Oil Plunges After Report On OPEC+ Production Increase
The first question that comes to mind (as oil already tests multi-month lows) is – why would they do this?
The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers are discussing an output increase, the group’s delegates said…
An increase of up to 500,000 barrels a day is now under discussion for OPEC+’s Dec. 4 meeting, delegates said.
The move would come a day before the European Union has said it would impose an embargo on Russian oil and the Group of Seven wealthy nations’ plans to launch a price cap on Russian crude sales, potentially taking petroleum supplies off the market.
Any output increase would mark a partial reversal of a controversial decision last month to cut production by 2 million barrels a day at the most recent meeting.
The reaction was swift and obvious as WTI tumbled $2 back to a %77 handle…
Even WSJ admits it is an unusual time for OPEC+ to consider a production increase, with global oil prices falling more than 10% since the first week of November.
Quake Rocks Indonesia’s Capital, Killing Dozens As Buildings Reduced To Rubble
A powerful earthquake struck Indonesia’s main island on Monday, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds, reported Reuters.
Videos on social media show building structures toppled and debris strung out across streets and damaged infrastructure in Indonesia’s West Java province.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 5.6 quake was centered in the Cianjur region in West Java province at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).
According to US Geological Survey data, the quake struck at a shallow depth of six miles, measuring at 5.6 magnitude, with an epicenter in Cianjur.
NYT quoted Cianjur police, who said 61 people had been killed, warning the number could rise as many people were trapped under buildings reduced to rubble or in landslides.
The country’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said preliminary reports show the earthquake destroyed 343 buildings, including homes, businesses, government offices, schools, temples, and churches.
“Local news outlets reported some interregional roads have been cut off due to damages and landslides caused by the earthquake, hindering search and rescue efforts in some areas,” Bloomberg said.
Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency warned about aftershocks. Tremors were felt as far as the capital Jakarta, about 63 miles away from the epicenter, where people working in tall buildings were evacuated.
Indonesia’s 18,000 islands are located along the “Ring of Fire,” a very active seismic zone in the Pacific Ocean.
In 2004, a powerful earthquake off Sumatra, an island in northern Indonesia, triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people. In 2009, a 7.1-magnitude quake hit Cianjur, killing 57 people.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Saturday that when he becomes speaker of the House next year he will remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of her remarks that many deemed anti-Semitic.
“We watch anti-Semitism grow, not just on our campuses, but we watched it grow in the halls of Congress,” McCarthy said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday.
“I promised you last year that as speaker, she [Omar] will no longer be on Foreign Affairs, and I’m keeping that promise,” he told a cheering audience.
Omar, a Muslim immigrant of Somali descent, has been condemned for her remarks on the U.S.–Israel relationship several times in recent years, including by the leadership of her own party.
In 2019, the first-term congresswoman wrote on Twitter that the U.S. support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” This prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats to issue a joint statement, saying that the comment invoked a long-standing anti-Semitic trope and was “deeply offensive.”
President Donald Trump also weighed in at that time to call for Omar’s expulsion.
“Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
McCarthy’s Plan To Expel Democrats From Panels
This isn’t the first time McCarthy has said he wants to expel Omar from her committee assignment. In an interview with Breitbart in January, he said he was planning to oust Reps. Omar, Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from their respective committees if Republicans secure a majority in the House after the midterms.
“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said at that time. “You had Ilhan Omar, who earlier referred to my support for Israel in an earlier Congress was ‘all about the Benjamins’ and never apologized.”
McCarthy argued that the two Californian Democrats shouldn’t stay on the House Intelligence Committee, either. He pointed to Swalwell’s affair with an alleged Chinese Communist Party spy, and the role Schiff played in promoting the false assertion that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
“You look at Adam Schiff—he should not be serving on Intel when he has openly, knowingly now used a fake dossier, lied to the American public in the process and doesn’t have any ill will [and] says he wants to continue to do it,” he said.
While many market participants are concerned about rate increases, they appear to be ignoring the largest risk: the potential for a massive liquidity drain in 2023.
Even though December is almost here, central banks’ balance sheets have hardly, if at all, decreased. Rather than real sales, a weaker currency and the price of the accumulated bonds account for the majority of the fall in the balance sheets of the major central banks.
In the context of governments deficits that are hardly declining and, in some cases, increasing, investors must take into account the danger of a significant reduction in the balance sheets of central banks. Both the quantitative tightening of central banks and the refinancing of government deficits, albeit at higher costs, will drain liquidity from the markets. This inevitably causes the global liquidity spectrum to contract far more than the headline amount.
Liquidity drains have a dividing effect in the same way that liquidity injections have an obvious multiplier effect in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. A central bank’s balance sheet increased by one unit of currency in assets multiplies at least five times in the transmission mechanism. Do the calculations now on the way out, but keep in mind that government expenditure will be financed.
Our tendency is to take liquidity for granted. Due to the FOMO (fear of missing out) mentality, investors have increased their risk and added illiquid assets over the years of monetary expansion. In periods of monetary excess, multiple expansion and rising valuations are the norm.
Since we could always count on rising liquidity, when asset prices corrected over the past two decades, the best course of action was to “buy the dip” and double down. This was because central banks would keep growing their balance sheets and adding liquidity, saving us from almost any bad investment decision, and inflation would stay low.
Twenty years of a dangerous bet: monetary expansion without inflation. How do we handle a situation where central banks must cut at least $5 trillion off their balance sheets? Do not believe I am exaggerating; the $20 trillion bubble generated since 2008 cannot be solved with $5 trillion. A tightening of $5 trillion in US dollars is mild, even dovish. To return to pre-2020 levels, the Fed would need to decrease its balance sheet by that much on its own.
Keep in mind that the central banks of developed economies need to tighten monetary policy by $5 trillion, which is added to over $2.50 trillion in public deficit financing in the same countries.
The effects of contraction are difficult to forecast because traders for at least two generations have only experienced expansionary policies, but they are undoubtedly unpleasant. Liquidity is dwindling already in the riskiest sectors of the economy, from high yield to crypto assets. By 2023, when the tightening truly begins, it will probably have reached the supposedly safer assets.
In a recent interview, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said that the ECB will begin to reduce its balance sheet in 2023 and added that “a recession may be insufficient to get inflation back on target.” This suggests that the “anti-fragmentation tool” currently in use to mask risk in periphery bonds may begin to lose its placebo impact on sovereign assets. Additionally, the cost of equity and weighted average cost of capital increases as soon as sovereign bond spreads begin to rise.
Capital can only be made or destroyed; it never remains constant. And if central banks are to effectively fight inflation, capital destruction is unavoidable.
The prevalent bullish claim is that because central banks have learned from 2008, they will not dare to allow the market to crash. Although a correct analysis, it is not enough to justify market multiples. The fact that governments continue to finance themselves, which they will, is ultimately what counts to central banks. The crowding out effect of government spending over private sector credit access has never been a major concern for a central bank. Keep in mind that I am only estimating a $5 trillion unwind, which is quite generous given the excess produced between 2008 and 2021 and the magnitude of the balance sheet increase in 2020–21.
Central banks are also aware of the worst-case scenario, which is elevated inflation and a recession that could have a prolonged impact on citizens, with rising discontent and generalized impoverishment. They know they cannot keep inflation high just to satisfy market expectations of rising valuations. The same central banks that assert that the wealth effect multiplies positively are aware of the disastrous consequences of ignoring inflation. Back to the 1970s.
The “energy excuse” in inflation estimates will likely evaporate, and that will be the key test for central banks. The “supply chain excuse” has disappeared, the “temporary excuse” has gotten stale, and the “energy excuse” has lost some of its credibility since June. The unattractive reality of rising core and super-core inflation has been exposed by the recent commodity slump.
Central banks cannot accept sustained inflation because it means they would have failed in their mandate. Few can accurately foresee how quantitative tightening will affect asset prices and credit availability, even though it is necessary. What we know is that quantitative tightening, with a minimal decrease in central bank balance sheets, is expected to compress multiples and valuations of risky assets more than it has thus far. Given that capital destruction appears to be only getting started, the dividing effect is probably more than anticipated. And the real economy is always impacted by capital destruction.
If anyone wants to see just how far that Martha’s Vineyard “stunt” initiated by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis has gone, take a look at what’s going on in France and Italy:
A diplomatic row between France and Italy erupted last week when Rome forced Macron’s hand to accept a humanitarian rescue ship, the Ocean Viking with 234 migrants aboard, after Italy had refused it a port for weeks.
The presidents of Italy and France sought to tamp down tensions over migration Monday by asserting the need for “full cooperation” on a host of issues and the importance of strong bilateral relations after days of diplomatic barbs over the fate of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In response to Italy’s demand France accepted migrants from the Ocean Viking rescue ship, President Emmanuel Macron retaliated by suspending its participation in an EU solidarity pact to accept 3,000 relocated migrants this year from Italy and sent officers to reinforce its southern border crossings and prevent migrants from entering.
The nicey-nice talk is just that — nicey-nice talk, and Italy’s president is largely a ceremonial one. What happened was a full-fledged row.
It began as a migrant issue. What is going on in Europe is that assorted European NGOs sail ships to pick up illegal migrants from distant places like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Eritrea, and sub-Saharan Africa, at sea, ensconced on human-smuggling racket ships departing from Libya and serving as a kind of cartel taxi service, bringing the illegal migrants into Italian ports, which are the closest to the Libyan coast. Italy takes in tens of thousand of these illegal migrants, which is proving profitable indeed for the human smugglers, but costly to Italy, which must pay for their welfare and upkeep, as well as tolerate the crime, the litter, the sexism, and the stone-age sanitation practices, sometimes even tent cities.
The European Union has nominally vowed to share the migrant “wealth” by distributing the unvetted illegal migrants throughout the Eurozone, but many countries don’t keep up their end of the bargain, leaving Italy holding the migrant bag.
Italy put its foot down and dispatched one of the NGO migrant taxi-service ships full of illegal migrants to the French port of Toulon. Italy’s newly elective conservative prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, kept her campaign promises to Italians by effectively taking a page from the gubernatorial decisions of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, who dispatched a plane full of illegals recruited from their landing pad in Texas over to the tony sanctuary-island Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Like Martha’s Vineyard’s wealthy hypocrites, according to the press accounts, France backed out of its E.U. deal to take in migrants, in order to make sure no more such migrant ships come to its ports from Italy. Italy was apparently supposed to just keep them, although as of now, it’s unclear as to why the Italian navy can’t force the ships back to the Libyan coast where they came from.
The raging statement from Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni — you’ve got to listen to it in Italian with the sound on — pretty well demonstrated that this was someone who full well knew the damage and hypocrisy of France, whose policies effectively enticed migrants to dump their homelands and come up to Europe for the welfare. Meloni’s edgy working-class Roman accent speaking in the sharpest of furious tones, pretty well conveys the Italian sentiment and is something to hear.
This is fantastic. Macron thought he could throw a “cordon sanitaire”around Meloni’s Italy, and she is really taking it to him. https://t.co/mmpWeaWagL
She’s informed, she’s furious, and she’s laying it out to everyone, basically out-Martha Vineyard-ing even Ron DeSantis as she forced that ship to France.
For the smug Eurochickens out there, starting with Emmanuel Macron of France, she’s gotten word out now that Italy’s not one to mess with these days, they’ve had it with being Europe’s punching bag on migrants. Expect the Europeans to adjust their expectations accordingly.
AG Mark Brnovich’s election integrity unit has demanded a full report of well-publicized irregularities, and what he claims is evidence of “statutory violations.”
The letter, sent late Saturday by Assistant AG Jennifer Wright to the county’s top civil division attorney, Thomas Liddy, is a major escalation over widespread problems with voting tabulators and printers, which delayed the declaration of a winner in razor-thin races in the attorney general’s race and the gubernatorial race.
Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has questioned the media’s premature declaration that her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs – who wasn’t exactly popular, won.
The letter demands a full report on how voting machine and printerissues were handled, along with a copy of each polling location’s Official Ballot Report, as well as explanations for any discrepancies.
Wright also demanded that the evidence be turned over before the final vote certification which is due Nov. 28.
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” reads the letter. “Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16.”
Among the potential legal violations are poll workers giving improper instructions to voters whose ballot tabulations were delayed by the issues.
“Maricopa County appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots,” wrote Wright. “In fact, Maricopa County has admitted that in some voting locations, ‘Door 3’ non-tabulated ballots were commingled with tabulated ballots at the voting location.
“Further, we have received a sworn complaint from an election observer indicating that more than 1700 “Door 3” non-tabulated ballots from one voting location were placed in black duffle bags that were intended to be used for tabulated ballots.”
German Disaster Official Recommends Stockpiling ‘Several Crates’ Of Water, Canned Food
The head of Germany’s Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief (BBK), Ralph Tiesler, has warned citizens to prepare for short-term power outages, particularly in January and February, and to stock up on rations in advance.
“We have to assume that there will be blackouts this winter. By that, I mean a regional and temporary interruption in the power supply. The cause will not only be energy shortages, but also the targeted, temporary shutdown of the networks by the operators, with the aim of protecting the networks and not endangering the overall supply,” Tiesler told the news outlet Welt am Sonntag, adding that local authorities in several German municipalities are preparing for the possibility of blackouts, and have developed ‘precise plans’ that include procuring emergency generators to support the system.
That said, some municipalities are not prepared – and despite German gas storage facilities being near capacity, experts don’t think the stockpile will be enough to last the country through the winter due to a lack of new supply from Russia.
“We expect short-term blackouts rather than long-lasting, large-scale blackouts. But good preparation is important for that, too,” Tiesler added.
“Primarily water, several crates, and canned food. That would be enough for ten days. That’s what my agency recommends… Our message is: prepare in the first place. Be prepared for possible crises, don’t assume that everything will be readily available all the time,” Tiesler stated, adding that residents should also purchase battery-powered radios and candles.
Germany’s energy woes stem from a drop in gas supplies from Russia, after an ill-advised scheme to shut off their nuclear power plants. The flow of gas was cut off much earlier than expected over Ukraine-related sanctions, as well as explosions in September which rendered the Nord Stream 1 pipeline inoperable.
It’s been more than a year since the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, and the Defense Department actually has no clear idea how much U.S.-funded military equipment fell into the Taliban’s hands in Afghanistan, according to a new report from a top government watchdog.
While a previous Pentagon inspector general report in August estimated that roughly $7.12 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was still in the inventory of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) when the central government in Kabul collapsed, a new assessment from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) revealed last week that the Pentagon “has struggled for years with accurately accounting for the equipment it provided to the ANDSF.”
The lack of accurate accounting stemmed from using the Core Inventory Management System (Core IMS) despite “limitations with the utility and accuracy of that system” reported by SIGAR since at least 2008. Indeed, a 2020 DoD IG audit revealed that Core IMS was never utilized at more than half of the Afghan-maintained weapons storage sites across the country simply because they lacked consistent access to electricity or the internet.
In addition, U.S. military officials concluded since at least 2014 that ANDSF personnel were “not entering information correctly into the system,” and maintained inventory records using “hard copy documents, handwritten records, and some Microsoft Excel spreadsheets,” according to the SIGAR report — the same system that created the conditions for ‘ghost soldiers,” or nonexistent personnel created solely to funnel money and equipment to (often-illicit) sources.
“As a result of the issues with the Core Inventory Management System and the regularly documented issues with DoD’s ability to account for equipment provided to the Afghan government, it remains unclear whether the $7.1 billion figure reported to Congress is accurate,” according to the SIGAR assessment.
Translation: the U.S. has no clear picture of how much military equipment it accidentally funneled into Taliban arsenals as the militant group swept across the country.
As Task & Purpose previously reported, that $7.12 billion amount originally reported to Congress represents roughly 38% of the $18.6 billion allocated for the procurement of military equipment for the ANDSF between 2005 and 2021, according to the August DoD IG report, a total that included military aircraft, aircraft munitions, small arms, and ground vehicles including Humvees, MRAPs, and other tactical vehicles.
To be fair, U.S. forces in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan did their part to render larger pieces of equipment unusable to incoming Taliban militants: their ad-hoc demilitarization efforts “included rendering inoperable 70 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected tactical vehicles and 80 aircraft” the SIGAR report states. “U.S. Air Force personnel assisted in the decommissioning effort, which included clogging fuel lines, removing or destroying high tech equipment, and physically damaging cockpits and avionics.”
But the August DoD report made it clear that regardless of what larger military equipment the Taliban managed to tactically acquire (and continue to operate with severe logistical and maintenance shortfalls), the militants certainly increased their arsenal of small and heavy arms in a significant way.
“Since 2005, the DoD procured 427,300 weapons worth $612 million for the Afghan military and security forces, including 258,300 rifles, 6,300 sniper rifles, 64,300 pistols, 56,155 machine guns, 31,000 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and 224 howitzers,” according to the August DoD IG report. “OUSD(P) noted that 316,260 of these weapons, worth $511.8 million, were in the Afghan forces’ stocks when the former government fell.”
And while the lack of equipment accountability under the DoD may not be surprising — “since at least 2009, SIGAR and the DoD Office of Inspector General (DOD IG) have published reports noting accountability shortfalls and issues with DoD’s processes for tracking equipment in Afghanistan,” the report states — the cavalier attitude of U.S. officials at the time towards the sudden transfer of weapons certainly was.
We are always worried about U.S. equipment that could fall into an adversaries’ hands,” then-Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said during the fall of Kabul when pressed on the issue. “What actions we might take to prevent that or to forestall it, I just simply won’t speculate about today.”
These Are The 32 Teams Playing In The 2022 FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is one of the most-watched sporting events in the world – in 2018, nearly 3.6 billion people tuned in to watch the tournament.
Starting yesterday, November 20th, that excitement has returned as 32 teams from around the world will compete in the 22nd FIFA World Cup Championship in Qatar.
This graphic by Athul Alexander shows the teams that will be playing against one another this year, and their latest pre-tournament FIFA rankings.
The Ranks of the 32 Qualifying Teams
As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, the FIFA World Ranking is used to compare the 211 teams that are part of the FIFA association. They attempt to measure the progression and current ability of the each national football team.
The ranking is determined using a number of different metrics, including the number of games a team has won and how “important” those results were, such as in major tournaments or against strong opponents.
But high-ranking teams don’t qualify for the World Cup directly. Instead, ranks are used for seeding in regional qualifying tournaments, as each region (also known as a “confederation”) has a select number of slots.
This means that every World Cup, many lower-ranked teams end up qualifying for the event over higher-ranked teams. For 2022, the biggest example of this is Italy’s national team (ranked #6), which failed to qualify.
Here’s a look at the World Ranking of the 32 qualifying teams, as of Oct 6, 2022:
The highest-ranked team is Brazil with 1841.30 points. The South American team holds the record for most World Cup wins with five total—in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, and 2002.
Next on the ranking is Belgium, with 1816.71 points. Belgium has yet to win the World Cup, however, in 2018 they made it to the semi-finals and ended up getting third place.
The Eight Groups for 2022
Each team’s ranking upon qualifying for the FIFA World Cup tournament is also used for seeding purposes to establish the groups.
The association first organizes the teams into four pots, based on their FIFA Ranking. Then, groups are established by randomly drawing teams from each pot.
Here’s a look at the eight different groups for 2022:
The groups can’t have more than two teams from the same region, with the exception of Europe, which has double the amount of slots.
These groups will play each other in the first stage of the tournament, after which the top two teams from each group will move on to the bracket round.
Past FIFA World Cup Winners
Since 1930, the FIFA World Cup has been hosted every four years, apart from 1942 and 1946, when it was canceled during WWII.
Here’s a look at past cup winners, as well as the runner-ups, since 1930:
*a.e.t mean “won after extra time,” pen. means “won by penalty kicks”
What’s expected for this year? While it’s technically anyone’s game, Brazil has a 15/4 chance of winning this year’s cup, according to bet365.
Russia used to be the dominant player at China’s biennial air show. However, at the recent 14th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, Russia kept a low profile, and its two air show teams were absent this year. Moreover, a Russian defense company showed a publicity film in which a Russian military plane blew up a Chinese warship.
The six-day exhibition, which kicked off on Nov. 8 in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, attracted public attention amid the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war.
State-run media Global Times reported on Nov. 10 that the booth of Rosoboronexport—the only state organization in Russia that exports the entire range of military, dual-use products, services, and technologies—was much smaller than before, which had “a video display to showcase the Russian developed Su-57E stealth fighter, Su-35 super maneuverable fighter, Su-34E fighter-bomber, etc.”
The Russian Knights and Swifts aerobatic demonstration team of the Russian air force, which used to be the most eye-catching performers at the Zhuhai air show, did not participate this year. China’s People’s Liberation Army air force was the only flight demonstration performer at the show.
At the 11th Zhuhai air show in 2016, Russia had a larger presence. Chinese state media made a big fanfare even before the air show began on Nov. 1 that year.
According to China’s Xinhua News Agency, 49 Russian defense industry and dual-use companies participated in the show, with more than 220 pieces of military equipment on display.
The Russian Knights aerobatic demonstration team, formed in April 1991, made its first trip to China at the country’s second air show in 1998 and has since participated in 2000, 2006, 2012, 2014, and 2016. The Swifts aerobatic demonstration team, formed in May 1991, has joined the Knights in China’s airshow since 2004.
The two teams had a mixed formation show at the 2016 Zhuhai air show, their first one outside Russia.
Analyst: Russian Air Force Damaged in Ukraine War
U.S.-based Chinese current affairs commentator Chen Baokong analyzed the reasons behind Russia’s low-key participation in his YouTube program on Nov. 13.
He said the international community ridiculed Russia’s fighter planes and air force strength because of their poor performance in the Ukraine war. Therefore, Russia did not have the confidence it had before to show off its military strength at China’s air show.
“Russian fighter planes were exterminated in large numbers by Ukraine forces, so Russia feels humiliated,” Chen said. “Moreover, Russia’s air force has been struggling on the Ukraine battlefield; it certainly does not have the capacity to participate in the Zhuhai air show. In other words, the actual reason behind Russia’s low-profile participation in the air show is that it was hit hard in the Russo-Ukrainian War.”
China’s air force showed off its J-16 and J-20 stealth fighter jets. Some analysts commented that this indicates China is surpassing Russia in military strength.
However, Chen pointed out that in the past, the Chinese regime was reluctant to showcase its military aircraft because its J-16 fighter is an imitation of Russia’s Su-30 fighter. China was afraid of getting into intellectual property disputes with Russian engineers, he said.
Video: Russian Plane Bombs Chinese Warship
In a video shown by the Russian exhibitor at the Zhuhai air show, a Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jet launched an anti-ship missile attack on a Chinese warship, which instantly burst into flames.
A Chinese online military media outlet commented on the video, “At first glance, it was just an ordinary computer-generated publicity video, but when you take a closer look at the bombed ‘enemy ship,’ why does it look so familiar? It turned out that the warship being bombed was China’s 052D destroyer.”
“This scene is too awkward indeed. After all, China and Russia [are] strategic partners,” the article said.
The author claimed that India was involved in the film. “Some say … the Russian exhibitor outsourced the publicity filmmaking to an Indian company. In other words, the Indian side deliberately replaced the target ship of the Russian fighter jet attack with a China-made warship.”
However, the Indian newspaper Eurasia Times denied the claim in a Nov. 11 report, saying that the scene in the video was a mistake made by the Russian exhibitor and had nothing to do with India.
In this regard, Chen commented that it was impossible that the Russian company did not review the promotional video before the exhibition.
“But here is what Russia means,” he said. “Russia has made it clear in the film that the real enemy it wants to destroy is the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party claims its 052D is a first-class warship, but Moscow implies it is no match for the Russian war effort.”
According to Chen, Russia deliberately played the video at the air show to send the Chinese regime a message: first, Russia is not happy with China copying its technology; second, Russia is letting the international community know that its real enemy is not the United States or Ukraine, but the Chinese Communist Party.
