Asia Times: Biden trapped over Ukraine

US President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House . File photoMOSCOW, June 17US President Joe Biden, against the backdrop of concurrent strategic and economic crises, is forced to look for a way out of the «Ukrainian trap,» writes Asia Times columnist David Goldman. humiliation, the author notes. For the second quarter in a row, the US economy has shown a decline in GDP, a decline in construction, real wages and rising inflation. By all international standards, this is a recession. These unpleasant phenomena occur against the backdrop of a sharp rise in the price of energy resources and food. To curb inflation, Americans will have to reduce consumption. Goldman called Biden's statements about cutting the Russian economy by half ridiculous and pointed out that Russia has earned 93 billion euros from energy exports in 100 days since the start of the special operation in Ukraine. At the same time, China and India buy Russian fuel on favorable terms, while the US and its allies pay a high price.Bloomberg announced the depletion of the US oil «stash» At the same time, the author called a «financial catastrophe» in the G7 countries, primarily Japan and Italy, due to the debt burden on their central banks, an even more terrible scenario. The observer also paid attention to the Ukrainian crisis and underestimation by Washington capabilities of the Russian army. The author called the peaceful solution of the Ukrainian issue with the territorial concessions of Kyiv «humiliation». According to him, the changed rhetoric of the US allies leads to this, as well as the peace calls of the leaders of France and Germany that sounded before the Russian special operation. Western countries imposed new sanctions against Moscow after the start of the special operation of the Russian army to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. So, Russian reserves were frozen in the amount of about 300 billion dollars. Calls to abandon Russian energy sources have also become louder. However, the disruption of supply chains led to economic problems in Europe and the United States, primarily to an increase in food and fuel prices. The Kremlin called the sanctions an economic war, the likes of which have never been seen before. The authorities stressed their readiness for such a development of events and assured that they would continue to fulfill social obligations. The Central Bank is taking measures to stabilize the situation on the foreign exchange market. The authorities also announced the transfer of payment for gas to unfriendly countries in rubles. In addition, the government has prepared a plan to counter the restrictions, which includes about a hundred initiatives. The volume of its funding will be about a trillion rubles.