Instead of heightened concern, many of our observers who are very close to Russia for Slavic, religious, Kosovo or ideological reasons rub their hands whenever a crisis in East-West relations appears, carried away by the illusion that Serbia's price on the world geostrategic market will then rise and that in the end, the "friendly" superpowers Russia and China will quickly overcome the hated America and Western capitalism, and we will once again find ourselves on the winning side. Against all this, Serbia should also worry about the increasingly "cold" diplomatic of the war between Russia and the West, which was triggered by the Skripal affair and the alleged use of a Russian nerve agent to kill an old spy and his daughter in the south of England. Because the possibility is being announced that the economic sanctions against the Russian Federation will be extended to the City of London, that is, to make it impossible (as it has already been made impossible for the Russian state banks) any financial borrowing by the Putin administration on the key world money market. It only apparently does not affect Serbia, but it could affect Russia's continental gas investments, so our gas energy problem would continue to float from bad to bad even during the next decade.
As already noted in our press (Politika and Blic), Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she will launch an initiative in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament to prohibit English clearing houses (Euroclear and Clearstraam) from assisting the Russian VTB Bank in the distribution of Russian public debt. institutional investors on the London financial market. This idea seems to be justified by the fact that it was noticed that just last month in London, the Russian state sold its euro bills for 2,8 billion pounds (about four billion US dollars), and allegedly gave that money to its banks under sanctions (VTB and Sber bank) - thus rendering their isolation from liquid funds in the West meaningless. This ban, of course, is not conceived out of any financial prudence, since the total Russian public debt is relatively small (about 122 billion dollars in total, of which only 38 billion is in Eurobonds), but to put pressure on Russia's need to service its due obligations. of their state banks, which, again, play a significant role in the financing of energy megaprojects.
Fortunately, Theresa May's idea has already been exposed to strong criticism from business circles, especially from the US. From there, it is warned that we should not interfere with the world borrowing system with those measures that lead to major disruptions, and are basically inefficient. Because Russia can continue to borrow in London through another country (for example, China) (with some additional commissions). The main argument against additional financial bans is that in London (as well as in other markets) the main buyers of Russian Eurobonds are English pension funds, which earn significant funds on this basis. After all, a third of the owners of sovereign debt are foreigners, without whom London would not be what it is, one of the most important monetary crossroads in the world. There are even observers who believe that the entire Brexit was launched into the English public when Germany demanded greater control of financial operations in the City of London. Why would Great Britain cut the branch on which its business elite is sitting?
Judging by the strength of the critics of Theresa May's idea, it is most likely that it will be abandoned, so we can, in caricature, conclude that Russia is saved from additional sanctions this time by the traditional greed of capitalism for profits. And those who sell money are the most generous and elegant. Despite all this, Serbia should continue to be afraid of any world confrontation, because it is illusory to expect that it could once again be recognized as a leader of "non-alignment", not even in the Balkan region, let alone as a mediator between the world's major powers.
(novimagazin.rs)
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