Ukraine Financial News

It’s been a rough year so far for stocks. The S&P 500 is off to its worst start since 1970 and its third-worst ever, falling briefly into a bear market last week, and the picture gets more grim depending on which way you turn.

McCullagh has served as chair since January 2020, sitting on the board since 2013. Credit: WBCSD

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.

By Andy Bruce

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.

S Jaishankar said on Monday. Interacting with the students of NIT Delhi as part of the BJP's mega public outreach to mark nine years of the Narendra Modi government, Jaishankar advised them to understand local and global developments.

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.

TotalEnergies and Shell on Sunday defended activities linked to Russia after a critical report into their trading in natural gas despite the war in Ukraine. The campaign group Global Witness said TotalEnergies was the third-biggest player in Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) last year and Shell the fourth, behind two Russian companies.

Wagner boss of «going off the rails» after receiving billions in public funds, as Moscow's new narrative takes shape after Wagner's brief mutiny. Last weekend the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led his forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia's top military brass, in a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin. «Prigozhin has gone off the rails because of big money,» Dmitry Kiselev, one of the main faces of the Russian propaganda machine, said on his weekly television show on Sunday.

Joe Biden has scheduled a diplomatic trip to Europe this month with stops in the United Kingdom, at the NATO summit in Lithuania and for meetings in Finland, the White House said Sunday. Biden is set to depart July 9 for «engagements» with the UK's King Charles III and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the White House said in a statement.

Russia launched a drone attack early Sunday on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, officials said. It was the first such attack of the war in 12 days. All of the Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones were detected and shot down, according to Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv city administration.

commerce ministry has called a meeting of exporters on Monday to take stock of the situation, as the country's outbound shipments have been contracting for the last four months, an official said. Exporters are expected to flag issues like extending greater support to participate in global exhibitions and fairs; expediting negotiations to conclude free trade agreements with the UK, Canada, Israel and GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council); and allowing industry double weighted deduction on salary to professionals to retain talent in India.

inflation cooled in the US and quickened in Europe, according to the latest readings, while central bankers in both regions signaled they’re prepared to raise interest rates further. In China, where the economy was expected to stage a huge rebound this year, the problems just keep piling up. On top of weak consumer spending and a housing slump, holiday tourism moderated last month and industrial profits are still plunging. Here are some of the charts that appeared on Bloomberg this week on the latest developments in the global economy:

Shortly after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, hundreds of aging tankers were snapped up by a cohort of faceless traders, intermediaries and investors to keep Russian oil flowing. By some estimates, the purchases, which added to vessels that were already transporting crude for Venezuela and Iran, created a more than 900-strong dark fleet. Now, the average age of the ships being purchased is declining, according to data from VesselsValue Ltd., a researcher of shipping deals.

The violence erupted just after Macron finally saw off half a year of protests over his controversial pension reform, which dominated the domestic agenda for most of this year. But the images of shops ransacked and buses burned across the country also risk hurting Macron's international standing at a time he wants to play an instrumental role in ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine and be seen as Europe's number one powerbroker.

Europe's Euclid space telescope is scheduled to blast off Saturday on the first-ever mission aiming to shed light on two of the universe's greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. The launch is planned from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 11:12 am local time (1512 GMT) on a Falcon 9 rocket of the US company SpaceX. The European Space Agency was forced to turn to billionaire Elon Musk's firm to launch the mission after Russia pulled its Soyuz rockets in response to sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops are advancing in all directions of their counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, a senior defence official said on Friday.

European Union leaders are set on Friday to commit to reducing the bloc's dependence on China and debate how to strike the balance between "de-risking" and engaging in areas such as climate change. «This is the million euro question,» Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told reporters on his arrival at the two-day summit in Brussels on Thursday. «We need to de-risk and that means being able to step back to some degree because geopolitically the apparently growing relationship between China and Russia is a potential problem for all of us,» he said.

Pakistan in badly needed relief to help bail out the impoverished country's ailing economy. The nine-month agreement must be approved by the IMF's Executive Board, which is expected to make a final decision in mid-July, a top IMF official, Nathan Porter, said in a statement late Thursday.

British Airways (BA), the national carrier of the UK is one of the largest airlines in the world. Sean Doyle who has been with BA for 20 years took over as CEO in Oct-2020. In this interview with Arindam Majumder, Doyle speaks on the recovery from pandemic and its growth plans in India.