City Moscow Financial News

Ukraine’s failure to secure an invitation to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) during the alliance’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, has disappointed many, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But although the summit’s concluding statement did not offer a definitive timetable for Ukrainian accession, it did demonstrate a degree of unity and strategic foresight that would have been impossible had Donald Trump still been president of the US. To be sure, Nato leaders’ promise to extend an official invitation to Ukraine “when Allies agree and conditions are met" was somewhat nebulous, and Zelensky, angered by the ambiguity, criticized the Western position as “unprecedented and absurd." But US President Joe Biden was right to suggest that the war must end before Ukraine is allowed to join.

Military Cooperation of the Indian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Military and Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-M&MTC) is being held at Manekshaw Centre in Delhi on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the issue of spare parts and maintenance issue of Russian origin defence equipment used by India. The meeting is being chaired by Lt Gen Johnson P Mathew, CISC HQ IDS from the Indian side and Lt Gen Dylevskii Igor Nikolaevich, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from the Russian side.

Russia's FSB security service said on Tuesday it had arrested a Russian woman it suspected of collecting information on a «critical infrastructure facility» at the order of Ukraine's intelligence services. It did not name the facility, but a surveillance video which Russian media said was taken by the FSB showed the suspect using her phone to film near a hydroelectric power plant in the town of Uglich in Russia's Yaroslavl region north of Moscow. She is then shown being arrested in her office by masked FSB and police agents. A court on Saturday ordered the suspect to be detained for two months, the RIA news agency reported. Baza, a Russian news outlet which sometimes publishes material from the FSB, released a message exchange between the suspect and a purported Ukrainian coordinator in which the woman agrees to supply the map coordinates of local railway lines, military recruitment offices and the hydroelectric plant. In the exchange, the authenticity of which Reuters was not able to verify, the suspect writes of wanting Ukrainian drones to strike deep inside Russia in order to undermine support for President Vladimir Putin.

Russia halted an unprecedented wartime deal on Monday that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty.

By Abdi Sheikh and Aaron Ross

By Guy Faulconbridge

Several media reports of late have said that Pakistan has been supplying weapons to Ukraine for that country’s resistance against the Russian invasion. Most such reports seem to originate from the Indian media but there is the occasional non-Indian source that goes into some detail about such transfers.  Pakistan’s defence relationship with Ukraine, over three decades old, is valued at some$1.6 billion but the flow has largely been towards Pakistan, in the form of T-80 UD battle tanks. It is these tanks, and some artillery ammunition, that Pakistan is suspected of sending to Ukraine.

food crisis amid the Ukraine-Russia war hit a stumbling block on Monday as Moscow backed out of a UN-brokered deal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call that the Black Sea agreements which allowed export of Ukrainian grain had ‘ceased to be valid today’. The development came mere hours after it accused Ukraine attacking the Crimean Bridge.

By Alex Lawler

Oil prices dipped for a second session on Monday after Libya resumed production over the weekend while China, the world's largest crude importer, is expected to release economic data showing that its post-pandemic recovery is fizzling out. Brent crude futures fell 57 cents, or 0.7%, to $79.30 a barrel by 0055 GMT while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $74.90 a barrel, down 52 cents, or 0.7%.

Vladimir Putin said Kyiv's counteroffensive, launched last month to push back Moscow's forces, was failing.Ukraine began its highly anticipated fightback after stockpiling Western weapons and building up its offensive forces. «All enemy attempts to break through our defences… they have not succeeded since the offensive began.

On 8 July, Ukraine marked its 500th day of holding out against Russia, whose openly revanchist bid to keep Kyiv aligned—and Black Sea access secure—was foiled with such hardy resolve that the war-torn country’s will to embrace the West was left in little doubt. Relations between the two ex-Soviet republics had snapped chiefly over Kyiv’s interest in joining the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), a mutual defence pact whose nuclear umbrella covers most of the rich West. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed its Nordic neighbours Sweden and Finland to seek the same security.

Reuters reported. Ukraine has received cluster bombs from the United States, munitions banned in more than 100 countries.

Ukraine from attacking the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on Sunday, destroying seven aerial and two underwater drones. «This morning, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by seven unmanned aerial vehicles and two unmanned underwater vehicles on objects on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula near the city of Sevastopol was thwarted,» the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was «eager» to work with China on areas of mutual interest, including debt restructurings for poorer countries, and that multilateral development banks needed reforms before capital increases could be considered. In remarks prepared for a press conference before a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in India, Yellen said her visit to Beijing last week helped put the U.S.-China relationship on «surer footing» and that the world's two biggest economies had an obligation to the world «to cooperate on areas of mutual concern».

By David Lawder and Aftab Ahmed

(Reuters) -Fighters from the Wagner group have arrived in Belarus from Russia, Ukrainian and Polish officials said on Saturday, a day after Minsk said the mercenaries were training the country's soldiers southeast of the capital.

(Reuters) -A Moscow court on Saturday issued criminal charges against seven people «motivated by national hatred» to kill two prominent Russian journalists in a Ukrainian-backed plot, Russia's state-owned TASS news agency said.

Russia and Ukraine is beyond the remit of the G20 and such efforts will be best undertaken by the United Nations and through bilateral negotiations, India's sherpa to the bloc said Saturday. «Our view is that G20 is an economic forum, not a forum to discuss security issues,» India's sherpa Amitabh Kant told Reuters in an interview.

US President Joe Biden has cracked a joke after media reports suggested that Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin could be in danger for carrying out an attempted mutiny last month against Russian President Vladimir Putin and briefly capturing Moscow's military facility. In a press conference in Helsinki, Biden said, "If I were he I’d be careful what I ate...I would keep an eye on my menu". The joke was a reference to high-profile instances of Russian security services using nerve agents and polonium to poison and kill political enemies of President Vladimir Putin.

Syria across the Middle East. Speaking to Pentagon reporters, the official said the US will send F-16 fighter jets to the Gulf region this weekend to augment the A-10 attack aircraft that have been patrolling there for more than a week.