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cheaper: on January 6 a barrel of Urals in the port of Primorsk in the Leningrad Region was sold at $38 - half the price of a barrel of Brent on the same day. In December, the Urals discount to Brent remained at the level of 30-35% - this was already an unprecedented figure, but it did not reach 50%.
The budget for 2023 was drawn up with the same deficit as in 2022, a deficit of 2% of GDP and an average annual price of Urals of $70.1 per barrel, but that target looks like it will be missed this year. However, some analysts speculate that the Kremlin may counter by voluntarily cutting oil production this year in an effort to drive prices up again to compensate for the lower revenues expected.
At the same time, some European officials are wary that the restriction will trigger a shortage of diesel fuel in Europe, which remains heavily dependent on Russian imports. Others believe that the market will adapt. The EU will be able to buy resources from the Middle East and the US, which now sell more to Latin America and Africa.
2.2 Merkel’s, Hollande’s admission the Minsk Accords were a play for time to rearm Ukraine were a betrayal says Kremlin
Remarks by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande that the Minsk Agreements served to win time for Kiev to prepare for war are "documented betrayal," Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev said on December 31, reports Tass.
"The admissions by Merkel and Hollande are proof of betrayal. The south-east of then Ukraine was betrayed by the West from the start despite the verbal fluff around it," the senator wrote on his Telegram channel. "The cost of this betrayal was thousands of human lives over the past eight years of civil war in Ukraine," he added.
The politician noted that Moscow ended up being the only co-author and guarantor of the Minsk Accords, stressing that now Russia is protecting the people of Donbass who "as it now turns out, have been betrayed by Berlin and Paris in Minsk".
On Friday, Hollande who participated in coordinating the set of measures on implementing the Minsk Accords in 2015 confirmed the statements made by ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel that these agreements were needed to give Kiev time to prepare for an armed conflict. According to the LPR’s former ambassador to Russia Rodion Miroshnik, France was not going to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2202 upholding the implementation of the Minsk Accords even though the country’s permanent representative at the Security Council voted for it.
In an interview with the Zeit newspaper published on December 7, Merkel said that the Minsk Agreements were "an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine." According to the politician, "it was clear to everyone" that the conflict had stalled and the problem had not been
10 RUSSIA Country Report February 2023 www.intellinews.com