Russia will loosen restrictions on the way foreign countries must pay for its fossil fuels in order to circumvent new sanctions imposed by Washington on a leading bank. In an order published Thursday, President Vladimir Putin scrapped requirements for funds to be paid through Gazprombank, which is the target of new U.S. Treasury Department sanctions designed to deprive Moscow of the revenue it is using to continue its war in Ukraine. Since 2022, Russia has demanded European buyers settle their accounts in rubles through the bank, to get around restrictions on it handling dollars and euros. The new rule change…
Author: Gabriel Gavin
Russia is bussing in thousands of voters at overseas polling stations in a bid to influence Sunday’s critical presidential election and EU referendum in Moldova, according to allegations by Moldovan officials. Almost 900,000 people have already voted in the countrywide poll, in which pro-Western President Maia Sandu is seeking re-election to a second term. Citizens are also being asked to cast ballots on joining the EU, with the government pushing for full membership by 2030. However, two polling stations established in Russia to count the votes of Moldovans living in that country have seen huge numbers of people lining up…
Russia is open to a compromise that could see its troops leave Georgia’s Moscow-backed breakaway regions, the country’s top diplomat has claimed. Speaking Sunday at a press conference at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted that an agreement to resolve the decades-long standoff in the South Caucasus country was possible. Georgia’s increasingly authoritarian government has sought closer ties with Moscow in recent years, while relations with the West have soured as a result of crackdowns on the democratic opposition and civil society. That’s despite Moscow’s launching a bloody invasion in 2008 that left around…
More than a hundred Ukrainian soldiers have been freed from captivity in Russia as part of a landmark deal, even as Moscow ramps up threats over Kyiv’s push to strike targets inside the country with Western-made missiles. “Our guys are home,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a statement Saturday, confirming that 83 enlisted soldiers and 21 officers had been released. He thanked negotiators for securing “such good news for Ukraine.” Russia’s Defense Ministry simultaneously reported that 103 Russian servicemen had been handed over by Ukraine in return, and had been transferred by coach to neighboring Belarus. The exchange is…
A long-awaited agreement that could bring peace to the South Caucasus after decades of conflict is close to being completed, Armenia and Azerbaijan have confirmed. In a press conference on Saturday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that his government has made a formal offer to Azerbaijan to sign a peace treaty, after judging that sufficient progress has been made on key issues in bilateral talks in recent months. “We have 17 articles in the latest draft of the peace treaty. Thirteen of them, including the preamble, are fully agreed on,” Pashinyan said. “We offer the following — to take…
The U.S. State Department said it is eyeing measures to clamp down on Iran’s oil exports amid rising worries about Tehran’s vow to take revenge against Israel for the killing of a top Hamas leader. Despite the tightening of sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s economy in recent years, the country’s exports of crude have steadily risen. According to data from analytics firm Kpler, its oil sales rose 30 percent in the last quarter alone, taking its fossil fuel shipments to a five-year high. In comments to POLITICO, a U.S. State Department spokesperson defended the existing restrictions on the trade as…