0630GMT/April 22 2025
(The Russian Memo) - Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, travelled to Russia to hold talks with Putin. This was the Qatari leader's first trip to Moscow since 2018. He described Russia as a "distinguished friend". (COMMENT: The trip to Moscow shows that although the West considers Vladimir Putin to be an international pariah, much of the rest of the world simply doesn't. It will have been particularly disappointing for Western leaders to see Qatar's leader in Moscow. Qatar was one of the only Middle Eastern states to sign up to a peace declaration in Switzerland last year sponsored by Ukraine and its allies but boycotted by Russia and its allies.) (NOTE: The Sultan of Oman is also due to visit Putin in Moscow on April 22.)
Russia's parliament removes the Taliban from its list of terrorist organisations. (COMMENT: This is part of a Kremlin push to rehabilitate the Taliban as an ally and a market. First, it needed to scrub Afghanistan's ruling group from its list of terrorist organisations.) (NOTE: Russia has already hosted Taliban leaders for talks. It wants to build a train connecting Moscow and Kabul.)
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi visited Putin in Moscow. There were no official press releases on the visit which Mr Araghchi described as "useful". (NOTE: Iran is one of Russia's main war partners.)
Bloomberg quotes US officials as saying that Washington will recognise Crimea as part of Russia in return for peace in Ukraine. (COMMENT: Happy days for Putin. This will be a major climbdown by the West.)
Putin declared a 30-hour Easter truce from April 19 1800 -- 0000 April 21. Ukraine immediately said that this was a sick ruse and accused Putin of breaking this truce. Full-scale fighting has since resumed.
Valery Gerasimov, Russia's military commander, says that 99.5% of the Kursk region has now been recaptured. (NOTE: Kursk is the region in southern Russia that Ukraine invaded in August.)
Putin told his cabinet that streets and schools should be renamed after heroes of his "special operation in Ukraine". (COMMENT: Putin wants to go down as a great war leader and also to indoctrinate ordinary Russians into supporting his war in Ukraine.)
The average mortgage term length in Russia is a record 26 years, the Central Bank told the Izvestia newspaper on Thursday. Later media reports said that the average mortgage repayment in Russia has increased by 13% this year. (NOTE: Even Putin is grumbling about Russia's housing/mortgage sector. Analysts have said that it is beginning to flatline, strangled by interest rates of 21% that were imposed last year to prop up the collapsing Rouble.)
Chinese car manufacturer GAC Motor is recalling 17,000 SUV cars (GS8) sold in Russia since July 2023. (COMMENT: Second-rate Chinese cars have flooded the Russian market since Western car manufacturers cut direct sales.)
AvtoVAZ, Russia's biggest car maker, has warned of a collapse in new car sales because of Russia's faltering economy. Maxim Sokolov, the CEO, said that AvtoVAZ had sold 45,000 new Ladas in April last year. This year, he said the company would be lucky to sell 30,000 Ladas in April. (COMMENT: Economists' warnings about the dire state of the Russian economy, ravaged by war spending and inflation, have become louder. This warning, though, comes from inside industry.)
Two Russian companies that signed licences to mine coal from Donetsk and Luhansk regions in occupied Ukraine have quit because the mines are unprofitable. (COMMENT: Although some analysts have said that the search for coal, or 'black gold', is driving Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the reality is that it is a Putin vanity project, driven by greed and hubris. The Russian companies' failure to mine coal effectively from occupied parts of Donbas highlights this.)