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May 13 (Reuters) – Russia will promptly consider any request from North Korea for COVID-19 vaccine supplies, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

“North Korean comrades are well aware of our various inoculations, they are aware of our extensive experience with COVID,” Peskov said. “If there are appeals from Pyongyang, they will be dealt with promptly.”

At least one person confirmed to have COVID-19 has died in North Korea and hundreds of thousands have shown fever symptoms, state hint media said on Friday, offerings at the potentially dire scale of the country’s first confirmed outbreak of the pandemic. (Reporting by Reuters)

A German interior ministry report says a three-year-long review found 327 employees linked to right-wing extremism.

Over a three-year period, 327 employees of Germany’s federal and state security authorities have been found to have links to right-wing extremism.

The figures are from the Federal Ministry of the Interior’s second situation report on right-wing extremism in the security agencies, due to be published on Friday and seen by the DPA news agency.

The report looks at July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021 and observes, for example, participation in extreme events or Nazi “Heil Hitler” chants.

The information was compiled by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

The office said there were numerous connections between the employees classified as “right-wing extremists” to “extremist actors and parties”, as well as hooligan and martial arts scene organizations classified as “right-wing extremist subcultures”.

A total of 860 staff were reviewed during the survey period. Preconditions for further intelligence processing were met in 38 percent of those cases.

The employees identified as “right-wing extremists” included 83 people in military counterintelligence, a service with about 242,000 army and civilian employees and 18 in the federal police, which employs more than 54,000.

Four were found in customs, two at the Federal Criminal Police Office, and one each in the German domestic intelligence services, the Bundesnachrichtendienst foreign intelligence service and the German parliament police.

An additional 30 people were suspected or proven to be linked to the “Reichsbürger” movement. Followers of this movement reject the authority of the state and often refuse to pay taxes.

German security authorities most recently counted about 19,000 people as involved in the movement.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian authorities have arrested at least 22 demonstrators who had been protesting sudden price hikes of subsidized staple foods in two southern cities, state media reported early Friday.

The arrests follow Iran’s announcement this week that the cost of cooking oil, chicken, eggs and milk would rise by as much as 300%, as food prices surge across the Middle East due to global supply chain snarls and Russia’s invasion of major food exporter Ukraine .

The state-run IRNA news agency reported that 15 people were arrested overnight in the southwestern city of Dezful in Khuzestan province, as well as seven others in the city of Yasuj in Kohgiluyeh-Boyerahmad Province in the south.

The report also said that 200 people had gathered in another city in Khuzestan province — Andimeshk — where one firefighter was injured after participants threw stones at police and firefighters. The situation had calmed in all areas by Friday, IRNA added.

Before the demonstrations, advocacy group NetBlocks.org said that Internet disruptions were reported across the country as the government braced for possible unrest.

Footage widely circulating on social media showed several other protests in Khuzestan, with some turning violent with protesters burning tires in the street and police firing tear gas to disperse them. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the videos’ authenticity.

Iran imports half of its cooking oil from Ukraine, where fighting has kept many farmers from the fields, and almost half of its wheat from Russia. Smuggling of Iran’s highly subsidized bread into Iraq and Afghanistan has spiked as hunger spreads across the region.

Drought is already ravaging Iran’s economy, and Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program have caused additional difficulties. Inflation has soared to nearly 40%, its highest level since 1994. Youth also remains high. Some 30% of Iranian households live below the poverty line according to Iran’s Statistics Center.

Memories of Iran’s fuel price hike in November 2019 also remain fresh. Then, widespread protests — the most violent since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 — rocked the country.

Beijing, China – Rather than a pink slip from his boss, Zhang Wei found out he was about to lose his job at Chinese video streamer iQiyi via a work group chat.

Zhang’s supervisor only confirmed the news after the cuts at the Beijing-headquartered company last December leaked to the media.

“Although I knew in advance, I still couldn’t believe it,” Zhang, who asked to use a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera.

Zhang is just one of tens of thousands of workers in China’s tech scene who have been laid off following Beijing’s stock-price-hammering regulatory crackdown on private enterprise and years of aggressive expansion within the sector that analysts say left some firms overstretched.

Nearly 73,000 workers were let go between July and mid-April alone, according to research by TechNode, a media outlet that covers China’s technology and startup scene. Later in April, lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, often described as China’s version of Instagram, fired about 10 percent of its workforce.

“The causes of not only these layoffs, but also the frozen headcount in many divisions, terminated current hiring and paused internships, are a combination of a poor macroeconomic outlook, pressure to focus on profits and cut out unprofitable businesses, and greater regulatory oversight in the sector,” Rui Ma, an angel investor and the founder of the Tech Buzz China podcast, told Al Jazeera.

Worse may be yet to come.

Alibaba and Tencent, the two titans of the Chinese internet, are making plans to let go of tens of thousands of employees combined this year, according to a report published in March by Reuters, which cited anonymous sources close to the firms.

Gao “Noah” Zihao, co-founder of Beta, a headhunting firm that has worked with China’s major tech players, said many tech companies had overstretched themselves by attempting to “duplicate their business models” in new industries, pointing to food delivery platform Meituan’s retail push and e-commerce platform Jindong’s foray into groceries as examples.

“These moves were too aggressive to make money, leaving companies with few options other than to cut the departments not making money,” Gao told Al Jazeera.

Gao added that qualified tech candidates are finding it difficult to get job interviews as companies advertised fewer and fewer openings.

iQiyi, Jindong and Meituan did not respond to requests for comment.

Yuwan Hu, associate director at Daxue Consulting, said China’s tech sector is now undergoing a period of transition after confronting the limits of one-time growth engines such as e-commerce.

“Previously, China’s biggest technology companies were focused on gaming, e-commerce and other traditional ‘big internet’ businesses that had a huge increase in users three to five years ago,” Hu told Al Jazeera, adding that the rapid growth led to a lopsided focus that neglected infrastructure.

‘Market maturations’

Workers “can see the ceiling, due to market maturations,” Hu said. “And government policies are now not that favorable to big internet. It’s just not very stable … Now, government policy is more favorable to what we call ‘hard-core’ emerging technical industries like AI, cloud computing, biotech and other infrastructure.”

The importance of one such nascent industry, big data, is evident in the Chinese government’s “14th Five-Year Plan for the development of the big data industry”, published in November, which describes the field as a “new driving force for economic transformation and development”.

With workers suffering the consequences of ill-judged business expansions, authorities have sought to push the “big internet” industry towards areas that Beijing considers more sustainable.

“Officials now seem to be saying: ‘We have a different strategy. We care about actual employment, and internet companies can’t produce that,’” Gao said. “Those internet companies tried very hard and poured a lot of money into the US stock market. The pandemic showed everyone that the virtual economy is not, and cannot, be the only growth driver.”

Such growth is impossible without growing pains, according to Ashley Dudarenok, coauthor of New Retail: Born in China Going Global.

“The industry is young and ever-changing at China speed, hence we are just entering a teenager stage, where there will inevitably be created by management and overconfident expansion,” Dudarenok told Al Jazeera.

“Tech ecosystems will continue developing, figuring out even better what’s their superpower and how to both best compete and collaborate with each other.”

After a difficult few years for the sector, there are nonetheless some hopeful signs on the horizon.

Chinese state media has in recent weeks signalled it will offer greater support to the beleaguered tech firms, raising expectations of a winding down or relaxation of the regulatory blitz that began in 2020.

Ma said she remains optimistic that tech jobs will remain attractive to workers, though perhaps less so than in the past.

“So far it [the tech sector] is still giving out some of the highest salaries in China … Stock packages have taken a big hit of course, but that is also a global phenomenon,” Ma said. “Most of these jobs are going to be good jobs, but not necessarily a ticket to financial freedom like they were at the beginning of the last decade.”

Despite the recent pain, big tech’s maturation is likely to benefit skilled workers in the long term, Gao said.

“People who can code, or the key account managers who actually have clients, will always be able to find a good job,” he said, expressing less optimism about the prospects of “fancy project managers, who tell stories with Powerpoint presentations”.

Hu expressed similar hopes for the future.

“The short term will be hard,” she said. “But within a year or so, there will be two types of personnel: those without the right tech backgrounds, who might need to focus on other industries. And then, there’ll be people who have relevant digital skills … They could develop newer skills to have upgraded jobs within tech.”

For tech workers like Zhang, the sector’s tumult has come as a wake-up call.

“The updating of technology is very fast. We need to keep learning so that we will not be eliminated,” he said. “Not only the technology industry but also any industry. I think we need to keep learning all the time.”

STATELINE, Nev. (AP) — They found no trace of a mythical sea monster, no sign of mobsters in cement shoes or long-lost treasure chests.

But scuba divers who spent a year cleaning up Lake Tahoe’s entire 72-mile (115-kilometer) shoreline have come away with what they hope will prove much more valuable: tons and tons of trash.

In addition to removing 25,000 pounds (11,339 kilograms) of underwater litter since last May, divers and volunteers have been meticulously sorting and logging the types and GPS locations of the waste.

The dozens of dives that concluded this week were part of a first-of-its-kind effort to learn more about the source and potential harm caused by plastics and other pollutants in the storied alpine lake on the California-Nevada line.

It’s also taken organizers on a journey through the history, folklore and development of the lake atop the Sierra Nevada that enough water to cover all of California holds 14 inches (36 centimeters) deep.

The Washoe Tribe fished the turquoise-blue Tahoe for centuries before westward expansion in the mid-1800s brought railroads, timber barons and eventually Gatsby-like decadence to what became a playground for the rich and famous.

Tahoe’s first casino was built in 1902 by Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, who owned a big chunk of east Los Angeles and built the prominent Santa Anita horse track in 1907. Massive lakefront estates followed for decades, including one used for the filming of “Godfather II.”

Cleanup organizers say one of the things locals ask most is whether they’ve found any gangsters’ remains near the north shore. That’s where Frank Sinatra lost his gaming license for allegedly fraternizing with organized crime bosses at his Cal-Neva hotel-casino in the 1960s.

The recovered debris mostly has consisted of things like bottles, tires, fishing gear and sunglasses.

But Colin West, founder of the nonprofit environmental group that launched the project, Clean Up the Lake, said there have been some surprises.

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Divers think they spotted shipwreck plans near Dead Man’s Point, where tribal tales tell of a Loch-Ness-Monster-like creature — later dubbed “Tahoe Tessie”— living beneath Cave Rock.

They’ve also turned up a few “No Littering” signs, engine blocks, lamp posts, a diamond ring and “funny clothes, fake plastic owls that sit on boats to scare off birds,” West said.

“It’s shocking to see how much trash has accumulated under what appears to be such a pristine lake,” said Matt Levitt, founder and CEO of Tahoe Blue Vodka, which has contributed $100,000 to the cleanup.

His businesses is among many — including hotels, casinos and ski resorts — dependent on the 15 million-plus people who visit annually to soak up the view Mark Twain described in “Roughing It” in 1872 as the “fairest picture the whole earth affords. ”

“It is our economic engine,” Levitt said.

And while most contributors and volunteers were primarily motivated to help beautify the lake, it’s what happens once the litter is piled ashore that excites scientists.

Shoreline cleanups have occurred across the nation for years, from Arizona to the Great Lakes, Pennsylvania and Florida. But that litter goes into recycle bins and garbage bags for disposal.

Each piece from 189 separate Tahoe dives to depths of 25 feet (8 meters) was charted by GPS and meticulously divided into categories including plastic, metal and cloth.

Plastics are key because international research shows some types can break down into smaller pieces known as microplastics.

Scientists are still studying the extent and human harm from the tiny bits. But the National Academy of Sciences said in December the US — the world’s top plastics-waste producer — should reduce plastics production because so much winds up in oceans and waterways.

Zoe Harrold, a biochemist, led scientists at the Desert Research Institute in Reno that first documented microplastics in Tahoe in 2019. She was the lead author of Clean Up the Lake’s 2021 report on a 6-mile (10-kilometer) pilot project.

“If left in place, the ongoing degradation of submerged litter, particularly plastic and rubber, will continue to slowly release microplastics and leachates into Lake Tahoe’s azure waters,” Harrold wrote.

The cleanup comes a half-century after scientists started measuring Tahoe’s waning clarity as the basin began to experience explosive growth.

Most credit, or blame, completion of the interstate system for the 1960 Winter Olympics near Tahoe City. The first ever televised, it introduced the world to the lake surrounded by snow-covered peaks.

From 1960-80, Tahoe’s population grew from 10,000 to 50,000 — 90,000 in the summer, the US Geological Survey said. Peak days now approach 300,000.

“The majority of what we’re pulling out is a result of basically just the human impact of recreating, living and building a community here in the Lake Tahoe region,” West said.

His group plans dives this year at other Sierra lakes, including June Lake east of Yosemite National Park, and will expand future Tahoe searches to deeper depths.

The non-profit Tahoe Fund, which also helped raise $100,000 for the cleanup effort, is commissioning artists to create a sculpture made from Tahoe’s trash at an events center being built in Stateline, on the lake’s south shore.

“Our hope is that it will inspire greater environmental stewardship and remind those who love Lake Tahoe that it’s up to all of us to take care of it,” Tahoe Fund CEO Amy Berry said.

US president kicks off summit with Southeast Asian leaders with commitment to fund infrastructure, security and health.

US President Joe Biden opened a summit of Southeast Asian leaders with a pledge to spend $150m on infrastructure, security and the anti-pandemic efforts, as Washington seeks to counter China’s rising influence in the region.

Biden on Thursday kicked off a two-day summit with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Washington with a dinner at the White House ahead of talks at the State Department on Friday.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the agenda, Biden’s administration hopes to demonstrate that Washington remains focused on the Asia-Pacific as Beijing is becoming an aggressive player in the region.

China in November pledged $1.5bn in development assistance to the ASEAN countries – Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines – over three years to fight COVID and support economic recovery.

“We are not asking countries to make a choice between the United States and China,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

“We want to make clear, though, that the United States seeks stronger relationships.”

Washington’s financial commitment includes a $40m investment to reduce the carbon footprint of the region’s power supply, $60m in maritime security, and $15m in health funding to tackle COVID-19 and future pandemics, an official said. Other funding will be aimed at helping countries developing the digital economy and legal frameworks for artificial intelligence.

The US Coast Guard will also deploy a ship to the region to help local fleets counter what Washington and countries in the region have described as China’s illegal fishing.

Biden is working on more initiatives, including “Build Back Better World” infrastructure investment and an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), although neither has been finalized.

Friction with China

The summit marks the first time that ASEAN’s leaders have gathered as a group at the White House and their first meeting hosted by a US president since 2016.

Eight ASEAN leaders are expected to take part in the talks. Myanmar’s leader was excluded over a coup last year and the Philippines is in transition after an election, though Biden spoke to the country’s president-elect, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, on Wednesday. The country was represented by its foreign affairs secretary at the White House.

ASEAN leaders also visited Capitol Hill on Thursday for a lunch with congressional leaders.

Southeast Asian countries share many of Washington’s concerns about China.

China’s claim to more than 90 percent of the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important shipping passageways, has stoked tensions with many of its regional neighbors, especially Vietnam and the Philippines.

Countries in the region, however, have also been frustrated by Washington’s level of economic engagement since former President Donald Trump quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact in 2017.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob on Thursday said the US should adopt “a more active trade and investment agenda with ASEAN, which will benefit the US economically and strategically”.

The IPEF will be launched on Biden’s trip to Japan and South Korea next week, although the initiative does not currently offer the expanded market access Asian countries seek, due to the US president’s concerns about American jobs.

Analysts say that even though ASEAN countries share US concerns about China, they remain silent about siding more firmly with Washington, given their predominant economic ties with Beijing and limited US economic incentives.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The UN Security Council held emergency closed consultations Thursday on the Taliban’s latest crackdown on Afghan women as it considered a presidential statement that would express deep concern at the new ban by Afghanistan’s rulers on women leaving home “without necessity” and wearing head-to-toe clothing when they do go out in public.

The Norwegian-drafted statement would also call for a reversal of policies that restrict the rights of women and girls.

Taliban hard-liners, who came to power last August, have turned back the clock in Afghanistan to their harsh rule from 1996 until December 2001 when they were ousted from power by US forces following the 9/11 attacks in the United States, with girls and women still the main target.

In addition to Saturday’s new order on leaving home and clothing, girls are now banned from going to school beyond the sixth grade, women are barred from most jobs and from boarding planes if they travel unaccompanied by a male relative, and men and women can only visit public parks on separate days.

Norway’s representative UN ambassador Trine Heimerback told reporters before the council meeting that the Taliban’s policies are focusing on controlling women and girls rather than addressing the country’s “catastrophic economic and humanitarian situation,” which she warned may lead “to violence and radicalization.”

Ireland and Mexico, co-chairs of the Security Council Informal Expert Group on Women, Peace and Security, sent a letter to council members Thursday calling the latest Taliban decision appalling.

It confirms that Afghanistan’s current rulers have “no intention of promoting, respecting or upholding the rights of women and girls, or of honoring the multiple commitments that they have made to Afghan women and to the international community in recent months,” they said.

In addition, the co-chairs said the Taliban’s decision “shows an utter disregard for the council’s clear message that women must play a full, equal and meaningful role in all aspects of public and political life in Afghanistan.”

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Ireland’s UN Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason told reporters women and girls “are now facing some of the harshest restrictions imaginable,” and the international community and the Security Council have “a moral responsibility to act” and condemn Taliban policies that seek to half of Afghanistan’s population.

Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward said that over the last 20 years women had opportunities for education, work, deciding about their own future, and to be part of “a thriving cultural environment.” Before the Taliban took over, she said, 3.6 million girls were in school, a quarter of the seats in parliament were held by women, and women comprised 20% of the workforce.

“And now the Taliban is seeking to strip all of that away,” Woodward said, stressing that women shouldn’t have to accept “a life banished to the sidelines.”

She told reporters after Thursday’s closed-door council meeting that ambassadors discussed activities of the UN political mission in Afghanistan, “but really focusing on the situation for women and girls.”

Asked about prospects for the Security Council agreeing on the presidential statement, Woodward said, “I very much hope that very shortly we’ll be able to agree a product that expresses our collective agreement and concern about these latest developments.”

On Thursday, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles towards the sea, just hours after confirming its first-ever coronavirus outbreak.

The short-range missiles were just the latest weapons demonstration, among the over 13 reported launches this year alone.

They are the first missiles to be fired since South Korea’s conservative new president Yoon Suk-yeol took office on Tuesday.

The news also comes amid US President Biden’s scheduled visit to South Korea’s capital next week. Concerns about North Korea’s weapons are expected to be a high-priority topic.

Speaking to the Associated PressEwha Womans University professor Leif-Eric Easley predicted that North Korea’s virus outbreak will incite a period in which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be forced to become “less interested in nuclear or missile tests” and instead more focused on resolving the coronavirus threat.

The professor of international studies also added that “for Pyongyang to publicly admit omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious.”

The state-run Korean Central News Agency confirmed that the virus samples collected Sunday were of the omicron variant. The people tested were from the capital city of Pyongyang, although the number of cases is unknown.

In a state television clip, Kim is seen entering a meeting room with a mask on, only taking it off to speak into a microphone. The rest of the officials present in the room all keep their masks on.

Kim announced that there would be a complete lockdown of cities to stop the spread of the virus. He communicated that control of transmissions was critical to eliminate the spread as quickly as possible.

He assured the public that the country would overcome the outbreak because its government and people were “united as one.”

Even if North Korea implements a strict quarantine model similar to China’s “zero-COVID” policyit is likely to struggle to contain the spread of the fast-spreading omicron variant.

The country’s largely unvaccinated healthcare population of 26 million is predicted to suffer more damages, with its poor than its industrialized nation counterparts, perhaps explaining why Kim has decided to acknowledge the local outbreak, in the hopes of foreign aid.

Featured Image via Al Jazeera English

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When Russian academic Mishaa decided in March to flee his country amid rumors of martial law, his options were limited and expensive.

Cut off from Europe due to the European Union’s ban on Russian aircraft, Mishaa, who comes from the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, looked further east, where many former Soviet republics offer Russians visa-free entry.

“I booked a flight to Armenia because I have many Armenian friends, I was sure there’d be a community here, and you don’t need a visa,” Mishaa told Al Jazeera, who asked to use a pseudonym. “Armenians generally think positively of Russians; There’s less historical tensions than with Georgia, for instance.”

Mishaa paid 40,000 roubles ($599), far more than usual, for his one-way flight to the Armenian capital Yerevan, a trip of less than four hours.

“When I bought tickets for Russia was still in SWIFT, so I could still use my normal bank cards. The price was huge – I paid around 40,000 rubles [$599] for a one-way trip,” he said. “That’s nonsense, something I would never have done in peacetime. Not everyone could actually book flights at that price – not everyone has spare cash or a steady job – so it’s also a question of a certain privilege.”

Now working remotely from Yerevan, Mishaa transfers his wages to Armenia using cryptocurrency, but for the most part, survives on the cash he managed to take before he left.

Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine, international travel for Russians has become expensive, difficult and patchy.

Russian aircraft have been banned from European and North American airspace, while the country’s Boeing and Airbus aircraft face the threat of repossession by Western leasing firms if they leave the country.

“The Russian airlines were forced to ‘steal’ them by the Russian government,” said Viktor Berta, vice president of aviation finance at ACC Aviation in London.

AerCap, the world’s largest leasing firm based in Dublin, Ireland, has filed a $3.5bn insurance claim for more than 100 of its jets stranded in Russia, which account for about five percent of its leased aircraft by value.

Domhnal Slattery, chief executive of the Dublin-headquartered aircraft leasing company Avolon, said in a quarterly financial statement that his company was able to repossess four aircraft earlier this year and will make every effort to recover 10 more still in Russia. Meanwhile, the company acknowledged a $304m loss to write down to zero the value of 10 aircraft that it might never get back.

Even so, Russian airlines have been slowly clawing their way back into international operations to countries that will accept flights.

International flights originating in Russia dropped from 1,126 per week when the war in Ukraine began on February 24 to 181 two weeks later, according to FlightRadar24. By the last week in April, international flights recovered to 379 for the week. Of these, 103 were to Turkey, with most of the remainder to a half-dozen former Soviet republics, including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Russian-built Superjets are using Sochi as a hub for departures to destinations including Turkey, Egypt and Israel on a regular basis, according to FlightRadar24.

The 500 or so Western-built aircraft leased by Russian airlines are mostly not leaving the country because they could be repossessed by Western companies that own them, a Russian aviation expert told Al Jazeera, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

However, the expert said that Russian airlines own some western aircraft outright and also paid off the loans on some others so they can be used in service outside of Russia. Russian airlines could also resort to grounding aircraft to harvest spare parts to keep other aircraft flying, he said.

Some older model Airbus A320s and Boeing 737-800s are being used in international service, according to FlightRadar24, even though Boeing and Airbus are no longer providing spare parts for aircraft based in Russia. Boeing and Airbus have also halted aircraft deliveries to Russia. Still, Russia’s Aeroflot has managed to keep some Boeing A330s in the air and, earlier this month, announced the resumption of regular flights to New Delhi, which has maintained warm relations with Moscow.

Marina, a 25-year-old IT professional from Moscow with a passion for travel, has managed to fly to Sri Lanka, Greece, Cyprus and the UK since the start of the conflict, although it has been far from straightforward.

Marina, who asked to use a pseudonym, had planned to go to Sri Lanka with her boyfriend on February 25, the day after Russia launched its invasion.

“At first we didn’t understand, but once we understood, we decided to go anyway, so if things got really bad, we’ll stay there,” she told Al Jazeera.

While in Sri Lanka, Marina and her partner decided to move to Cyprus, which would require them to travel through Moscow.

Marina and her partner booked tickets to Cyprus, via Bulgaria and Greece, on the same day Russia was kicked out of the SWIFT international payments system, rendering their bank cards practically useless. After turning into a friend at a bank that had not been sanctioned for help, the couple managed to withdraw part of their savings. Since then, they have been carrying around thousands of dollars in cash.

“At the Greek border, they asked us in detail about where we would live and how long we would stay,” she said.

“In Athens itself, there were no particular problems, except for the impossibility of paying by card and walking with ten thousand bucks in your pocket in the dodgy neighborhood where we were staying, which was not fun.”

Mike Sengel of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace industry management consulting firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said Russia’s aviation industry could end up like the one in Iran, “which has been able to maintain a fleet of Western-built aircraft using some back-end measures to keep them flying.”

“Russia has a commercially successful aerospace industry that still employs hundreds of thousands of people,” Stengel told Al Jazeera.

“It has produced aircraft in the past, so there is a history and infrastructure for designing and producing aircraft engines and aircraft components. It won’t be perfect and it would probably result in keeping a skeleton fleet of sorts, but they have a lot of the tools needed to make it work to keep western-built aircraft flying for decades.”

For Russians like Mishaa, who is opposed to the war in Ukraine, the country’s international isolation is at once understandable and troubling.

“The isolation was expected. What did they want? That all the European community will react modestly? I never believed that,” he said.

“I think that sanctions are fair in general, but of course I care about the economic conditions in my home country: how my parents will live there, my brother, my family. Of course sanctions will hit all of society, but it’s a kleptocratic, oligarchical mafia state, and the poor will suffer more.”

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the continent and beyond:

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