According to the Ukrainian side, Russia has accepted all the conditions except Crimea. As soon as this news came out, it meant that the peace talks had made great progress, and the two sides were infinitely close to a truce.
Putin is really an unpredictable politician, it is reasonable to say that Ukrainian helicopters sneaked into Russia's own oil depots, Putin should be angry, and even many people think that this move will anger Putin, leading Putin to launch a larger military operation against Ukraine.
But Putin is Putin, and the world thinks he is a showman, when he unexpectedly sent troops to attack Ukraine. When the whole world thought he was going to take revenge, he was calm and ready to negotiate peace. Many experts are still analyzing that the Ukrainian helicopter sneak attack on Russia may cast a shadow on the prospects of peace talks and make the whole war more confusing.
Now, the war should be over soon. However, from the perspective of the overall situation of the world, Russia's truce with Ukraine unexpectedly helped the United States a lot. The battle continued, with the result that russia and the United States collapsed at the same time, eventually triggering a global economic storm.
This storm is not just financial, but from physical to financial. The armistice is also a big positive for the United States. Biden did something big on the last day of last month that many people may not have noticed. Biden's 15 billion cubic meters of gas contract for Europe at the triple summit in Brussels is undoubtedly a verbal check, but his announced massive release of the strategic petroleum reserve is true.
Many people are not yet aware of the importance of this matter, according to the U.S. plan, they will release 1 million barrels of strategic oil reserves per day for the next 6 months. With this release, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will return to 1984 levels. You can understand what the world was in 1984 and what the world is today.
The consumption of oil in 1984 was completely incomparable to today's. Oil is not renewable energy, and countries around the world used to worry that oil would run out, so every country will reserve a lot of strategic oil, and the same is true for China.
The United States is the most developed country in the world, and they have naturally stockpiled a lot of oil for many years. So why is the United States releasing so much strategic oil at this time? What does it have to do with the situation in Russia and Ukraine?
From a clear point of view, the purpose of the Release of Strategic Oil by the United States is to curb global oil prices. After the war, European Brent oil rose to $140 a barrel. This is undoubtedly a sky-high price. There is a data that can be referred to, the cost of China's crude oil imports in 2020 is about $40 per barrel.
The sharp rise in international oil prices is undoubtedly a huge blow to the US economy, because the rise in oil prices has caused imported inflation. Many of the daily necessities of the United States are dependent on imports, and the sharp rise in oil prices will trigger a rise in the price of many raw materials, and the final cost will be shared by the people of various countries.
In the short term, the release of such a large strategic oil reserve by the United States has indeed curbed oil prices very well, and after the news came out, the price of Brent oil has fallen to $107 a barrel. In addition, the United States can also do a good job of avoiding financial risks, because American oil companies tend to put some short orders in the futures market. The United States released strategic oil in order to avoid financial risks caused by the failure of these companies to deliver.
Of course, the United States now has the courage to release such a large amount of oil reserves. With the advancement of Shale oil technology in the United States, they have changed from an importer of oil to an exporter of oil, and in fact the United States has become the world's largest oil producer.
Of course, the Americans are also very smart, and now that the international oil price is so high, they can also harvest a good wave of these strategic oils. But the move also proves that the U.S. economy has come to the brink of collapse as the war between Russia and Ukraine continues.
The release of strategic oil can curb oil prices in the short term, but in the long run, because the strategic oil of the United States has decreased, oil prices will continue to rise. There is only one way to truly solve the problem of international oil prices, that is, the global situation is stable, and the major oil producing countries have increased their production.
Oil prices will affect costs on all sides, and inflation in the United States has reached a 40-year high. At the same time, the EUROPEAN Union and the United Kingdom, which are closely linked to the US economy, inflation is also very serious, and many countries are more than 5%, or even 8%.
Supermarkets for the British were almost empty, and some in France began to give up on work because the money they earned from work was not enough to refuel them. This round of inflation is not only caused by currency over-issuance, but also superimposed on the problem of insufficient supply. The epidemic has led to a serious shortage of global supply, which has made the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries seriously short of daily necessities, and the lives of ordinary people are miserable. Today, energy prices are also soaring rapidly, which is even worse.
The United States had said it would not raise interest rates, but they did this year. But a mere interest rate hike will not save the U.S. economy. Fortunately, Russia and Ukraine are infinitely close to an armistice, which is a great positive for the United States.
The Eu and Japan follow the United States in sanctioning Russia, which is equivalent to giving up Russian gas and oil. Japan estimates that abandoning Russian gas would add $15 billion a year to their costs, as well as for the European Union. Their abandonment of Russian gas means they have to go to the United States to buy more expensive gas.
These costs will eventually be shared by enterprises, and eventually fall on the heads of ordinary people around the world. As the cost of production in the European Union and Japan rises, the cost of cars, machinery and equipment, precision machine tools, pharmaceuticals and chemical products they sell will all rise. The cost of buying equipment in China rises, then the cost of the products we produce will rise, and in turn, the prices of the products we export to the United States will rise, and eventually the United States will have to bear these costs.
Now if Ukraine and Russia really have a truce, then everything will return to normal, the EU and Japan can use back Russian gas and oil, and global energy prices can return to a normal level. Countries can also begin to resume production. The U.S. economy could also avoid a crash.
In fact, today's world is a boom and a loss, whether it is a thermal weapons war, a financial war, a trade war, it is all a matter of one stroke, and no one is a winner. Russia played Ukraine, also without a winner. Russia seems to have the initiative, but the war is a huge drain on their national strength. Russia has sold oil to India for $35 a barrel.
This shows that Russia is really short of money today. The Russian economy is already fragile, heavily dependent on energy, and without foreign exchange earnings for energy, their lives are even more difficult.
Any war is an act of killing a thousand enemies and inflicting eight hundred self-inflicted wounds. The same is true of the U.S. trade war with China, which is harder for China but harder for the U.S. Today's world is no longer the world of the United States and the Soviet Union 30 years ago.
At that time, there were few contacts between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was even a very isolated country. Nowadays, communications and transportation are more and more developed, and there are many connections between various countries. The amount of trade between China and the United States is very amazing, and most of the US allies have more trade with China than the United States.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once again reminded the United States not to fight a Cold War with China, other countries will not follow the United States, and if the Cold War starts, it will only make China and the United States lose both.