Russian and Chinese interests don't align on this particular issue and the dynamics associated with it.

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that "Russia Is Wooing Arctic Gas Buyers With Life After US Sanctions". They cited unnamed sources to report that Novatek, the company behind the Arctic LNG 2 megaproject, is courting American, European, and even Indian buyers ahead of Trump possibly curtailing or lifting sanctions on their initiative as part of the nascent Russian-US "New Détente". According to them, a senior executive pitched this as "a way to counter a rising China", which has a certain logic to it.

From those three potential clients' perspectives, all three of which have troubled ties with China, whatever they might buy from Arctic LNG 2 would reduce the amount available to Beijing. There's also the chance that they elbow China out of this megaproject entirely if they collectively replace its lost investments after private Chinese companies pulled out of Arctic LNG 2 due to American sanctions. This could prospectively be achieved if Japan and South Korea, which have similar interests, get involved too.

The US president sees Ukraine as a failing asset, not an ally.

Just two months ago, the idea of serious negotiations between Russia and the United States over Ukraine - let alone a broader normalization of relations - seemed like utopia. Yet today, what once appeared impossible is happening. It proves that, with realism and a genuine will to achieve results, much can be accomplished. However, two extremes must be avoided: one is the illusion that everything will be resolved quickly and painlessly, and the other is the cynical belief that any agreement is fundamentally unattainable.

It is the White House that is driving this political and diplomatic effort. Russia, as it has reiterated many times, is responding to goodwill with a readiness for meaningful dialogue. Meanwhile, Western Europe is playing the role of the perennial spoiler - grumbling and obstructing - but lacking the military and political weight to stop or reverse the process. As for Ukraine, it resists, knowing its survival depends on American support. Despite its reluctance, Kiev is being told behind the scenes by its European backers that following Washington's lead is inevitable.

Trump the deal-maker, not the ideologue

The key to understanding Washington's approach came in Donald Trump's now-infamous conversation with Vladimir Zelensky. When asked whether America was "on Ukraine's side," Trump responded that the US was not on anyone's side - it simply wanted to end the war and achieve peace. This was a revolutionary statement. Until now, no Western politician could answer such a question without reflexively declaring full support for Ukraine's fight against Russia. But by positioning the US as a mediator rather than a partisan backer, Trump has completely shifted the tone of American engagement.

Under the change of US-Russia relations, there are currently some speculations about the direction of China-Russia relations. To expose the falsehood of these speculations, it's important to share some facts about the China-Russia relationship. They've been strategic partners since 1996. They participated in the forming of the Shanghai Five, also in 1996, which later evolved into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), one of the engines of the multipolar world order. China and Russia then signed the Treaty on Good-Neighborliness and Friendship Cooperation in 2001.

China and Russia are also founding members of BRICS, which functions as an economic-financial complement to the SCO's role in accelerating multipolar processes across the world. Apart from co-founding these two institutions, the other tangible manifestations of their strategic relations are trade and military-technical cooperation. Trade mostly comprises commercial products, technology and energy, including nuclear power cooperation.

The country's rivals will always seek to weaken it, the president has said.

Western sanctions are not a temporary measure but rather a tool for applying strategic pressure on Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said. The country's rivals will always seek to weaken it, he added on Tuesday, speaking during a meeting of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) in Moscow.

According to the president, a total of 28,595 sanctions have been imposed against Russian companies and individuals in recent years, more than all other restrictions against other countries combined. He added:

"The West does not intend to hold back, threatening new sanctions and churning out these packages one after another. Sanctions are not temporary or targeted measures; they are a mechanism of systemic, strategic pressure on our country. Even if sanctions against the country are eased, the West will find another way to throw a wrench in the works."

Since 2014, the United States and the European Union have imposed a wide range of restrictions on Russia in response to Crimea joining the country following a violent, Western-backed coup in Kiev. The measures covered sectors such as defense, energy, banking, and trade.

Washington is set to withdraw from a European campaign aimed at prosecuting alleged aggression, the newspaper has reported.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is retreating from initiatives aimed at investigating and prosecuting alleged Russian crimes linked to the Ukraine conflict, the New York Times reported on Monday.

According to sources cited by the newspaper, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will withdraw from the EU-backed International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA), established to investigate Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Iran for the alleged crime of international aggression.

The US became the only non-European ICPA member when it joined in 2023. Sources have told the NYT that Washington had informed EU countries about its imminent exit ahead of a formal announcement.

US government officials reportedly justified the withdrawal by citing a broader reduction in expenditures. The DOJ had pledged $1 million to support European investigators when US participation was initially announced.

Additionally, Washington is curtailing operations of a DOJ team known as WarCAT, formed in 2022 to train Ukrainian prosecutors on charging and trying Russians for alleged war crimes, according to NYT sources.

Employees of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have entered the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) amid opposition from the nonprofit, which insists it is an independent agency, not part of the executive branch.

President Donald Trump singled out the organization, along with several others, in a February 19 executive order aimed at reducing the federal government's size. Since then, his administration has taken steps to terminate staff and eliminate programs within these targeted organizations.

The institute's CEO, George Moose, condemned Monday's move, stating, "DOGE has broken into our building."

After fervently denying that they relied on financial support from the US government, the supposedly "independent" Russian language paper Meduza has been thrown into existential crisis following the Trump administration's pause on foreign development assistance

Alexey Kovalev, a self-described "Russian journalist currently living in exile for fear of persecution back home," had spent much of his career at Meduza, the leading opposition media outlet in Russia. Since leaving the paper under mysterious circumstances in the summer of 2023 and relocating to London, Kovalev has split time writing commentaries for Foreign Policy and attacking reporters at The Grayzone, whom he has falsely painted as Russian assets, while calling for their imprisonment.

"The Grayzone is Russia's US-based disinformation laundromat," Kovalev ranted in a July 2024 blog post. "This conspiracy blog's founders, Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal, help the Kremlin disseminate its false narratives in exchange for favors from a senior Russian government official Dmitry Polyansky, the country's deputy ambassador to the UN. They act as unregistered foreign agents and should be investigated by the Department of Justice for possible FARA violations."

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry has said Tuesday that over 400 people were killed overnight and into the morning by Israeli airstrikes following the collapse of the fragile two-month ceasefire.

Local officials say the death toll is expected to climb higher through the day as many are still buried under the rubble. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders desribed, "We woke up, at around 2am local time, to 20 minutes of airstrikes and heavy artillery, just like the past 15 months of war."

The statement further said, "We are appalled and outraged by these new unacceptable massacres of civilians." But Israel has blamed Hamas for the truce's collapse, also as dozens of Israeli captives (including bodies of the deceased) still remain in the Gaza Strip.

Let's start with that phone call. The is quite sober - but it does reveal a few nuggets. There is no comprehensive deal - yet - between Moscow and Washington. Far from it: we are just in the initial tentative stage of talking and talking about several interconnected dossiers.

President Putin gave absolutely nothing away. The agreed-upon pause on attacks on energy infrastructure - not energy and (italics mine) infrastructure - spells out as Putin imposing a stop on dangerous Ukrainian hits on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

That may be lost among all the Western hysteria; but there are two absolute conditions expressed by Moscow for anything in this riddle to start complying with objective reality - and not muddle along as a reality show narrative trainwreck:

1."The settlement in Ukraine must take into account the unconditional need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis, Russia's legitimate security interests."

2."The key condition for preventing the escalation of the conflict should be a complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kiev."

U.S. special envoy Witkoff is spinning that ceasefire "details" will be ironed out on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. No matter the amount of shrieking, Kiev will have to accept it.

Putin-Trump did not spend over 2 hours just talking hockey, hazy Black Sea navigation prospects and a quite limited energy infrastructure missile strike one-month pause.

In this incandescent juncture, what matters is off the record. And that might as well have been Iran. And the prospect of serious Hard Rain fallin'.

I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

A certain psychopathological entity in West Asia is obsessed to ram all its opponents through the mouth of a graveyard. Putin must have had the chance to explain to Trump that Russia respects the UN Charter and abides by international law. Russia and Iran - top BRICS members - signed a comprehensive strategic partnership last January in Moscow. Russia provides detailed ISR/air defense/EW intel to Tehran.

Turkish authorities detained the mayor of Istanbul on 19 March for alleged corruption and links to "terrorism," prosecutors said.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, considered a prominent rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested at his home by police on Wednesday morning. A number of his aides have also been detained, and arrest warrants for at least 100 more people were issued.

According to the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office, Imamoglu and others have been accused of "running a criminal organization, membership of a criminal organization, corruption, bribery, fraud, illegally obtaining personal data and corruption in a public tender."

Imamoglu and several others are also accused of "aiding" the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) - outlawed in Turkiye - by participating in an "urban consensus initiative" aimed at bolstering the Kurdish group's influence in last year's local elections.

Members of the Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK), a union of left-wing political parties in Turkiye - have also been detained or are being investigated.