Russia said on Sunday its forces had taken control of a settlement in the Donetsk region, while Ukraine reported attacking a Russian oil and gas facility the same day.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said in its latest report that over the past 24 hours, its forces had taken control of the village of Shevchenko in the Donetsk region, and had struck multiple Ukrainian facilities, including production and storage sites for long-range drones, logistics centers, and military energy and transport infrastructure.
Russian air defense systems also shot down eight guided aerial bombs and over 1,000 fixed-wing drones across multiple areas, according to the ministry.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported the same day that its forces had struck a Russian oil and gas facility in Crimea, which it said was used to supply fuel and energy to Russian troops there.
In addition, Ukrainian forces hit a drone ground relay station, also in Crimea, along with a road bridge used for Russian military logistics in the Donetsk region and a drone warehouse in the Luhansk region.
Russia claims control of new settlement, Ukraine reports hitting Russian energy facility
Latest tariff measures rolled out by the U.S. government last Thursday have drawn sharp criticism from economists and political analysts worldwide, who warn the unilateral protectionist move will disrupt global supply chains, undermine free trade and weigh heavily on the global economy.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced last Thursday that the U.S. would levy tariffs ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent on goods imported from 60 economies starting last Friday, citing Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The ripple effects of the policy have already spread across global trade circles, sparking widespread pushback from the international community.
Veljko Mijuskovic, a professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade in Serbia, pointed out that the core motive behind the U.S. tariff policy is to clamp down on its key competitors. He emphasized that the new tariffs will not only batter global supply chains and impede free trade, but also exert a negative impact on the global economy, ultimately hurting the interests of all stakeholders including the United States in the long term.
"Every imposer of different obstacles to global trade is not good. That is a lose-lose strategy. Imposing tariffs is only a temporary way how you can boost some of your own economic sectors and protect them. But on the whole run, once you limit the free flow of goods and capital, that is something that shall come back to you as a boomerang. So definitely, even though they might have short term benefits, in the long run, this is a negative economic decision," he said.
Echoing those concerns, Patrick Bond, a political economist at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, noted that the disregard of the United States for international trade rules in levying new tariffs, coupled with ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, was exposing the global economy to greater volatility and uncertainty.
"He put the tariffs on to bring companies back into the U.S. that had gone abroad with jobs, but that hasn't really worked. We can just understand them as a con man, as a trickster, but also as a bully. And I think that's the only way to think about a man who's making such a mess of the world economy with the war in Iran, with oil prices, fertilizer shortages, food prices and all of the chaos in trade," he said.
New US tariffs deepen global supply chain chaos, economic uncertainty: int'l experts
