Captured NATO Military Equipment Put On Month-Long Display In Moscow Russia will soon showcase a parade of NATO vehicles captured from the battlefield in Ukraine. Or rather, we might say that Putin is about to show off his ‘trophy vehicles’. A month-long exhibit displaying the Western military equipment will run starting May 1st at Moscow’s Victory Park, and which will be featured alongside the capital’s annual Red Square Victory Day Parade on May 9 which commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Via EPA/The Independent The display will feature an array of armored fighting vehicles, including an American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC. It will also include destroyed American tanks, per state media: For the first time Russian troops have hauled a disabled US-made M1 Abrams tank away from the front line of the Ukraine conflict, the beginning of a journey that will eventually see the vehicle displayed at a trophy show in Moscow, officials have said. German-made Leopard main battle tanks are also being transferred to the Russian capital to be put on display. Russia’s defense ministry has listed that it additionally has examples of military equipment made in Australia, Austria, France, Finland, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden and South Africa – as cited in Newsweek. Russian media sources have already begun releasing images and footage of the vehicles being staged ahead of the official event kick-off. According to reports, some of the vehicles will even display American and British flags, highlighting that they were captured on the frontlines in Ukraine, in what appears to also be a PR effort to embarrass the Western military alliance. Last year the Russian military released several videos and images of burning French-supplied main battle tanks from the Ukrainian battlefield. At that time Russian officials began

China & The US: What Matters That’s Overlooked Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Parsing geopolitics is fun but our attention is better directed to the limits and second-order effects of legacy systems in each of the rival states. Geopolitics, like any conflict, is dramatic: rivals jostle for hegemony on a 3-D chessboard, war threatens, etc. The focus of this drama is on the leaders’ calculations and the pieces being moved around the board in the complex battle for hearts, minds, resources and the high ground. This is the conventional context of history, and so accounts of the rivalry between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire read like contemporary accounts of the rivalry between China and the U.S.: the actors and scenery changes, but the dramatic plot remains the same. A less dramatic but closer reading of history tells a different story: imperial decline stems not from external rivalries but from internal limitations. Externalities–plague, drought, invasion–are not causes so much as events which reveal the limits of the empire’s internal legacy institutions. These rigidities can be structural–economic or political–or cultural / social. There are two dynamics in play here: 1. Once solutions are institutionalized, they become legacy systems that focus not on flexibly solving problems but on sustaining and defending the interests of the institution and its insiders. The solution becomes the problem. 2. Whatever is viewed as a solution generates unanticipated second-order effects which the system is ill-equipped to resolve. There are many examples of these dynamics in both China and the U.S., and indeed, in every nation / polity. Consider the goal of increasing homeownership, a laudable ideal that the U.S. pursued after World War II by institutionalizing the heretofore unavailable innovation of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and government-agency backed mortgages (Veteran Administration-backed mortgages for veterans, FHA, etc.). Once

Uranium Stocks Rise After White House Mulls Russian Import Ban  Uranium stocks moved higher late in the US cash session after a report from Bloomberg, citing “people familiar with the matter,” revealed that the Biden administration is considering an executive order to ban Russian imports of enriched uranium after congressional efforts stall.  Officials from the White House National Security Council, the Department of Energy, and other top-level officials have discussed reducing reliance on Russian uranium imports. The people said the potential ban could include waivers similar to legislation that quickly passed the House last year.  “Because of procedural rules, the next best potential legislative vehicle to attach the uranium ban in the Senate to is must-pass legislation needed to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, which is slated for the Senate floor this week,” Bloomberg said.  Certainly, final decisions have yet to be reached on the matter. According to sources, the administration and the nuclear industry favor Congress enacting the ban. However, if push come to shove, executive authority could be used, they said.  After Russia invaded Ukraine, Washington imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.  In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti shows how much America’s nuclear power plants rely on Russian uranium.  According to the Energy Information Administration, Russia supplied about a quarter of all enriched uranium used in more than 90 commercial reactors.  Bloomberg estimated that America’s power plants spend at least $1 billion a year on Russian-enriched uranium. The White House has warned that dependence on Russian sources of uranium “creates risk to the US economy.”  “At the same time, replacing that supply could be a challenge and is poised to raise the costs of enriched uranium by as much as 20%,” the media pointed out.  In markets, the world’s largest publicly traded uranium company, Cameco Corporation, caught a slight bid after the Bloomberg story was released. Miner Uranium Energy Corp and Sprott Uranium Miners ETF