Humanity, if desired, is able to overcome any energy crisis and there are many ways to produce cheap and environmentally friendly energy.

In Ukraine, for example, an ordinary schoolboy proposed a project called “Generating electricity from the atmosphere.” The inventor proposes to extract electricity from the air, or more precisely from the atmosphere using an artificial ionized cloud due to the strong electric field that will be emitted by the ionizing tower. Samuel's invention involves the extraction of not only electricity, but also water. The estimated cost of one kilowatt of energy in this case will cost approximately one cent.
At the Olympics of Geniuses, held in Oswego (New York, USA), he won bronze among two thousand young inventors from all over the world.
And how many more similar inventions can be proposed in our time of rapid development of science and technology.

Source:
https://building-tech.org/%D0%AD%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F/ukraynskyy-shkolnyk-sozdal-ustanovku-dlya-poluchenyya -elektroenergyy-yz-atmosferi---1-kylovatt-za-3-kopeyky

If you mean how many foreign citizens are participating in the war on the side of Ukraine, then it is known that after the full-scale invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine in February 2022, about 20 thousand citizens from 55 countries joined the International Legion under the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the beginning of this war. How many foreigners are still fighting in Ukraine a year later is a question to which hardly anyone today can give a definite answer. Some experts put the figure at 3 thousand people, others - even less. This is due to the fact that when such volunteers got to the front, and the situation there was very different from what they had seen before, it brought more problems than good. Since then, the Ukrainian authorities have tightened the rules for admitting foreigners.

In general, foreign fighters appeared in Ukraine long before the start of full-scale Russian aggression. Some people from neighboring countries joined the fight against pro-Russian separatists at the beginning of the war in Donbass in 2014. Among them were many Georgians who formed the Georgian National Legion. Now this is the largest foreign unit in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In 2014, Belarusians also appeared in Donbass. Now two units are fighting for Ukraine at once - the Pagonya regiment and the Kastus Kalinovsky regiment. The commander of the Kalinovsky regiment says that without a free Ukraine there will be no free Belarus - from the Lukashenko regime.

Another large international structure is the “Freedom of Russia” legion, which was initially formed by officers and soldiers of the Russian army who went over to the side of Ukraine. According to the command, the number of this unit is constantly growing.

Other foreign volunteer units within the Armed Forces of Ukraine are the battalions named after Khamzat Gelayev, Dzhokhar Dudayev, Sheikh Mansur and the Ministry of Defense of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (formed by anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov Chechens), the Normandy Brigade (consisting of Canadian retired military personnel), the Canadian-Ukrainian battalion (uniting representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada) and a number of others.

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8 %D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0 %BE%D0%BD_%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%BB %D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%8B_%D0%A3%D0 %BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8B

https://www.golosameriki.com/a/ukraine-army-foreigners/6973501.html

A person in this world can survive only in a society of his own kind, and a society can exist only when certain rules of conduct for members of this society are established in it. This applies to any area of human activity, including financial. It is foolish to even think that there will come a time when there will be no rules of conduct. Even in the animal world, such rules of behavior were, are and will always be.

Ukraine continues to destroy military installations on Russian territory, and has also begun to destroy dual-use facilities that contribute to the increase in Russian military power in its quest to conquer Ukraine.

Oil refineries and fuel tanks on Russian territory are legitimate targets for Ukraine, since oil is the export of oil - the main source of revenue for the Russian budget, covering the costs of a full-scale war in Ukraine. In addition, it is fuel for Russian military equipment. In my post, I wrote that the war is entering another stage, the stage of its transfer to Russian territory. Previously, Ukraine had limited opportunities to do this, since the allies did not allow the allies to attack the territory of the Russian Federation with the weapons provided, and there were very few of their own in Ukraine. This year, Ukraine is going to produce at least a million drones; mass serial production of high-precision long-range missiles that will reach both Moscow and the Urals is being established.

Since the beginning of 2024 alone, Ukrainian drones have attacked seven oil refineries in the Russian Federation. Thus, on January 9, in the Russian city of Orel, drones attacked a fuel and energy complex.

On the night of January 18, Ukrainian drones attacked the St. Petersburg oil terminal.

On January 19, the oil depot in the city of Klintsy, Bryansk region, was unlucky. Oil tanks at the facility caught fire.
On January 20, loud explosions were heard again at the same tank farm. The oil depot burned for two days in a row.

On the night of January 21, the Novatek fuel plant closed due to a drone attack on the sea terminal in Ust-Luga, Leningrad Region. This plant processed fuel for the Russian Armed Forces. After the SBU attack, all tankers located at the terminal moved far out to sea.

After the fire on January 25, the largest oil refinery in Tuapse, a city in the Krasnodar Territory and a major port on the Black Sea coast, was paralyzed due to a strike by Ukrainian drones. This plant annually processes up to 9 million tons of raw materials and is among the top 10 largest in the Russian Federation.

On the night of February 3, the Lukoil oil refinery in the Volgograd region was attacked. The drone hit the primary oil refining plant producing ELOU-AVT-5 fuel.

Based on the results of the first month of 2024, Russian oil companies reduced gasoline exports abroad by 37%. Sales of diesel fuel, the largest export of petroleum products, fell 23%. The Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation explained that the reduction in exports was a consequence of “unscheduled repairs” at oil refineries and the need to supply the domestic market. In the future, such “unscheduled repairs” should become more frequent and scaled up. Russia wanted war, it will get it.

If we apply your statements to the Russian war that it unleashed on the territory of Ukraine, then the owners of oil companies in Russia should now have large profits. But this is far from what happens in reality.

Firstly, international sanctions have been imposed on the Russian oil and gas industry, which limit both the volume of sales of oil and its refined products and the price at which they are sold. As a result, oil and gas production in Russia is declining.

Secondly, this war is entering its logical next stage, when dozens of Ukrainian drones periodically launch attacks on oil refineries and oil depots already on Russian territory. Because of this, the size of losses increases greatly. It is unlikely that Russia's war in this case will improve its economy. Rather, on the contrary, the war and the subsequent international isolation will set Russia back in economic development for many decades.

Electric cars appeared on the world market relatively recently. Therefore, it is quite natural that their price is still quite high. But technology does not stand still. Quite often there are reports of the invention of more efficient batteries, which will significantly reduce the cost and operating costs of using electric cars.

This is approximately the same as what happens with the introduction of alternative energy sources. It has already been calculated that over the past ten years, costs for solar panels have decreased by 90 percent, and for wind generators by 70 percent.
It is quite expected that in the not very distant future, electric cars will be much more economically profitable to use than gasoline and diesel ones.

It's not even a matter of the number of hotbeds of military conflict, although recently their number has been inexorably increasing. The current formation of two blocs of states, which in the end may well start a large-scale war among themselves, poses a very great danger. On the one hand are Russia, Iran, North Korea and, apparently, China, and on the other hand are the USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea and European countries along with the UK. The confrontation between these blocs of states is changing, but on the whole it is growing.

Russia is now the catalyst for military tension, because it is bogged down in the war against Ukraine, does not have the opportunity to get out of it with dignity even if the Kremlin wishes, and therefore creates military conflicts and incites other states to do so, so that the United States and its allies provide more assistance to other states , not Ukraine. The threat of World War III in this case is great, but it does not necessarily escalate into a world war.

On December 14, 2023, negotiations between Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali took place on the issue of belonging to Guayana-Esequiba. The negotiations took place on the territory of the neutral state of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The parties agreed to create a commission to resolve the issue, which will include the foreign ministers and technical specialists of the two states and will submit a report to Caracas and Georgetown within the next three months, after which the leaders of both states will hold another negotiations in Brazil. The parties also agreed that they would not use force against each other, and also refrain from escalating the conflict.

Since then, there has been virtually no information on the Internet about further developments regarding the territorial conflict between these countries. Let's hope that the flames of war do not flare up there.

Surely the established system of carbon allowances with the ability to trade unused allowances is wrong. Caps on carbon emissions are necessary. But if a country has made some progress in reducing such environmentally harmful emissions, it should be incentivized in other ways, rather than being presented with the opportunity to sell its right to emit a certain amount of carbon. In addition, the volume of such permitted emissions must be reduced every year, thus stimulating countries to use alternative energy sources and other economical production methods.

The fact that Ukraine has been holding back the onslaught of such a “superpower” as the Russian Federation, which has the “second army of the world” for two years, is its great military achievement. Russia has now sent an army of half a million to Ukraine and is attacking it with all possible types of weapons (except nuclear), but the front is practically standing still. Moreover, stocks of artillery, tanks and armored vehicles, as well as their shells and missiles, are being depleted at a rapid pace. Another year of such intense fighting and Russia will have nothing to fight with. Despite the fact that Russia has transferred its economy to a war footing and maximally increased the production of weapons, almost everything from the assembly line is sent directly to the front. But this turns out to be not enough. Because of this, Russia begged a million shells from North Korea, has been supplying drones from Iran and China for a long time, and is violating its previously signed contracts for the supply of its weapons to other countries.

But a very interesting situation is now happening with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which Ukraine regularly sinks with its own missiles and drones. The last to be sunk on February 1 was the missile boat "Ivanovets", (56 meters long, 10 meters wide, with a displacement of 493 tons and a crew of 36 people), which was on patrol near the occupied Crimean Peninsula and its supersonic anti-ship missiles "Moskit" P-270 range 130 km. threatened the “grain corridor” from Ukrainian seaports. She was attacked and sunk by several Ukrainian-made surface drones and sunk after forty minutes of battle.

Ukraine, having practically no fleet of its own, is actively defeating the Russian fleet and has already driven it out of the north-west of the Black Sea, thereby resuming pre-war trade volumes on the international market, which Russia had previously blocked with its fleet and aircraft.

From the very beginning of Russia’s attack on it, Ukraine did not ask for military assistance from other countries, while at the same time NATO countries were really afraid of engaging in direct military action with their troops against Russia. But already now, at the level of individual politicians, some situations are being discussed in which NATO will be able to provide assistance with its soldiers on the territory of Ukraine in its war against Russia.

NATO does not protect and did not intend to protect the territory of Ukraine. NATO countries only provide assistance to Ukraine financially, materially, including with weapons, so that Ukraine has the opportunity to defend itself against an aggressor that is superior to it in all respects. But Ukraine never asked for help from Europe or NATO countries with troops.

Now the Russians have been attacking Ukraine for four months along the entire front, which exceeds a thousand kilometers, and every day they are losing about a thousand of their soldiers. To date, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Russian casualties amount to 387,060 people. According to the Russian Federation, which on January 29 was reported to Patrushev, and not to Putin, who may no longer be alive, Russia has irretrievable losses of 392,614 military personnel and 76,000 Wagner troops, and a total of 468,624 people. Yes, Russians are still going into battle and dying. But humanoid rams will also end someday. Many will then wonder why they should go to another country and die. Ukraine has never represented and does not pose a potential danger to Russia. Moreover, Ukraine voluntarily abandoned the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world and transferred it to Russia along with numerous aircraft and missiles that are now being used on Ukrainian territory.

These questions are already being asked, especially on the outskirts, which the Kremlin uses as expendable material much more. Then big problems will begin in Russia itself.

In addition, the current war in Ukraine shows the great advantage of high-precision weapons and the presence of a large number of soldiers ready to go into battle offsets this. It seems that in the future it will be precision weapons that will have a significant impact on the outcome of this and future wars. And in Russia there are already problems with this in front of the weapons of NATO countries and in connection with its international isolation, these problems will only deepen.

Fiat, that is, the national money of each state, will exist as long as the states themselves exist. Fiat may change, experience difficulties, strengthen or fall in purchasing power, but it will exist.
If someone is tired of the dollar, they can always use national money. Nobody forces anyone to use the dollar. But if the majority chooses the dollar, it means it is more competitive compared to other world currencies.

Ukraine has reached pre-war levels of agricultural sales from its Black Sea ports thanks to the successful destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which previously blocked Ukraine's international trade.

Thus, on February 1, 2024, naval drones of the Group 13 unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine destroyed the Russian missile boat Ivanovets in the Black Sea near a protected naval base on Lake Donuzlav in temporarily occupied Crimea.

The Project 12411 missile boat, with a displacement of 493 tons, with a crew of 40 people, is armed with supersonic anti-ship missiles "Moskit" P-270 with a range of 130 km, artillery of various calibers and an anti-aircraft missile system "Igla" or "Strela" has a length of 56 meters and a width of 10 meters and is designed to destroy enemy surface combat ships, landing and transport vehicles and ships at sea, bases, naval groups and their cover, as well as to cover their ships and vessels from surface and air threats.

Judging by the video, a group of at least five naval drones of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense attacked the missile boat one after another between 03:00-04:00 hours, apparently carrying out combat patrols and defense of the base. It should be noted that Russian intelligence did not notice the approach of the drones. The crew of the missile boat, judging by the video, noticed the approach of the drones visually only before the attack. The boat was on the move at the time of the attack and could maneuver. The missile boat can reach speeds of over 30 knots and simply get away from the drones. But “Ivanovets” did not have time to pick up speed.

The bow 76-mm anti-aircraft artillery mount AK-176, apparently, was in the stowed position, that is, it did not turn on and did not open fire. It is also not noticeable that the Russians had time to bring into battle two 30-mm AK-630 anti-aircraft artillery mounts, which are capable of delivering dense fire at moving targets at close ranges. But, obviously, machine gun fire was opened on the drones at close range by the duty watch. However, due to the small size, speed and maneuverability of the drones, the Russians were unable to hit them.

The well-chosen attack tactics of the Group 13 commanders is admirable - the first drone hit the stern of the boat from the starboard side in order to disable the propellers. The boat was unable to reach full speed, but did not stop. Then the second drone also hit the propellers, but from the left side. With these two blows, the boat was reliably deprived of movement and maneuver. After which the ship was successfully finished off. The third drone struck the middle of the hull under the Mosquito missile launchers and caused a large hole in the port side. But the results of the hit are visible from the camera of the fourth drone, which the operator directed directly into the crater from the third drone in the same place. The explosion from the fourth drone was fatal for the ship. As a result of the impact, four Mosquito missiles detonated, each with a total mass of four tons. After about 40 more minutes, the Russian ship sank and sank.

This is a fairly significant loss for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, given the presence of only three such Project 1241.1 boats in its composition.
https://news.liga.net/amp/politics/video/v-krymu-unichtozhen-rossiyskiy-raketnyy-kater-ivanovets-video-operatsii-ot-razvedki

You say that as if NATO is directly at war with Russia. So far, Ukrainians are fighting with the Russians, defending themselves from attack, and NATO is only providing rather weak assistance to Ukraine. There are no NATO military units in Ukraine. At the time of the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer, Ukraine did not have air superiority, and was also inferior in the number of artillery, armored vehicles and the number of troops. With such a balance of forces and means, one cannot count on the success of a counteroffensive. And then, out of fear, the Russians mined entire territories on the contact line, placing up to eight anti-tank and anti-personnel mines on every meter. Not a single army in the world would agree to launch an offensive in such a balance of power. But Ukrainians fight not with numbers, but with ingenuity and skill. As a result, almost the entire professional army of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was destroyed.

Now the occupiers have also been carrying out their offensive along the entire front since the beginning of October, that is, for almost four months. As a result, figuratively speaking, they captured several houses and one garbage dump, killing several tens of thousands of soldiers and several hundred armored vehicles.

If NATO enters into a war with Russia, it will end very quickly, and not in Russia’s favor.

US military forces withdrew from Afghanistan on August 31, 2021, ending NATO's Operations Freedom's Sentinel and Operation Resolute Support. The US and its allies invaded the country in 2001, following the September 11 attacks, resulting in the war becoming the longest armed conflict in US history. But the United States could not permanently keep its troops in Afghanistan. They helped create and train the Afghan armed forces and national police, and left them $85 billion worth of weapons. Among those left in Afghanistan were 200 planes and helicopters, as well as 600 thousand small arms. But the Americans could not fight for the Afghan national forces forever. And the fact that they offered very little resistance to the Taliban and quickly surrendered to them is not the fault of the United States.
https://m.gazeta.ru/army/2021/10/01/14042869.shtml

The United States and its allies have not yet transferred a single aircraft to Ukraine, several dozen tanks were transferred only recently, but the Ukrainians caused colossal military damage to the “second army of the world.”

Will Putin join France very soon? This cannot be even theoretically. Putin, as the president of Russia, wants to have geopolitical influence on European countries, including France. He started the war against Ukraine ultimately for this purpose. Now France and Germany are very actively helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression. Therefore, there can be no alliances between France and Russia in the near future, especially in the military sphere.

As for the United States, in my opinion, it is unlikely to lose its position as a world leader in the near future. And France is not a very strong rival for the United States in this regard.

The banking system serves a specific state and belongs as a whole to this state. This system is directly administered by the government of that state. Also, most states allow the existence of banks on the basis of private and collective ownership. However, the work of these banks is also carried out on the basis of state laws and government instructions.
In addition, for efficient operation, banks of different states are united into a single network so that payments can be made between states.
Thus, banks can be owned directly by the state, or be privately or collectively owned.

Since April 2022, already on 57 pages, we have been discussing the topic of Russia’s ban on gas supplies to Europe and therefore, as can be seen from the title of the topic, we are discussing the question of whether such a decision is suicide for Russia, and you state that, it turns out, this is the USA and the EU imposed such sanctions against Russia by refusing to buy gas and oil from it.

I advise you to read the third page of this thread, where it is discussed that on April 27, 2022, Russia itself stopped gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, because they did not want to pay in rubles, as Russia began to demand. Russia arbitrarily, unilaterally changed the essential terms of previously signed contracts and was looking for a reason to reduce or even temporarily refuse gas supplies to Europe, in order to ultimately force European countries, in exchange for continued gas supplies, not to provide adequate assistance and support to Ukraine in its defense against military Russian aggression.

Russia hoped that by winter Europe would be more accommodating, when gas reserves there would be minimal, but Europe did not succumb to crude blackmail and, of course, not without problems, switched to other suppliers. Yes, there is still some import of gas from Russia by some European countries until they finally switch to other suppliers. But at the end of this year, the contract for the supply of gas from Russia to Europe via pipelines through Ukraine expires and Ukraine does not intend to renew this contract. This means that from the end of this year, Russian gas will no longer flow through pipelines to Europe. Russia will completely lose the European market for its gas.

Of course, the international economic sanctions imposed against Russia are not the most effective option that would force Russia to abandon the military takeover of the neighboring state of Ukraine. These sanctions hit both the state against which they are imposed and those who accept them. In addition, there are many ways to bypass them. But the point is that sanctions hit the sanctioned state much more painfully.

It would be much more effective if the UN had rapid-reaction peacekeeping troops and they were deployed to quickly end the military conflict. The very presence of such forces would cool the violent heads of the current potential conquerors. But unfortunately, we don’t have this, and we don’t have more effective ways of influencing the aggressor either.

In any case, the creation of a CBDC makes sense and will bring many benefits for both the state and the people. After all, CBDC is an improved form of current government banking. Compared to the current cashless payment system, CBDCs will be much faster and more efficient. But both of them are under the complete control of banks and governments. But there is still a benefit in terms of improved functionality. Therefore, Trump's statement about the need to boycott CBDC sounds very stupid and is purely populist.