Sanctions

Divide and conquer: The Kremlin’s gambit

Petrov’s Defence, known popularly as the Russian Game, is a chess opening based around symmetry: the second player matching the moves of the first through pawn, knight and so on, in a game that has a reputation for leading to protracted, difficult draws unless a player can seize upon a momentary advantage that may come [...]

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Getting all your ducks in a row

The environment for winning and retaining business has rarely been more challenging. Most prominently, in geo-political terms, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the knock-on effects on politics and economies worldwide. In addition, the rising tensions between China and Taiwan, an escalated war of words and ideology between various delineations of ‘East’ and ‘West’, and

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The magic black money tree

While walking through the edge of Utah’s Fishlake Forest, it is possible to cross over 100 acres and simultaneously pass forty thousand trees, and just one. This is because the colony of Pando Aspen trunks (‘I spread’) share a single underground root system, with each apparently individual tree simply being part of a larger, hidden,

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Belgium and Russia: More than a Mere footnote?

The death of Russian budget supermarket, Mere, in Belgium, just four months after opening can be read either as a cautionary tale of stunningly misreading the public mood on the part of the owners or a surprise that, given the strength of public feeling across Europe to Russian business, it took so long. Either way,

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The luxuries of avoiding sanctions

Global sanctions on Russia continue apace, and there are rare admissions from within the country that these are working. Transport Minister, Vitaly Savelyev, has indicated that current trade logistics have been ‘virtually wrecked’, and the news that McDonalds and Starbucks are to permanently leave the country is, to the ordinary Russian, just as disappointing as

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Unrestricted Economic Warfare

While the war in Ukraine rages through expressions of military dominance, elsewhere a far wider conflict is being waged by Russia against, basically, the entire world. As the shutters come down on Russian cultural, economic and political partnerships, Moscow is retaliating by fighting back. While Putin has escalated the war of words with his remark

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