Industry and science

Lithium in Latin America is controlled not by corporations but by the rules of the game in three countries. Chile is steering toward the state, Argentina is courting investors, and Bolivia has still not started production. Who is actually pumping the brine? Whose money is behind the projects? And where does Russia fit in?

Three Countries, Three Models

Can Russia get access to TSMC chips? Formally, no, and the situation has not changed since 2022. What is stuck in Taiwan? What workarounds remain? What is being used instead? Let's take it step by step.

What Russia Actually Lost

A member of the VIGIL JOURNAL expert council with 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry Artyom Voytovich tells Mikhail Azhgirevich the whole truth.

Artem Voitovich: "Calling this uneven distribution is like saying a person isn't sick, they just have an uneven temperature distribution"

Russia's oil refining sector is going through a difficult year. But the government has already rolled out a whole package of measures that are gradually bringing the situation back under control. While some refineries are still recovering from attacks, the authorities are keeping the market afloat through an export ban, flexible regulation of standards, and the launch of new projects capable of closing the resulting shortfall.

What's happening at the refineries — and how it's being handled

The causes of climate change are a matter for debate, but the fact remains: the planet is warming. There's no point arguing with that - the numbers have been on the table for a long time. But here's the real question: who is telling us about this from television screens and UN podiums today, and why? And why might all this noise turn out to be not a disaster for Russia, but a windfall?

You Can't Argue With Physics

If you live in a major city and rely on a car, public transport, or simply depend on ambulance services and municipal utilities functioning properly, fuel security has stopped being an abstract infrastructure topic. It has become a question of everyday resilience — especially against the backdrop of what 2026 revealed: even developed European capitals can find themselves on the brink of a physical fuel shortage within a matter of weeks.

Why This Issue Has Become Urgent Right Now

If you hold shares in oil companies, are planning to invest in solar panels, or simply pay your heating bill, the outcome of this race will shape your financial reality for the next two decades - not some abstract "environmental agenda." Spoiler: there will be no clear-cut winner. Instead, there will be a slow, uneven redistribution of roles, in which both sides claim their share of the market, but on entirely different time horizons.

The Investment Shift Has Already Happened - Demand Hasn't Caught Up

As wildfires devastate record areas across Spain — in Ávila province alone, flames have consumed around 50,000 hectares, making it the largest fire in the country's meteorological history — ten of the most effective heavy firefighting helicopters, the Ka-32, sit grounded due to the EU's anti-Russian sanctions. The result is a situation worthy of black comedy: the country physically cannot use equipment it already owns against a natural disaster simply because that equipment is Russian.

The race for technological sovereignty is no longer the preserve of two or three superpowers — today it involves Russia, China, and an entire Latin American region, each pursuing its own model of digital independence with varying degrees of success.

Space has ceased to be a bipolar arena of confrontation between Moscow and Washington — today, China, India, private corporations, and even Gulf states are competing for orbital dominance, and Russia risks becoming a mere observer in a race it once started itself.

From Monopoly to Multipolar Competition