News round-up, May 15, 2023
Quote of the day…
…”It will take a huge effort for us to support the energy transition to carbon-free sources like nuclear energy. In fact, according to historian Richard Rhodes, it could take from 50 to 100 years on average. That's why it's crucial to invest in all types of renewable energy, explore carbon capture for petroleum, and continue scientific research into fusion and advanced nuclear technology. Additionally, we should prioritize the immediate expansion of fission energy (is a remarkable process through nuclear reactions, generating an amazing quantity of power—far more than is possible from conventional sources), a proven and already-existing technology both in the U.S. and worldwide. There's no better time than now to make nuclear energy expansion a bipartisan priority.
TIME BY CHARLES OPPENHEIMER, MAY 11, 2023 Most read…
Nuclear Energy's Moment Has Come
In a new documentary released last week and available on VOD, director Oliver Stone's "Nuclear Now," we can see a comprehensive and compelling history of the rise of the anti-nuclear movement and a thoughtful argument for the utility of nuclear energy to address today's severe energy crises.
TIME BY CHARLES OPPENHEIMER, MAY 11, 2023 Energy Stocks Are in the Doldrums After Last Year’s Big Rally
Worries about economy and demand weigh on oil and gas prices
WSJ By Hannah Miao, TODAY Investors Are Nervous—and That Could Support Stocks
Fund managers have lowest exposure to stocks relative to bonds since 2009
WSJ By Jack Pitcher, May 14, 2023
World’s most important election…
Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu square up for likely 2nd-round clash in Turkey
Neither the president nor his rival looks set to pass the 50 percent threshold needed for an outright win.
POLITICO EU BY CHRISTIAN OLIVER AND ELÇIN POYRAZLAR, MAY 14, 2023 Exclusive: G7 leaders to target Russian energy, trade in new sanctions steps
Western allies hunt for new ways to tighten already restrictive sanctions on Russia, from export controls to visa restrictions and an oil price cap, which has put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin but not halted the full-scale invasion that started over a year ago.
REUTERS By Trevor Hunnicutt and Andreas Rinke, NOWWagner head offered to reveal Russian troop locations to Ukraine - Washington Post
Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the area around Bakhmut due to a severe lack of ammunition. These actions could severely affect the ongoing Russian offensive in the region.
Reuters, editing by Germán & Co
Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES CorpHow can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…
The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Today's events
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Today's events 〰️
Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant owned by PG&E is scheduled to close in 2024 and 2025, but an effort is underway to extend the life of the plant. David Middlemamp-San Luis Obispo Tribune/Tribune News Service/Editing by Germán & CoNuclear Energy's Moment Has Come
In a new documentary released last week and available on VOD, director Oliver Stone's "Nuclear Now," we can see a comprehensive and compelling history of the rise of the anti-nuclear movement and a thoughtful argument for the utility of nuclear energy to address today's severe energy crises.
TIME BY CHARLES OPPENHEIMER, Editing by Germán & com, MAY 11, 2023 *Oppenheimer is an entrepreneur and investor, representing the family of J. Robert Oppenheimer. You can follow his work at https://oppenheimerproject.org or on Twitter @choppen5.For all the recent talk about clean energy and a shift away from coal, there’s a major problem in our goal to transition to a net zero-carbon economy. Despite all the growth and advances in renewable energy, globally we consume more fossil fuels than ever, and our rate of CO2 production is in fact increasing, not heading to zero.
But there’s a bipartisan, environmentally friendly solution still sitting on the table, still waiting for its moment — if only we can overcome our predetermined bias.
As J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson, I believe that my grandfather would support the expansion of nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly solution to address both the world’s energy problems and, perhaps counterintuitively, as a catalyst for peace and unity.
Most known as the physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII, JRO (as we refer to him in the family) and many other prominent scientists noted that humanity reached a new milestone following the detonation of the first atomic bomb.In witnessing a technology sufficiently powerful to destroy humanity, they also recognized its potential for collective good — that it required a new level of unity to address common threats. JRO and others recommended that the only safe path forward was global scientific cooperation, especially in an effort to avoid international arms races. That level of cooperation is necessary to face today’s threats from exponential technological growth.
Indeed, nuclear energy has the ability to be scaled at an industrial level, globally: Uranium 235 has millions more times energy than coal or oil.
It’s also important to underscore that nuclear energy became unpopular in part due to its association with nuclear weapons and fears about its safety. But the actual safety record shows it is one of the safest sources of energy, and it is becoming more popular to be an environmentalist and pro-nuclear. We must get over our cognitive and political bias: Nuclear energy is necessary and safe, and not the same as nuclear weapons.
In a new documentary released last week and available on VOD starting June 6 from director Oliver Stone, “Nuclear Now,” we see a comprehensive and compelling history of the rise of the anti-nuclear movement, and a thoughtful argument for the utility in nuclear energy to address today’s severe energy crises. “Nuclear Now” also shows us that energy expansion is becoming a unifying issue, domestically and abroad. Today, we must expand the development of nuclear energy to meet our carbon-free energy transition, because nuclear energy is indeed environmentally friendly, and necessary.
The support for nuclear energy has risen to 60 percent across the country — practically unheard of in modern political terms — including a spike among Democrats support from roughly 38 percent in 2018 to 59 percent today. Despite the decades of ringing alarm bells over the perceived dangers that nuclear energy might bring—in part of course due to its association with nuclear weapons—our energy crisis is too urgent to ignore nuclear anymore. And more than that, it’s equally important to dispel the misinformation surrounding it.
With rising bipartisan support, it can only go up from here.
It will take a huge effort for us to support the energy transition to carbon-free sources like nuclear energy, a process the historian Richard Rhodes has said takes 50 to 100 years on average. That should include all types of renewables, carbon capture for petroleum, and scientific research into fusion and advanced nuclear. And there should be an immediate expansion in fission energy, a proven, already-existing technology both in the U.S. and worldwide. There is a great opportunity right now to pursue nuclear energy expansion as a bipartisan issue.
As my family observes my grandfather’s birthday, it’s time to call for a “Manhattan Project” for carbon-free energy production. For as much doom and gloom the climate change narrative brings, we can also focus on what can be done to plan for a more sustainable future. Chief among them is an industrial-scale production of carbon-free nuclear energy. We’ve done it for defense, we can do it for energy.
Internationally there is great hope for nuclear energy development increasing cooperation that my grandfather, Neils Bohr, Einstein, and other scientists said was our path to a safe future. They recognized that there was only one way humans could survive when we possessed technology as powerful as atomic bombs: and that is to cooperate on a shared, safer, cleaner future.
Image by Germán & CoEnergy Stocks Are in the Doldrums After Last Year’s Big Rally
Worries about economy and demand weigh on oil and gas prices
WSJ By Hannah Miao, TODAY Shares of oil-and-gas companies led the market last year. This year, they are the biggest laggards.
Energy stocks comprise the worst-performing sector of the S&P 500 this year, down 10%, compared with the broad index’s 7.6% gain. Shares of Chevron are down 13% this year, while Exxon Mobil has shed 4.1%. Warren Buffett’s darling, Occidental Petroleum, has pulled back 8%.
That comes after the S&P 500 energy sector rallied 59% in 2022, the only segment of the index to end the year with gains and the sector’s best year on record according to FactSet data going back to 1990. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year shocked energy markets, sending commodity prices soaring alongside energy stocks.
This year concerns about a slowing global economy and energy demand have weighed on oil and gas prices, taking shares of energy companies down with them. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has dropped 13% this year, falling to $74.98 a barrel.
“The performance of an energy stock is going to be driven by supply and demand of oil,” said Fernando Soto, a senior vice president in Brown Brothers Harriman’s private banking division. “It’s very, very difficult to predict that.”
Mr. Soto said being underweight in energy shares hurt in the past couple of years, but is helping drive outperformance this year.
On the supply side, Russian oil production has continued to flow, testing Western sanctions. On the demand side, tumult in the U.S. banking sector has heightened concern about a slowdown in the world’s largest economy. Meanwhile, options-hedging has turbocharged volatility in oil prices.
Adding to the unpredictability regarding energy demand is the state of China’s reopening after the pandemic. Trade data released this week signaled the world’s second-largest economy is revving up slower than expected.
“It’s a challenging time for any sector at this particular point in time with all of the near- term uncertainty,” said Leslie Thompson, chief investment officer of Spectrum Wealth Management. “In the last couple of years energy has outperformed significantly, so I think there’s a little bit of reversion to the mean and taking some profits.”
Investors are shunning mutual funds and exchange-traded funds tracking energy stocks. They have pulled more than $7 billion out of energy-equity funds in 2023 on a net basis, according to Refinitiv Lipper fund-flows data as of Wednesday.
Still, some investors believe oil prices and energy stocks could stabilize as fears of a global slowdown abate. Supply remains tight; U.S. oil-and-gas companies have given priority to returning profit to shareholders over expanding production capacity.
Energy stocks only make up roughly 5% of weighting in the S&P 500, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, but have an outsize impact on profits within the index. Companies in the S&P 500 are set to log a 2.5% annualized decrease in profit in the first quarter, according to FactSet, based on a blend of actual results and estimates for companies yet to report. Without the energy sector, the S&P 500 blended earnings decline would deepen to 3.8%.
The earnings power of energy companies make the sector look relatively cheap from a valuation standpoint. Companies in the S&P 500 energy sector are trading at roughly 10 times projected earnings over the next 12 months, according to FactSet. That compares with the broad index’s multiple of around 18.
Ben Cook, Hennessy Funds’ energy-transition fund portfolio manager, said the fund has remained more heavily weighted in oil-and-gas companies relative to renewable-energy shares, estimating that the oil market could begin to recover in the second half of the year.
“Oil price volatility is inescapable as an investment driver of performance and it’s certainly something that needs to be watched, but we feel there’s an opportunity to attract investor capital into the sector over time, given the strength in earnings,” said Mr. Cook.
EMIL LENDOF/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL/Editing by Germán & CoInvestors Are Nervous—and That Could Support Stocks
Fund managers have lowest exposure to stocks relative to bonds since 2009
WSJ By Jack Pitcher, May 14, 2023
Investors have a sour outlook on U.S. stocks. Contrarians say that is good news for the market.
Turmoil in the banking sector has dragged fund managers’ enthusiasm for stocks to a 2023 ebb, according to Bank of America’s most recent monthly survey. The stress adds to worries including lingering inflation, higher interest rates and a slowing economy that have driven them to cut their stockholdings to their lowest levels relative to bonds since 2009.
Institutions have pulled a net $333.9 billion from stocks over the past 12 months, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, while individual investors have yanked another $28 billion. Billions have flowed into cash equivalents, driving total assets in money markets to a record $5.3 trillion as of May 10, according to the Investment Company Institute.
To some, all that doom and gloom looks like a sign of hope. Many on Wall Street view extremes in sentiment one way or the other as the time to do the opposite. Warren Buffett famously advised investors to “be greedy when others are fearful.”
The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% this past week and has made little progress since the end of March, stalling after a strong start to the year for highflying tech companies that has left the index up 7.4% for the year. This week, investors will get a fresh look at the health of the economy with the release of April retail-sales data and earnings reports from retailers Walmart, Home Depot and Target.
“The technicals and the sentiment side of the equation to us are just way offsides,” said Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers, a $1.2 trillion asset manager. “Not only does that limit the downside, but if you get any more positive news, that could easily squeeze the market higher.”
Cautious stock picking hasn’t offered much advantage in the market turmoil so far, and the longer that managers lag behind, the more pressure they will be under to add risk back into portfolios, Mr. Janasiewicz said. Active fund managers have largely underperformed the S&P 500 this year, with only one in three actively managed large-cap mutual funds beating their benchmarks in the first quarter.
Individual investors share institutions’ bearish view, according to the long-running weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors. The survey showed 41% of individual investors expect stock prices will fall over the next six months, down from a recent high of 61% in September that preceded this year’s rebound but above the 31% historical average. The survey is commonly used as a contrarian tool, with investors expecting higher returns following extreme levels of bearishness and lower returns when sentiment is particularly upbeat.
Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, said her firm has added more new equity positions than normal in recent weeks as indexes stalled and attitudes soured. After the firm trimmed winning trades earlier this year and ran its cash allocation to a mid-single-digit percentage—higher than normal—it has been looking for bouts of volatility to put money back into stocks.
“You’ve got all this money on the sidelines,” said Ms. Tengler. “In our view, when bearishness is that universal, it’s historically always been a great time to look for opportunities.”
Analysts at UBS Global Wealth Management have for weeks warned that stock valuations look high and markets are betting on a too-rosy outcome for the economy. That very caution may help put a floor under any fresh market drop, said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at the bank’s wealth-management arm.
One potential catalyst for a rebound: investors front-running the Federal Reserve. After announcing another quarter-point interest-rate increase at the Fed’s May policy meeting, Chair Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank may be done raising the policy rate for now. Traders in interest-rate futures are betting that the Fed will begin cutting rates as soon as this fall.
That could prompt traders to pile in ahead of any potential rate cuts, he said. Rate cuts are typically viewed as a boost to stocks, which start to look comparatively more attractive than bonds.
“Positioning data suggests there’s a lot of money waiting to be put back into equities,” said Mr. Haefele. “That possibility could bias investors to be early rather than late in adding risk, with a decent pullback in equities viewed as a buying opportunity even before the first rate cut. Investors’ desire to be early on the Fed rate cuts may prevent equities from declining more than 10%.”
The Fed has given no indication that it plans to cut, and if the central bank lowers rates soon, many believe it will be due to further turmoil with banks or a sudden recession—either of which could hurt stock prices.
And the last time fund managers were positioned as favorably toward bonds, in 2009, rates were near zero, so bonds paid little interest. The rally that followed gave birth to Wall Street sayings like “there is no alternative” to U.S. stocks. Today, high-yield savings accounts are paying 4%.
One group that hasn’t stopped buying this year: hedge funds. They have increased their stock exposure by a net $30.8 billion since the start of the year, according to S&P.
Still, few in the market appear interested in adding risk right now, added Mr. Janasiewicz of Natixis.
“I’ve been out sharing my optimistic view in meetings with clients, and I’m taking a lot of flack for it,” he said.
Image by Germán & CoWorld’s most important election…
Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu square up for likely 2nd-round clash in Turkey
Neither the president nor his rival looks set to pass the 50 percent threshold needed for an outright win.
POLITICO EU BY CHRISTIAN OLIVER AND ELÇIN POYRAZLAR, MAY 14, 2023 ISTANBUL — A singing, grinning President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told supporters he was ready to fight a second round in Turkey’s election on May 28, sensing he had the momentum to beat his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who undershot expectations in Sunday’s first round.
With 92 percent of votes counted, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council said in the early hours of Monday that Erdoğan had won 49.49 percent of the vote, only narrowly shy of the 50 percent needed for an outright win. Kılıçdaroğlu had secured 44.79 percent, disappointing a poll consensus that he had a narrow lead.
A veteran electoral campaigner, a grandstanding Erdoğan appeared on a balcony of his AK party headquarters in Ankara with a microphone singing: “We love you so much” to the crowd and praising them for the “feast of democracy” they had just served up. Dismissing the opposition’s claims of foul play, he even predicted the final trickle of results on Sunday could push him over the 50 percent needed for another five-year stint in power.
Mocking Kılıçdaroğlu, who had filmed in his campaign ads in his modest kitchen, he said: “Some people are in the kitchen, we are on the balcony.”
“We don’t know whether the presidential election will be finished in the first round. If it ends in this round then there is no issue. If our people have decided to finish it in the second round then that’s most welcome too. We believe we will finish the election in the first round successfully.”
A visibly angry Kılıçdaroğlu, whose party accused Erdoğan’s camp of widespread electoral malpractice overnight, snapped back: “Despite all his slander and insults Erdoğan could not get the result he expected. The election cannot be won on the balcony. Data is still coming in.”
“If our people say there’s a second round, we will respect that,” the 74-year-old former bureaucrat added. “We will definitely win this election in the second round … Erdoğan didn’t win the vote of confidence he was expecting … In the next 15 days we will fight for rights, laws and justice in this country.”
The prospect of a second round will focus attention on where the 5 percent who voted for Sinan Oğan — a former nationalist parliamentarian running as an independent — will take their votes on May 28.
World’s most important election
Turkey’s presidential election has turned into one of the world’s most closely watched political contests this year because of the massive implications both for the future of democracy in the NATO member of 85 million people and for security in Europe and the Middle East.
Heading into the vote, the increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan looked more vulnerable than at any time over his 20-year dominance of Turkey’s politics because of a blazing cost of living crisis, which has pushed the prices of many staples such as onions, meat and cucumbers out of the reach of many consumers.
Adding to his woes, Erdoğan has also found himself pitted against a united six-party opposition under Kılıçdaroğlu, whose presidential candidacy was also supported by the pro-Kurdish HDP party.
However, the Islamist populist is able to rely on a strong conservative base and is still held in high esteem because of his massive infrastructure and welfare programs, along with his increased positioning of Turkey as a geopolitical heavyweight.
Despite Erdoğan saying he was on course to win by a hefty margin, the opposition has been predicting it would narrow the gap because of the number of votes still to come from big cities where it is stronger. Kılıçdaroğlu accused government electoral observers of deliberately avoiding adding large numbers of votes from polling stations in opposition strongholds, by continually contesting the count there.
He said 300 ballot boxes were being held up in Ankara, and 783 in Istanbul. “They are blocking the system at the ballot boxes where our votes are high with repeated objections,” he complained. “Don’t be afraid of the people’s will. Don’t block the people’s will. I call on democracy workers in the field not to leave the ballot boxes. We are here until every vote is counted.”
In a sign of the furor over the degree to which the AK party was demanding recounts, Yunus Başaran, a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey from the southern coastal city of Antalya, said some ballot boxes had been counted seven times. “This time they’ve found this path,” he said.
Journalist Nevșin Mengü tweeted she had information that in the Ankara neighborhood of Çankaya — a traditional opposition bastion — one ballot box had been counted 11 times. Alper Taşdelen, mayor of Çankaya, said almost all of the ballot boxes there were being contested.
Anger over the count
From early evening on Sunday, the counting of the results triggered a bitter political debate, with the opposition accusing Erdoğan’s AK party of several forms of electoral skulduggery.
Two of Turkey’s most senior opposition politicians, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, cried foul over the way the state-run Anadolu news agency was reporting results. This is a highly sensitive topic as Anadolu’s feed is widely used by TV channels for their live election coverage. Initially, Anadolu had put Erdoğan on course for a 54 percent to 40 percent win.
The mayors said the agency was giving an exaggerated picture of Erdoğan’s lead early in the evening by cherry-picking results only from districts where the AK party was strong. The intention was to dishearten electoral observers from the opposition camp, who would leave before all ballots had been counted, which would allow ballots to potentially be manipulated.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition vowed that their officials would stay up to head off the problem. Slamming the public announcement of the results by the Anadolu agency as a “fiction,” opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu called on his teams to stay vigilant. “We will not sleep tonight,” he said.
The opposition mayors pointed out that Anadolu had resorted to the same tactic in the mayoral elections of 2019, initially saying the votes meant the AK party was on course for big wins, while the opposition eventually took Istanbul and Ankara in late counting.
Erdoğan and his AK party officials accused the opposition of deceit, and using the fraud accusation as an excuse for losing.
“Our nation has made its decision. You don’t need to find new excuses. We will see our nation’s will when we have the final results.”
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country
…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.
More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
The logo of the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' meeting is displayed at Niigata station, ahead of the meeting, in Niigata, Japan, May 10, 2023. REUTERS/Issei Kato/Editing by Germán & CoExclusive: G7 leaders to target Russian energy, trade in new sanctions steps
Western allies hunt for new ways to tighten already restrictive sanctions on Russia, from export controls to visa restrictions and an oil price cap, which has put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin but not halted the full-scale invasion that started over a year ago.
REUTERS By Trevor Hunnicutt and Andreas Rinke, NOWWASHINGTON/BERLIN, May 14 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations plan to tighten sanctions on Russia at their summit in Japan this week, with steps aimed at energy and exports aiding Moscow's war effort, said officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.
New measures announced by the leaders during the May 19-21 meetings will target sanctions evasion involving third countries, and seek to undermine Russia's future energy production and curb trade that supports Russia's military, the people said.
Separately, U.S. officials also expect G7 members will agree to adjust their approach to sanctions so that, at least for certain categories of goods, all exports are automatically banned unless they are on a list of approved items.
The Biden administration has previously pushed G7 allies to reverse the group's sanctions approach, which today allows all goods to be sold to Russia unless they are explicitly blacklisted.
That change could make it harder for Moscow to find gaps in the sanctions regime.
While the allies have not agreed to apply the more-restrictive approach broadly, U.S. officials expect that in the most sensitive areas for Russia's military G7 members will adopt a presumption that exports are banned unless they are on a designated list.
The exact areas where these new rules would apply are still being discussed.
"You should expect to see, in a handful of spaces, particularly relating to Russia's defense industrial base, that change in presumption happen," said a U.S. official who declined to be named.
The precise language of the G7 leaders' joint declarations is still subject to negotiation and adjustment before it is released during the summit. The G7 comprises the United States, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
The G7 leaders' action on Russia comes as Ukraine's Western allies hunt for new ways to tighten already restrictive sanctions on Russia, from export controls to visa restrictions and an oil price cap, which have put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin but not halted the full-scale invasion that started over a year ago.
Some U.S. allies have resisted the idea of banning trade broadly and then issuing category-by-category exemptions.
The European Union, for instance, has its own approach and is also currently negotiating its 11th package of sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine, with the bulk focused on people and countries circumventing existing trade restrictions.
"The sometimes-discussed approach of 'we ban everything first and allow exceptions' will not work in our view," said one top German government official. "We want to be very, very precise and we want to avoid unintended side effects."
Meanwhile, any change in language, including language specifying that certain trade is banned unless specifically exempted, by the G7 leaders may not necessarily lead to more bans immediately or indeed any change in Russia's posture.
"At least on day one, that change in presumption doesn't change the substance of what's allowed, but it matters for the long-term trajectory of where we're going and the restrictiveness of the overall regime," the U.S. official said.
Ukraine, backed by Western arms and cash, is expected to launch major counter-offensive operations in the coming weeks to try to recapture tracts of its east and south from Russian forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been in Europe this week for meetings with Pope Francis as well as with leaders from France, Italy and Germany. He is expected to address G7 leaders, either virtually or in-person, during their summit in Hiroshima, the officials said.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last month a G7 move to ban exports to the country would cause Moscow to terminate a Black Sea grain deal that enables vital exports of grain from Ukraine. Food security in the aftermath of the war is also expected to be a major topic at the G7.
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Founder of Wagner private mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves a cemetery before the funeral of a Russian military blogger who was killed in a bomb attack in a St Petersburg cafe, in Moscow, Russia, April 8, 2023. REUTERS/Yulia Morozova/Editing by Germán & CoWagner head offered to reveal Russian troop locations to Ukraine - Washington Post
Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the area around Bakhmut due to a severe lack of ammunition. These actions could severely affect the ongoing Russian offensive in the region.
Reuters, editing by Germán & CoMay 14 (Reuters) - Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary force, offered to reveal the position of Russian troops to the Ukranian government, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing leaked U.S. intelligence documents.
Wagner's soldiers have been at the forefront of a bloody Russian offensive to take the city of Bakhmut. In exchange for Ukraine withdrawing its soldiers from the area, Prigozhin in January offered to tell its intelligence service the positions of Russian forces, the Post reported.
The paper said Ukraine rejected the offer.
Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the area around Bakhmut, where they are at the vanguard of the Russian offensive, unless they receive much-needed ammunition.
He said Tuesday in an audio message that he and his men would be regarded as traitors if they abandoned the area.
The Post reported Prigozhin's offer came through his contacts with Ukraine's intelligence service.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the report, which was based on secret U.S. documents leaked to the group-chat platform Discord.