going. Despite the jingoistic tone of the military and propagandists, there are frequently tensions in the daily discussion because there are always voices that are more dissatisfied than others.. Murz was one of those very critical voices.

Shortly before he died, he commented that on February 20 from above he was forced to delete a recording from the channel. It was his most controversial piece. In which he commented on the capture by Russian troops of the city of Avdivka in the Donetsk region. Murz, citing an anonymous source, stated that during the attack on the Ukrainian town, the casualties of the Russian army amounted to 16,000 people.. And that also about 300 armored vehicles were destroyed.

Russian propagandists came out in force against Murz, saying that his words about irreparable losses at Avdeevka “are usually falsifications and slander against the Russian Defense Ministry.”

Morozov's Telegram channel wrote that the order to delete his publication was given under pressure from “political prostitutes led by Vladimir Solovyov”, one of the most influential presenters of Putinism, from whose program the destruction of Ukraine and future attacks on Europe.

In the last posts on his channel, Andrei Morozov posted a note in which he stated that he would “shoot himself”. He asked “not to be sad” about his death and to bury him in a cemetery of the self-proclaimed LPR.. He also posted his will and an appeal to the chief military prosecutor to investigate an artillery regiment, the 1487, in which according to him there is a serious shortage of weapons, losses, lack of rotation, rest and medical care for the troops.

Murz shot himself. In his surroundings, stupor and surprise: “We spoke with him at night, there were no indications,” reacted lawyer Maxim Pashkov.

The war chorus has mourned his death, although without much conviction. Russian propagandist Yulia Vityazeva, who led the hunt for Morozov on social media, reacted impassively: “Suicide is a sin, a weakness and a defeat.”. He did not show even the slightest guilt, concluding that what happened “is entirely on the conscience of those who knew the problems of their supposed friend and comrade, but did nothing to help him.”

Alexander Kofman, a senior official of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, also said goodbye without much affection: “Sleep well, Murz, you made a big mistake, but no one will answer for it except you”.

Brazil has been insisting on the same thing for almost three decades, but February 2024 offered it the ideal constellation: it presides over the G20 in the midst of a serious international crisis that manifests itself in the war in Ukraine and Israel's war against Hamas.. It is time, believes Itamaraty's experienced diplomacy, to change the architecture of world power.

“Multilateral institutions are ill-equipped to face current challenges, as demonstrated by the unacceptable paralysis of the Security Council in relation to ongoing conflicts,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira during the meeting of foreign ministers held this year. Wednesday and Thursday in Rio de Janeiro.

“This state of inaction directly implies the loss of innocent lives,” he insisted.. “Without peace and cooperation it will be extremely difficult to achieve the promised large-scale mobilization of the resources necessary to address the existential threats we face, in particular the fight against poverty and inequality and the protection of the environment.”

Vieira knows well what he is talking about, because he had the honor of being chancellor of his country twice.. First in a brief period before the impeachment ended the government of Dilma Rousseff, and now in the third presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The chancellor explained in detail his proposal to reform the UN Security Council in an interview with EL MUNDO in 2023.

“We were always on the side of those who want to reform the council, because it is losing legitimacy, because it no longer represents the countries and the United Nations of 2023.. At the time of its creation, the United Nations comprised 54 countries, today there are almost four times more, 193. Africa, a gigantic continent with a large population and 54 countries, is not represented on the Security Council.. “Latin America, also an important region, is not there, and neither are other important international players such as India or South Africa.”.

Brazil's position has, among other important countries, the support of Germany.

“Unfortunately, international institutions reflect the world of the last century, which is deeply unjust. Especially in large financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, the majority of states are not represented,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in an interview broadcast this Thursday by “O Globo.”

“We, as Germans and as the European Union, want to change that, also in the Security Council. We are working with Brazil and also with South Africa. We are also working with India and other countries to make clear that the UN Security Council no longer reflects the world today and that it is crucial to move in this direction. Last year we had a small success at the G20, and I personally campaigned a lot for this within the EU. “The African Union finally has a permanent seat at the G20 table and this must now be expanded in the financial institutions, but also at the UN in New York.”

Brazil also obtained the support of the EU in the voice of its High Representative for Foreign Policy, the Spanish Josep Borrell: “Brazil has managed to put on the table the concern that the emerging world is becoming one of the most important leaders of the world, in fact. And this proposal is very significant. We will see how it is accepted. But one thing is for sure, if the Security Council has more and more vetoes, it will become less and less useful.”

The former Spanish Foreign Minister believes that the US vetoes on Gaza and Russia on Ukraine imply a “blockade” of the United Nations, an organization born from the still smoking rubble of World War II with the aim of maintaining the international peace and security.

“There is no trust between members of the global community, and the world is increasingly polarized. “It's not just about disagreements about conflict resolution, but about something much more existential, which is life and death,” Borrell said.

“Our goal is to make what we have work better, not necessarily create something new. Our goal is to make institutions work. And to do this, the more participants we have at the table, the better.. Changing the rules of what exists today is more complicated,” concluded the head of European diplomacy.

After the presidencies of India (2022), Indonesia (2023) and Brazil (2024), the G20 will be led in 2025 by South Africa, before a great power such as the United States takes over in 2026.

Brazil has dedicated special attention and work to its presidency, with the aim of reinstalling Lula as a world leader and advancing the reform of international institutions.. Thus, the foreign ministers will meet again within the framework of the G20 on the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) general assembly, in September in New York.

“There we will call for action. The role of the G20 is to give political impetus to the great debates. “What we want is a political impulse that makes it clear that we have obsolete international institutions and that, whether we like it or not, we must reform them,” a senior source from the Brazilian Presidency told “O Globo.”. “This applies to both political and economic organizations.. With this call to action alone, our presidency will be more than successful. And the G20 is not an international organization. It is a governance mechanism. “If institutions worked, maybe the G20 wouldn't even be necessary.”

Silence. Total silence. Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, chose this Thursday not to open his mouth in his statement before Justice, which accuses him of having plotted a coup d'état to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from assuming the Presidency in 2023.

“The president has already left, he remained silent as the defense anticipated,” said Paulo Cunha, Bolsonaro's lawyer, who was advised not to answer the questions..

Cunha alleges that the defense did not have access to all the elements of the investigation, such as access to the plea agreement of Army Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, a close collaborator of Bolsonaro during his Presidency and today a huge headache for the former president. having accepted a plea agreement. “President Bolsonaro has never sympathized with any type of coup movement,” Cunha added.

Bolsonaro appeared at the headquarters of the Federal Police in Brasilia 11 minutes before scheduled to give a statement within the framework of the investigation known as Tempus Veritatis, which attempts to determine what happened in the last months of 2022 in the Government that he then commanded. conservative hard right politician. After only 15 minutes before the judge, the former president retired.

Bolsonaro “does not fear anything because he has done nothing,” his lawyer insisted, although the investigation led by Alexandre de Moraes, judge of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), points in another direction.

Research underway

The morning of Thursday, February 8, 2024 marked a before and after for the man who governed Brazil between 2019 and 2023. The Federal Police entered his vacation home in the paradise of Angra dos Reis, a couple of hours from Rio de Janeiro, and asked for his passport.. Bolsonaro did not have it with him, they gave him 24 hours to deliver it. The former president was prohibited from leaving the country and he and his accomplices are accused of having formed a criminal organization, attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and planning a coup d'état in the final weeks of 2022.

The operation targets Bolsonaro, the military and former ministers of his Administration. In total, 33 search and seizure warrants and four preventive detention warrants were issued.. This Thursday, the Brazilian Justice took 23 simultaneous statements in seven different states: 14 in Brasilia, four in Rio de Janeiro, two in São Paulo, one in Paraná, one in Minas Gerais, one in Mato Grosso do Sul and one in Espírito Santo. Among the deponents were four ministers of Bolsonaro's Government.

The STF took the step after an investigation reflected in 135 pages in which it is revealed that the then president sought to remain in power despite having lost the second electoral round of October 2022 to Lula. Eight days after Lula's inauguration, on January 8, 2023, Bolsonaro hordes invaded the Plaza de los Tres Poderes in Brasilia and destroyed the Planalto Palace, the Congress and the STF headquarters.

The Federal Police showed up at the summer house and seized the mobile phone of Tercio Arnaud Thomaz, one of Bolsonaro's advisors.

Bolsonaro, 68, is prohibited from communicating with other people who are also the target of the operation. De Moraes, the super judge who was key to stopping Bolsonaro's para-institutional impulses during his mandate, is the one who triggered the police operation based on the investigation.

Bolsonaro presents himself as a victim of a conspiracy. “I left the Government more than a year ago and I continue to suffer relentless persecution,” the former president told Folha de São Paulo two weeks ago.

Throughout this week, Bolsonaro's lawyers warned that the former president would not testify until he had full access to the evidence in the case.. Bolsonaro and his defense tried to obtain permission from the STF not to testify, but De Moraes denied the request.

The former president, 68, called for a demonstration in the center of Sao Paulo this Sunday. The objective is to show to the outside, but also to the inside of his party, that he still has enough popular support to be a decisive factor of power in Brazilian politics.

Legal experts cited by Folha de São Paulo point out that Bolsonaro is playing with fire and risks preventive detention by calling the event.