City Moscow Financial News

Biden has two main jobs on Ukraine at next week's NATO summit, but there's a hitch: they take him in opposite directions. The US president will arrive in Lithuania late Monday on a mission to stoke NATO support for Ukraine while simultaneously pouring cold water on dreams of quickly bringing Ukraine into the alliance.

Putin emerged from last month's Wagner mutiny looking weakened, despite defusing the immediate threat, according to analysts. The short-lived and ultimately aborted revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin's mercenary force marked the most dramatic challenge ever to Putin's rule. The Belarus-brokered deal to halt Wagner's march toward Moscow saw off a major clash, yet now that agreement seems to be in question.

Prigozhin is still in Russia, Belarus's president said on Thursday, despite a deal with the Kremlin for him to move to Belarus following his failed insurrection last month. «As far as Prigozhin is concerned, he is in Saint Petersburg… He is not in Belarus,» Alexander Lukashenko told reporters from foreign media outlets. Lukashenko said that fighters from Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group have also not moved to Belarus yet, despite an offer from the Kremlin for those who took part in the failed mutiny to do so. «At the moment the question of their transfer and set-up has not been decided,» Lukashenko said. «I am absolutely not worried or concerned that we will host a certain number of these fighters here,» he added.

Europe's Ariane 5 rocket on Wednesday blasted off from French Guiana for the final time, carrying two military communications satellites and leaving its nations with a vacuum in autonomous access to space for the first time in more than four decades. The 53-metre-tall, three-stage launcher left the launchpad in the French spaceport of Kourou on its 117th and final mission at 7 p.m.

Oil rose as traders weighed Saudi Arabian and Russian production cuts after a slew of low-volume trading sessions.

Capital controls have helped insulate the rouble against geopolitics in the 16 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, but mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's aborted march toward Moscow on June 24 has reverberated through markets and raised questions about President Vladimir Putin's grip on power. By 1315 GMT, the rouble was 1.7% weaker against the dollar at 90.54, earlier hitting 91.0675, its weakest point since March 28, 2022. It lost 1.6% to trade at 98.76 versus the euro, earlier passing the 99 mark for the first time in more than 15 months, and shed 1.2% against the yuan to 12.49, a more than 14-month low.

Ukrainian leaders lashed out at Unilever this week as a new Russian law compelled it to contribute to ongoing war efforts. The Ukraine Solidarity Project led protests against the company on Monday, placing it on a 'sponsors of war' list alongside Procter & Gamble and the French supermarket group Leroy Merlin. The developments came after it was revealed that Unilever had paid Moscow $331 million in taxes last year.

Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, criticising what Moscow says are obstacles to its export of agricultural products.

President Vladimir Putin says that the Russian people were “united as never before” as he sought to project confidence in the wake of a short-lived revolt at a meeting of a rare international organization where he can find a sympathetic audience

Vladimir Putin claimed Tuesday that the Russian people were «united as never before,» as he sought to project confidence in the wake of a short-lived revolt, at a meeting of a rare international organization where he can find a sympathetic audience. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, hosted via videoconference by India, was Putin's first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia and comes as he is eager to show that the West has failed to isolate Moscow over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian military says it has fended off a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow that prompted authorities to briefly close one of the city's airports

Vladimir Putin reassured Asian leaders of Russia's stability and unity on Tuesday in his first appearance at an international forum since the country was rocked by a brief armed mutiny last month. «The Russian people are consolidated as never before,» Putin told a virtual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group that also includes China and India. «Russian political circles and the whole of society clearly demonstrated their unity and elevated sense of responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland when they responded as a united front against an attempted armed mutiny.» Putin's emphasis on Russia's unity at a meeting with key allies appeared to show how keen he is to remove any doubts about his own authority on the world stage after the short-lived mutiny led by Wagner mercenary founder Yevgeny Prigozhin late last month. Wagner fighters took control of a southern city and advanced towards Moscow on June 24, confronting Putin with the gravest challenge to his hold on power since taking over as Russia's paramount leader on the last day of 1999.

SCO) on Tuesday will hold an online summit hosted by India seeking to expand the influence of the Eurasian group by including Iran and opening a path to membership for Belarus. China's President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will participate in the virtual summit, which will be Putin's first appearance at an international event since the short-lived mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group in late June.

Brent crude futures were up 22 cents, or 0.3%, at $74.87 a barrel by 0033 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude were at $70.06, up 27 cents, or 0.3%.

Investing.com — Right on cue, the Saudis came out to say their million-barrel cut for July will be extended to August and possibly September — maybe even infinitely. The Russians talked up their cuts too. But the announcements coincided with particularly bad global factory activity, sending crude prices lower.

The recent mutiny in Russia revealed cracks in President Vladimir Putin’s regime and raised hopes in the West that his days in power were numbered. There are two reasons for caution: Autocrats have remarkable staying power and only rarely are replaced by a democratic government. Images of hundreds of heavily armed men rumbling in a convoy toward Moscow raised the possibility that the man who launched the Ukraine war and has dominated Russian politics for more than two decades could lose power.

Saudi Arabia on Monday said it would extend its voluntary cut of one million barrels per day (bpd) for another month to include August, the state news agency said. Russia, seeking to nudge up global oil prices in concert with Saudi Arabia, will reduce its oil exports by 500,000 bpd in August, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday, further tightening global supplies. The cuts amount to 1.5% of global supply and bring the total pledged by OPEC+ oil producers to 5.16 million bpd.

Narendra Modi will host Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russia counterpart Vladimir Putin, Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif and other leaders of the SCO nations at a virtual summit of the bloc on Tuesday that is expected to focus on regional security situation and ways to boost connectivity and trade. It will be Putin's first participation in a multilateral summit after a mercenary group launched a short-lived armed rebellion last week that rocked Moscow. The summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) under India's presidency is also set to welcome Iran as the new permanent member of the grouping. The situation in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict and enhancing cooperation among the SCO member countries are expected to figure in the summit, people familiar with the matter said, adding boosting connectivity and trade is also likely to be discussed. The summit is also taking place against the backdrop of the over three-year eastern Ladakh border standoff between Indian and Chinese troops, and two weeks after Prime Minister Modi's high-profile visit to the US. The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc and has emerged as one of the largest transregional international organisations.

Japan has excluded from sanctions three Russian energy projects in which Japanese companies are actively participating, according to an announcement posted to the website of the country’s Economy Ministry. According to the announcement, the exemption will cover projects deemed critical to Japan's energy security.

Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday. «In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine,» Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.

Russia's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva said there were no grounds to maintain the «status quo» of the Black Sea grain deal that is set to expire on July 18, the Russian news outlet Izvestia reported on Monday. In a wide ranging interview, envoy Gennady Gatilov told the outlet that the implementation of Russia's conditions for the extensions of the agreement was «stalling.» Those conditions included, among others, the reconnection of the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) to the SWIFT banking payment system.