Page 20 - RusRPTApr24

Parliament finally ratified Sweden’s bid in January 2024, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban assured Stoltenberg that Hungary was not far behind.
In late February, Kristersson traveled to Budapest for a final diplomatic push. During his visit, a new Swedish-Hungarian defense deal was negotiated; Sweden extended the time period for providing support and logistics assistance to Hungary for Swedish-made Gripen C aircrafts and also agreed to sell four more to Hungary’s small airforce. Shortly after, the Hungarian Parliament approved Sweden’s NATO application nearly unanimously. Orban denied that this was related to the defense deal, however, instead claiming that Hungary was simply holding out for “a mutual trust of cooperation, which is the basis of guaranteeing of each other's security.” “It’s not a business deal,” he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it would retaliate against Sweden now that the country has joined NATO, but it did not give any specifics. According to the Ministry, it depends on how Sweden engages with the alliance, including which NATO weapons and military units it deploys. “We’ll closely monitor what Sweden does in the aggressive military bloc, how it will implement its membership in practice,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. Sweden’s accession means that NATO practically encircles the Baltic Sea, hampering Russia’s access to the strategically-important region.
A flag raising ceremony to add the Swedish flag to NATO’s headquarters will take place on March 11.
2.6 Russia’s red, yellow and green data
Russian statistics had attracted criticism before the war, but after it began, many simply disappeared. Two years later, things got even worse: a huge amount of information disappeared from the public domain, from data from the Pension Fund to reports from the Prosecutor General’s Office. In total, sensitive data needed by analysts was classified by 35 departments, and this began to affect the quality of forecasting.
However, unlike the DPRK or the USSR, Russia did not completely close the statistics. The Cedar organization (Center for data and research on Russia) and the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom examined the quality of the remaining data and came to the conclusion that many indicators are distorted, but some can still be trusted.
The authors selected 30 indicators of the demographic, social and economic situation in Russia, and analyzed each of them with the involvement of specialized experts. Each was classified into three groups:
“green” - for reliable indicators;
“yellow” - for indicators that can be trusted with reservations; “red” - for unreliable indicators.
20 RUSSIA Country Report April 2024 www.intellinews.com