https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/world/americas/venezuela-rosneft-oil.html

Russian State Oil Company Rosneft, in Sudden Move, Sells Assets in Venezuela
The U.S. had imposed sanctions on two Rosneft oil trading subsidiaries this year for helping Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.

By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss
March 28, 2020, 3:25 p.m. ET

CARACAS, Venezuela — The Russian state-controlled oil firm Rosneft said Saturday it was ceasing operations in Venezuela and selling all of its assets in the country, a sudden move that could damage Venezuela’s already collapsing economy.

The United States had imposed sanctions on two Rosneft oil trading subsidiaries this year for helping Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, stay in power. Those sanctions have hurt the company’s business elsewhere in the world.

By late 2019, Rosneft had emerged as the biggest economic ally of Mr. Maduro, accounting for up to two-thirds of the country’s oil trade and a significant share of crude production. The lifeline provided by Rosneft has allowed Mr. Maduro to maintain a flow of hard currency and supply the country with gasoline.

In a statement, Rosneft said it had agreed to sell its Venezuelan assets to an unnamed company that it described as wholly owned by the Russian government.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-worst-intelligence-failure-us-history-covid-19/

The Coronavirus Is the Worst Intelligence Failure in U.S. History

It’s more glaring than Pearl Harbor and 9/11—and it’s all the fault of Donald Trump’s leadership.
BY MICAH ZENKO | MARCH 25, 2020, 1:52 PM

Last September, I met the vice president for risk for a Fortune 100 company in Washington, D.C. I asked the executive—who previously had a long career as an intelligence analyst—the question you would ask any risk officer: “What are you most worried about?” Without pausing, this person replied, “A highly contagious virus that begins somewhere in China and spreads rapidly.” This vice president, whose company has offices throughout East Asia, explained the preventative mitigating steps the company had subsequently adopted to counter this potential threat.

Since the novel coronavirus has swept the world, I have often thought about this person’s prescient risk calculus. Most leaders lack the discipline to do routine risk-based horizon scanning, and fewer still develop the requisite contingency plans. Even rarer is the leader who has the foresight to correctly identify the top threat far enough in advance to develop and implement those plans.

Suffice it to say, the Trump administration has cumulatively failed, both in taking seriously the specific, repeated intelligence community warnings about a coronavirus outbreak and in vigorously pursuing the nationwide response initiatives commensurate with the predicted threat. The federal government alone has the resources and authorities to lead the relevant public and private stakeholders to confront the foreseeable harms posed by the virus. Unfortunately, Trump officials made a series of judgments (minimizing the hazards of COVID-19) and decisions (refusing to act with the urgency required) that have needlessly made Americans far less safe.

In short, the Trump administration forced a catastrophic strategic surprise onto the American people. But unlike past strategic surprises—Pearl Harbor, the Iranian revolution of 1979, or especially 9/11—the current one was brought about by unprecedented indifference, even willful negligence. Whereas, for example, the 9/11 Commission Report assigned blame for the al Qaeda attacks on the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush, the unfolding coronavirus crisis is overwhelmingly the sole responsibility of the current White House.

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https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-reporting-covid-19-cases-cover/story?id=69717763

Why is Russia reporting so few COVID-19 cases? Some say it's a cover-up
Moscow has seen a surge in "pneumonia" cases compared to last year.
By
Patrick Reevell
March 21, 2020, 9:43 AM

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread around the world, there are growing questions in Russia about the official number of cases that have been declared.

According to the count released by its health ministry, Russia currently has only 253 confirmed cases of the virus. That is vastly lower than in other major countries in Western Europe, where there are already thousands of cases.

What really makes Russia an outlier, however, is the number of tests it is carrying out compared to its number of positive cases. Russia has done 133,101 tests, putting it behind only China, Italy and South Korea.

But with just 306 cases of the virus, Russia’s ratio of positive cases to the number of tests is the second lowest in the world, at 0.21%. Only the tiny United Arab Emirates comes lower at 0.11%, based on figures from the Our World In Data project at Oxford University.


An aerial view shows a construction site for a new infectious disease hospital, as an additional measure against the spread of the new coronavirus, on the outskirts of Moscow, March 18, 2020.An aerial view shows a construction site for a new infectious disease hospital, as an additional measure against the spread of the new coronavirus, on the outskirts of Moscow, March 18, 2020.
Moscow News Agency/via Reuters