UK ministry: About 1 mil. Russian casualties likely in invasion of Ukraine
The ministry made the announcement on Thursday, more than three years and three months into the conflict. It said it is likely that around 250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or are missing.
The ministry said, "Russia's senior leadership are almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high resultant casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war, and those losses can be replaced."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday also said the number of Russian casualties in the invasion has reached 1 million.
Zelenskyy wrote on social media that the tally is the price Russian President Vladimir Putin "is willing to pay for his sick geopolitical fantasies." He added that Putin still "refuses to end this war."
Zelenskyy plans to attend the Group of Seven summit in Canada next week. The agenda of the meeting will include how to deal with Russia.
Zelenskyy spoke in a joint news conference with German defense minister Boris Pistorius on Thursday. He said, "It is clear that we are very close to important sanctions decisions."
Zelenskyy also expressed the hope for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
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Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
Glory to Stalin and the whitewashing of history
Earlier last month, at its 19th Reporting and Election Congress, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) invalidated Nikita Khrushchev's bombshell 1956 address to the highest-ranking Soviet communists — known as his 'secret speech' — in which he denounced Josef Stalin's cult of personality. At a time when 'NATO militarism is increasing its aggression against Russia,' according to the KPRF narrative, Stalin — who had nearly a million of his own citizens executed and sent countless more to the Gulag labor camps — should be admired, even emulated, not decried. By contrast, the KPRF resolution accuses Khrushchev of subjecting the 'results of 30 years Stalin's leadership' to 'wholesale denigration' for the sake of 'cheap popularity.' In fact, the KPRF claims, Khrushchev faced an 'objective shortage of materials discrediting the name and work of Stalin,' and a 'targeted effort' to replace original documents with 'fakes' in state archives has been 'reliably established.' These are mind-boggling assertions. The cruelty and lawlessness of the Gulag system are not matters of historical debate. We know, for example, that in just the first two years of Stalin's Great Purge, well over 1.5 million people were arrested and more than 680,000 of them were killed. Moreover, when the archives were opened up in the late 1980s, during Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost, it was reliably confirmed that they included original records of even more terrible crimes, which Khrushchev had thought better of exposing. But, to hear the KPRF tell it, Stalin was a 'demanding and fair leader,' and a model of 'integrity,' who 'saved our people from enslavement and death.' Compounding the absurdity of the KPRF's resolution is the fact that the party, which was formed in 1993, is not a successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was disbanded in 1991. It has no authority to invalidate official actions taken by Khrushchev or any other Soviet leader. A ranking member of parliament pointed this out to the KPRF, though not as any kind of defense of Khrushchev; the ruling United Russia party merely wants to remain at the forefront of the re-Stalinization campaign that is under way. The process of cleaning up Stalin's image began shortly after Vladimir Putin came to power 25 years ago. Teaching materials, such as the high-school textbook 'The Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006,' justified Stalin's 'strong hand' as necessary to enable a 'besieged' country to survive and develop. 'The formation of a rigid militarized political system' was a means of 'solving extraordinary problems in extraordinary circumstances.' The textbooks issued in 2023 — a year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine — went much further, describing Stalin as a venerable and triumphant figure. (A co-author of the books, Vladimir Medinsky, was also Putin's lead negotiator in peace talks on Ukraine.) At least 105 of the 120 monuments to Stalin seen across Russia today were erected under Putin's leadership. The newest addition, located inside Moscow's Taganskaya subway station, is a white plaster copy of the marble bas-relief that was removed in 1966 as part of the de-Stalinization process. As Putin's regime uses schoolbooks and statues to burnish Stalin's image in the popular memory, the insidious effects of re-Stalinization are becoming increasingly apparent. The suppression of dissent regarding the Ukraine war is a notable one, as is a wave of deaths among Russia's elite, the latest being the suicide of Russia's transport minister and former governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoyt. Starovoyt had just been fired for his failure to prevent incursions into Russian territory by Ukrainian troops last year. His superiors had determined that, under his watch, the border had been insufficiently fortified and Starovoyt knew that he had no recourse. He could not defend himself or even resign quietly. Under Putin, as under Stalin, if the supreme power finds you guilty, you are — and you are expected to bear whatever punishment is imposed upon you. In such a context, suicide becomes an act of defiance. And, in fact, some Stalin-era officials chose this path. Vissarion Lominadze, once the head of the Republic of Georgia's Communist Party, shot himself in the chest in 1935, in order to avoid arrest for deviation from the party line. When the Old Bolshevik trade unionist Mikhail Tomsky shot himself in his dacha in 1936, he left a note denying participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy, but he was convicted posthumously (and eventually cleared.) Sergo Ordzhonikidze's suicide was a different kind of protest. In 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, the old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman ended his life in despair, following the brutal persecution of his brother Papulia, who was arrested on unspecific charges while working as the boss of the Transcaucasian Railway. Such high-level suicides enraged Stalin, who viewed them as acts of dishonesty and manipulation. When it came to the widely respected Ordzhonikidze, Stalin did not even want to admit the truth about his death. The official story — which Khrushchev refuted in his 'secret speech' — was that Ordzhonikidze died of heart failure. Putin was apparently similarly furious about Starovoyt's final act of disobedience: He ordered his Kremlin aides to recall the wreath they had sent to the funeral, as per protocol. Nonetheless, many government officials attended the ceremony. One wonders whether this amounted to a quiet bureaucratic protest against the impossible demands and arbitrary punishments that are being imposed on those tasked with carrying out Putin's decrees, at a time when the slightest whiff of corruption, incompetence or confusion can be treated as treason. There was a sort of urban legend during the Stalin era: When a train was forced to stop because the track had been destroyed, Stalin ordered that some of his entourage be shot, so that their bodies could be used as rails. As Starovoyt's death shows, the officials surrounding Putin are not much safer. Nina L. Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School, is the co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler) of "In Putin's Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones" (St. Martin's Press, 2019). © Project Syndicate, 2025
The Mainichi
2 hours ago
- The Mainichi
From Laos to Brazil, Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers -- from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes -- tariffs -- on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands -- and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run -- even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. "In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. "The biggest winner is Trump," said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. "He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded -- dramatically.'' Everything goes back to what Trump calls "Liberation Day'' -- April 2 -- when the president announced "reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% "baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs -- all of which is now being challenged in court. Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States -- up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year -- but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. "20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate," Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss Countries that didn't knuckle under -- and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath -- got hit harder. Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 -- versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax -- even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. "The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. "If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Paying more for knapsacks and video games Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits -- or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs "This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. "Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. "The U.S. consumer's a big loser," Wolff said.
Japan Times
3 hours ago
- Japan Times
How Trump is gaslighting the climate — with Japan's help
Nestled among the bold characters of headlines about freshly signed U.S. trade deals are equally bold numbers: $550 billion, $250 billion, $100 billion. These are some of the eye-watering figures that countries have promised to invest in or buy from the United States' energy sector — primarily its fossil fuel industry — as part of the agreements. Whether such large amounts of money will actually be pumped into the U.S. economy is yet to be seen, but in the meantime, U.S. President Donald Trump is living up to his promise to 'drill, baby, drill' by aggressively promoting America's energy resources, especially natural gas. Increasing the United States' oil and gas production means it can rely on these as cheap energy sources domestically while also selling them abroad to reduce its trade deficit with other countries — so the MAGA argument goes. Major environmental concerns about boosting this industry aside — particularly given the country's status as the top emitter of methane from oil and gas production — the economic case is also far from clear. Increased American gas exports, most of which are traded abroad via ship as liquefied natural gas (LNG), could push up domestic energy prices at a time when households are already feeling the pain of high living costs. Plus, as the world gears up for an unprecedented increase in LNG export capacity, many believe that global supply will outstrip demand, which is falling in major markets such as Japan and Europe and may not grow as much as the industry hopes in emerging economies such as China and India. With its LNG export capacity set to triple, accounting for one-third of the global total by 2030, the U.S. needs buyers. This is where Trump's leverage tactics come in handy as Washington pushes America's trading partners — including Japan — to buy more U.S. gas in exchange for more lenient tariffs. The question of Asia's gas needs also hangs over what U.S. President Donald Trump hopes will become the crown jewel of American energy dominance: Alaska LNG. | Reuters In February, Trump said Japan would start importing 'record numbers' of American LNG. While the president's hyperboles should be taken with a comparably large grain of salt, Japanese companies have indeed been buying more of the fuel this year, on top of already sizable contracts and investments. Japanese banks are the top three financiers of LNG export projects in the U.S. Jera, Japan's largest power generator and one of the biggest LNG importers globally, has increased the U.S. share of its gas mix from 10% to nearly 30%. On July 22, as the ink on the U.S.-Japan trade deal was still drying, Trump said Japan had agreed to form a joint venture to develop an LNG project in Alaska, without specifying which project. The details of any potential venture remain unclear. But the reality for those living at the heart of the American LNG buildout, in the coastal communities of Texas and Louisiana that look out on to the Gulf of Mexico, is one of diminishing returns. Having already suffered the brunt of decades of oil, gas and petrochemical development — including a boom in LNG export facilities in the wake of the 2016 U.S. shale gas revolution that transformed the country from a net gas importer into the world's No. 1 exporter — their health, livelihoods and environment are at stake as more facilities are due to come online. 'Paying for, financing, funding and insuring these projects is ensuring my children's deaths,' says Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, a disaster relief and environmental justice organization, and co-director of the Gulf South Fossil Finance Hub, who lives in Sulphur, Louisiana. Ozane's six children suffer from ailments including skin, respiratory and neurological disorders. Near where her family lives, CP2 LNG, a planned LNG export facility, reached a final investment decision — a key milestone for large energy projects — last month, thanks in part to a political and regulatory environment that is proving to be as accommodating to fossil fuel development as it is hostile to climate policies and renewable energy. Redrawing the energy map The U.S. government is doing everything in its power to move gas projects ahead, with Trump kicking off a wave of environmental deregulation and oil and gas permitting. On his first day back in office, the president signed an executive order called Unleashing American Energy, undoing predecessor Joe Biden's investments in clean energy and electric vehicles and boosting production of oil and gas — the 'liquid gold under our feet,' as Trump called it in his inaugural address. Fishing boats in the Calcasieu Ship Channel, which connects Lake Charles, Louisiana, with the Gulf of Mexico. Since Calcasieu Pass LNG started production in 2022, catches of shrimp, crabs and fish have decreased dramatically year after year, local fishers say. | Mara Budgen Soon after, Washington established the National Energy Dominance Council, headed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a fracking millionaire. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the gargantuan Republican spending legislation adopted in July, incentivizes oil and gas leasing, including by lowering federal royalties rates, and repeals a fee on methane emissions. Trump also lifted a moratorium on permits for new LNG export facilities that was adopted by Biden in January 2024. Among such facilities, CP2 LNG, located in the Calcasieu Ship Channel in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, has received federal approval; if constructed, it would put the company that owns the project, Venture Global, in the lead as the United States' biggest LNG exporter. LNG has also become a major bargaining chip in Trump's trade wars. While this isn't the first U.S. administration to use the fuel as a geopolitical tool, 'Trump has taken a sticks, not a carrot approach' like others before him, says Sam Reynolds, a research lead at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). This push 'has been largely successful' as Asian, European and Middle Eastern buyers sign on to purchase more American gas. 'The administration is trying to redraw the map of energy dependence,' says Reynolds, though the growing competitiveness of renewable energy globally 'will challenge what the U.S. can feasibly achieve by doubling down on fossil fuels.' Footing the bill On an early morning in mid-July, Ray Mallet is on his boat in the Calcasieu Ship Channel, where CP2 LNG is being built, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico — waters he knows well, having worked there as a commercial fisher all his life. But on this day, Mallet isn't casting his nets and lines as usual. Together with other fishers, as well as scientists and local environmentalists, he's deploying hydrophones in the water to test whether noise pollution from the Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal, which sits where the channel meets the gulf, is causing a severe decline in seafood catch rates. U.S. President Donald Trump holds a joint press conference with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House in Washington on Feb. 7. | Reuters The hydrophones are being used to scientifically verify what local fisherfolk already 'know and see,' says Alyssa Portaro, founder of the Habitat Recovery Project, a Louisiana-based conservation nonprofit that is running the data collection project: Since Calcasieu Pass LNG started production in 2022, catches of shrimp, crabs and fish have decreased dramatically year after year. 'I've had to go fish elsewhere to try to support my family,' Mallet says. Anthony Theriot, known as 'Tad,' who lives a little over 1.5 kilometers from Calcasieu Pass LNG, has also been fishing here his whole life. Shrimpers and fishers used to make a good living, he says, but income has declined sharply since the plant started. 'This was the No. 1 seafood capital of the U.S. and now it's the world capital of LNG exports,' says Portaro. What is happening in Cameron Parish mirrors conditions across the Gulf Coast. Existing socioeconomic disparities are being exacerbated as American LNG facilities 'tend to be sited in areas that are disproportionately home to communities of color and low-income communities,' according to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) study on the impacts of U.S. LNG exports that was mandated by the Biden-era moratorium. But the consequences may be felt further afield: The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects domestic gas prices to more than double through 2026 compared with last year and the DOE study finds that increasing LNG exports will lead to higher electric bills. Rising prices are also a concern for the industry as the cost of building LNG plants has soared, compounded by 50% U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminium. Among those caught in the fallout is a major Japanese engineering, procurement and construction contractor, Chiyoda Corp., which in July stated that it will stop pursuing large-scale LNG projects overseas due to losses incurred from some U.S. facilities. Ultimately, international buyers will foot at least part of the bill. 'U.S. LNG prices abroad are based on that domestic gas price as well as the capital expenditure of the facilities and both of those are rising,' says IEEFA's Reynolds. In signing up for more American gas, Japan is 'essentially committing over the long term to pay more for LNG.' Unleashing a carbon bomb? The world's top LNG players, including Japan, are predicting high prices and high demand for the fuel, especially in Asia, over the next couple of decades. Yet many others foresee a glut in the market, with expected amounts of additional LNG supply above the level of demand in developing parts of Asia, according to Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. 'There is a reasonable question about where all this LNG is going to go,' Corbeau says. Reynolds points, for example, to the industry's overly optimistic predictions about China. While it is the world's largest buyer of LNG, having surpassed Japan in 2021, its imports haven't grown significantly since then, in part due to a record-breaking adoption of renewable energy. In Japan, gas demand is declining year after year, though according to the economy ministry, predicting future trends is difficult given the advent of new industries and technologies. This means preparing for several scenarios, including one in which electricity demand increases due to the growth of artificial intelligence, among other factors, but energy sources such as renewables are deployed slowly. The government envisions a significant reduction of thermal power — including coal and gas — in Japan's energy mix, but continues to set high targets for how much LNG its companies should contract. A children's playground next to the Freeport LNG export terminal in Texas. Existing socioeconomic disparities are being exacerbated as American LNG facilities 'tend to be sited in areas that are disproportionately home to communities of color and low-income communities,' according to a U.S. Department of Energy study. | Mara Budgen What LNG isn't needed domestically is increasingly being resold to countries in South and Southeast Asia. The question of Asia's gas needs also hangs over what Trump hopes will become the crown jewel of American energy dominance: Alaska LNG. The project entails building a 1,300-kilometer north-south pipeline to transport gas across the largest U.S. state. From the south coast, LNG would be shipped to Asia via a much shorter route than that from the Gulf Coast — for example, gas would reach Japan in around 10 days rather than the typical 30 to 40 days. Despite being under discussion for decades, Alaska LNG has never been developed due to the huge cost of building and operating a pipeline in the state's harsh geographic and climatic conditions. In 2016, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie called it 'one of the least competitive' LNG projects in the world. Estimated to cost $44 billion — proportionally double the price of LNG export projects in the Gulf Coast — additional expenses, such as those incurred from the new tariff regime, haven't even been factored in yet, Reynolds points out. Alaska LNG has signed a nonbinding agreement with a Thai buyer and received interest from Indian, Taiwanese and South Korean players as well as Japanese companies such as Jera, Tokyo Gas and Mitsui. In contrast, the president of Japan Petroleum Exploration told Reuters in February that Alaska LNG 'is not a realistic investment proposition due to its unclear economics and large scale.' 'If it has not taken a final investment decision, there is a very simple reason for that — economics,' Corbeau says. Chris Wright, U.S. energy secretary, speaks during a conference in February. | Eric Lee / The New York Times Climate concerns also loom large when it comes to Alaska LNG — labeled a 'carbon bomb' by environmental groups — and other such developments. As global demand for oil collapses, gas is the fossil fuel industry's last frontier. To some, this is good news, as gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal and oil when burned and can keep the lights on as societies transition to less carbon-intensive energy systems. Others are concerned that investments in gas compete with those in renewables — a fact also highlighted by the DOE study — while experts note that lower carbon dioxide emissions does not mean it is a clean alternative, particularly because of the significant amount of methane emitted along the value chain. 'It's like you're trying to eat a healthier diet and instead of eating cookies, you're going to eat candy,' says Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. campaign manager at U.S.-based nonprofit Oil Change International. Why not 'try an apple'? Some Gulf Coast communities are taking matters into their own hands. Melanie Oldham, founder and director of environmental justice organization Better Brazoria, lives a few kilometers from the Freeport LNG export facility in Freeport, Texas. Her community has started recording methane emissions from the plant using an optical gas imaging camera so that 'people can see that we're telling the truth' about LNG pollution, Oldham says. While climate skeptics such as Wright — Trump's energy secretary, who has described concerns about climate change as a 'mania' — are too vocal a contingent in the U.S. government, Oldham urges 'decision-makers in Europe and Asia (to) take a look at the whole picture.' 'People know that these projects are not a done deal,' says Rosenbluth. 'They need local and state permits. They need financiers, they need actual buyers, and many of these projects do not have all of those things.'
