I don’t mean to nitpick, but this has most likely more to do with the US dollar’s weakness -deliberately(!) brought about by the new boss in the White House- than with the ruble’s strengths. Trump and his administration -especially Stephen Miran, the newly appointed chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers- have long communicated the willingness to weaken the dollar to improve the U.S. trade balance. (Some argue Trump’s action will rather lead to a higher U.S. budget deficit and the end of the USD hegemony, replaced by some Central Bank Digital Currency, gold, and maybe some other commodities. (If interested, Hungarian-American economist Zoltan Pozsar was likely the first who proposed this afaik.)

The currency games have an effect on everyone. (China which has been hit hardest by Trump’s tarrifs, see it’s yuan at a 17-year low at the moment, at around 7.3 CNH for 1 USD, and the Chinese Central Bank is calling on commercial banks to limit purchases of USD, despite the tariffs conundrum, at least this is what analysts say so far and what we see in the numbers.)

It’s hard to tell what happens tomorrow, but I wouldn’t bet on Russia’s currency nor its economy in the long run.

As a side note, Australia’s SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) has just started to partner with Euronews.

Le Monde conducted a joint investigation with VSquare, Direkt36 and Espresso. Here is the unpaywalled/archived report by Vsquare.

The EU is to make Temu, Shein, Aliexpress, Amazon & Co. reliable for their unsafe products.

And this move is overdue. Many of this cheap crap is a threat to people’s health and the environment. I don’t want our children to be confronted with things that pose a threat to their health.

And it is also an important social issue. If you pay a few bucks for a product -with shipment from China to Europe included- it is impossible that workers who manufacture these things receive even a remotely decent pay. In Europe and other democracies, people criticize (often rightfully) a lack of workers’ rights and call for better labour protection, unionization, and stuff like that, but the same people are happy when they can get clothing for absurdly little money to ‘shop like a billionaire.’

I would really like to know what they are negotiating as experts say Ukraine doesn’t have minable rare earths deposits, say proposed deal with U.S. makes no sense

Beijing, in its turn, has been opening up sectors such as telecommunications, banking or manufacturing for foreign investment, he said.

What? Beijing has done the exact opposite. The latest brick in China opaque legal wall took effect just last year with what the party-state calls “anti-espionage law”, an opaque regulation that creates new risks for foreign companies, business travelers, academics, journalists, researchers. Its nebulous language allows China significant leeway to investigate and prosecute foreign corporations at will.

And China makes wide use of this. Last year, even before the new law took effect, Chinese authorities detained staff of Mintz Group, a US due diligence group. They were later released as far as I can remember, but all they did was market research.

As a foreigner it’s also impossible to found a subsidiary in China, you need a Chinese partner that would then own the majority. China has been closing down further in recent years.

“We should put our focus on partnership. China will never be a threat or any kind of enemy to the EU,” Yao said, praising the bloc’s multilateral approach to foreign affairs, as opposed to President Donald Trump’s isolationist agenda.

China has no interest in a partnership, not with the EU nor anyone else. They are a constant threat to their neighbours, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Buthan, and all the others. In addition, China has been engaging in transnational repression, targeting political exiles abroad to silence dissent across the globe, including in Europe.

And this is just a TINY selection of issues with China.

North Korea is now supplying almost half of Russia’s artillery ammunition, think tank reports

Evidence suggests these containerised munitions are shipped from North Korea’s port of Rajin to Russia’s Far East, then transferred by rail to ammunition depots closer to the frontline. With an estimated cadence of 750 containers per month—equivalent to roughly 600,000 to 783,000 munitions per quarter—North Korean support has likely eased pressure on Russia’s defence industry and extended its capacity to wage high-intensity warfare […] If left unaddressed, this flow of arms could tilt the battlefield further in Moscow’s favour and accelerate broader security risks across both Europe and East Asia.

War in Ukraine: Has Sumy attack destroyed all hope of peace?

The war in Ukraine looks set to escalate again. Sunday’s deadly Russian rocket attack on the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine has made it more challenging than ever to find common ground between the two sides, to form the basis of a ceasefire or peace negotiations.

“Russia is waging deliberate war on the civilian population,” Wilfried Jilge, a Ukraine expert and historian of Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), told DW.

“Sumy is a new extreme, but it’s not the first. I think we still haven’t grasped just how brutal this regime is, both at home and abroad.”

@JoMiran@lemmy.ml

Just read the article. The Moscow Times is referring to numbers provided by Rosstat, Russia’s official Statistical Office. This is official data by the Kremlin.

According to data released by the state statistics agency Rosstat, 195,400 children were born in Russia during January and February 2025 — a 3% drop compared to the same period in 2024.

The decline was even steeper in February alone, with births falling 7.6% year-over-year to 90,500 — 7,400 fewer than in the same month last year.

Some regions saw even sharper drops. Births fell by 18.7% in Arkhangelsk, 19.4% in the republic of Karelia, 18.6% in the Oryol region, 21.6% in Kostroma and 26.6% in Smolensk.

They are fighting on European soil against a European country.

https://sopuli.xyz/c/china

You’ll find more across the web.

That’s a fearmongering clickbait title.

China doesn’t become a better and more reliable partner because the US becomes unreliable.

The number of those who ‘abuse the social system’ is so small that they are economically irrelevant.

At the moment i think China is the lesser of two evils. Yeah, its not a democracy and China does things that benefits China, but it has one thing that the OTHER evil has lost recently: Predictability.

This is satire, right? Just because the US is becoming ever more like China does not mean that China becomes better. Europe must diversify and gain more independence without one or two large trading partners. Countries like Spain or Hungary are heading in the wrong direction, but there is much underway in Europe to achieve a higher level of autonomy.

“We want to work on issues of common interest […],” Sanchez told Xi.

Did they talk also about China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine? The transnational repression of exiled dissidents by China across Europe? The secrecy of agreements that leads to disaster like the one in Novi Sad, Serbia, that should make it impossible to held someone accountable?

The Chinese government is not interested in someone else’s interest. Even Mr. Sanchez will have to recognize that China is a threat to Europe, and it behaves so, not matter how much investments his country receives.

That decision came after the Chinese government privately told automakers to pause big investments in European countries that backed extra European Union tariffs on Chinese-made EVs …

Seems to be another incident illustrating that China is not a reliable partner for Europe …

Why would we buy this cheap crap made by forced labour?

Buy European here in Europe.

And how is this ‘news’ at all?

It seems the World Uyghur Congress released a statement on the matter, to whom it may concern:

WUC STATEMENT ON CHINESE ESPIONAGE CASE IN SWEDEN

China is pushing hard across Europe to present itself as an alternative to the US, as if we needed this. Just read a piece about Beijing’s efforts in Italy:

Propaganda push: presenting China as an alternative to the US in Italy

[In an Italian media outlet, Chinese Ambassador to Italy Jia Guide] said, “China hopes that Italy will maintain an objective and fair stance, play a constructive role in promptly resolving economic and commercial tensions between China and the EU, and boost the confidence and willingness of Chinese electric vehicle companies to invest in Italy and Europe" […]

In another piece published by [Italian media outlet] Il Sole 24 Ore—a publication that has, in the past, inflamed internal tensions with its “pro-China” coverage—Jia called for greater European commitment to enhanced cooperation with China to foster a balanced and sustainable form of globalisation.

I would also agree with others here that Europe needs more diversification, China is just another dictatorship and thus an unreliable partner.