Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea and Vietnam in rare trips to long-time partners as he faces renewed challenges in his war on Ukraine.
France’s political turmoil is causing concern in some European Union capitals that initiatives like joint military spending and a fresh push to support Ukraine could fall by the wayside.
Sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov sued a German unit of the UBS Group over anti-money laundering reports that he claims triggered an illegal criminal investigation against him.
President Vladimir Putin dismissed four deputy defence ministers and appointed two people with close ties to the Kremlin elite as he continued a shake-up of Russia’s wartime leadership.
Putin to visit North Korea, Vietnam as war in Ukraine stalls
Putin will visit North Korea and Vietnam in rare trips to long-time partners as he faces renewed challenges in his war on Ukraine.
Putin will travel to North Korea from 18-19 June and go on to Vietnam from 19-20 June, according to Kremlin statements published Monday.
The trip to North Korea will be Putin’s first since 2000. It comes as Kim Jong-un’s regime is suspected of sending missiles and millions of rounds of munitions to help Putin in his grinding assault on Ukraine. With Kyiv now taking delivery of billions of dollars in fresh arms from its US and European allies, the window for a Russian breakthrough is narrowing.
North Korea possesses some of the largest stores of artillery and weapons that are interoperable with Soviet-era systems deployed on the frontlines in Ukraine. Satellite imagery indicates the arms transfers picked up momentum after Kim visited Putin in September, when the North Korean leader toured Russian weapons plants. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the arms transfers despite ample evidence showing them taking place.
Read more: Why Putin’s bond with Kim is a danger to the world: QuickTake
“I believe Kim and Putin will pick up from where they left off when Kim was in Russia in September 2023 and seek to further upgrade the bilateral relationship across many, if not all, realms,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow with the 38 North Program at the Stimson Center. She added this may mean the leaders upgrading a treaty adopted in 2000 to include stronger language about military and security cooperation.
“For as long as the war in Ukraine continues, North Korea-Russia relations will remain solid. What the relationship will look like after the war in Ukraine is over, that is harder to predict,” said Lee, who worked as an analyst for the CIA’s Open Source Enterprise for almost two decades.
For months, Russia’s army has made only limited gains on the battlefield against Ukrainian troops that were running low on weapons.
Read more: Putin is running out of time to achieve breakthrough in Ukraine
Kim, meanwhile, has presided over tests of some of his newest artillery rockets and ballistic missile systems. South Korean Defence Minister Shin Wonsik has said the weapons displays may have been intended to impress Putin by showing him what North Korea could provide for his assault on Ukraine.
In return for the munitions from Kim’s regime that could reach as high as nearly five million artillery shells, Russia has sent to North Korea technology to help in its plans to deploy an array of spy satellites as well as conventional arms such as tanks and aircraft, Shin said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Russia is likely to send military technology to Kim, increasing Pyongyang’s threat to the region, Shin added.
Russia and North Korea plan to sign an agreement on strategic partnership, including on security and economic cooperation during Putin’s visit that will replace existing accords dating back as far as 1961, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to the state-run Tass news agency.
The stakes for Putin’s visit to Vietnam are likely to be lower. He last went there in 2017, when the nation hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in the coastal city of Danang.
Vietnam and Russia have ties going back decades to the Soviet Union. Moscow was a major supplier of military aid to Vietnam during its war with the US. The Southeast Asian nation has since relied on Russia for weapons, including aircraft and Kilo-class, diesel-powered submarines.
Relations between Vietnam and Russia have stayed warm, with Moscow also a key stakeholder in Vietnam’s energy sector. Vietsovpetro, a joint venture between Vietnam and Russia, runs one of the country’s largest oil fields in Bach Ho, which has been in operation for about four decades.
Macron’s struggles have Europe fretting over defence and Ukraine
France’s political turmoil is causing concern in some European Union capitals that initiatives like joint military spending and a fresh push to support Ukraine could fall by the wayside.
Doubts are growing over beefing up EU defence outlays through collective financing — an idea that President Emmanuel Macron backs strongly, according to people familiar with the matter. There’s also a fear that the snap legislative elections he called this month will undermine his role as one of Kyiv’s top cheerleaders, including his plan to dispatch army trainers to Ukraine.
Ever since he celebrated his first election victory in 2017 with the European anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Macron has been among the leading advocates for a stronger, more unified EU. But he’s also struggled to bring both other leaders and voters along with him, and in a landmark speech earlier this year, he warned that the European project itself is at risk.
At home, his party and its allies are now some distance behind both far-right and left-wing rivals in polls. If Marine Le Pen’s National Rally can extend its lead to cement a majority, it would pose a fundamental challenge to EU leaders, who were meeting Monday in Brussels to discuss how to stiffen their response to Russian aggression.
The president is the head of the military in France but the state budget is presented by the government, run by the prime minister and approved by parliament, which could end up with its lower house being dominated by parties with very different priorities following the two rounds of voting set for June 30 and July 7.
Macron’s gamble leaves a question mark over additional EU defence spending, for which he’d sought options for leaders to assess at next week’s summit, a person familiar with the matter said. Those options were likely to come from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in the coming days, according to another person, who said joint borrowing was still being discussed and may be omitted given strong resistance from frugal nations and the fact France’s position is now weaker.
Everyone is looking at France and considering the potential impact on EU policies, another person said. All asked not to be identified talking about private discussions.
On the push to place military personnel in Ukraine side, doubts are also emerging. While Lithuania is ready to provide instructors alongside other partners, should Ukraine request such help, Latvia remains undecided.
France’s own financing is a concern, too. While it adopted a military-spending bill last year that runs from 2024 to 2030, some defence equipment pledges made since remain unfunded. Questions could also arise over Macron’s promise to provide Ukraine with as much as €3-billion in aid this year, depending on the election results, people familiar with the matter said.
Russian tycoon Usmanov sues UBS over money laundering alerts
Sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov sued a German unit of the UBS Group over anti-money laundering reports that he claims triggered an illegal criminal investigation against him.
The Russian tycoon filed the suit at the Frankfurt Regional Court on June 7, his lawyers said in a statement on Monday. The suit claims the bank’s reports — filed from 2018-2022 — wrongly pointed to potentially suspicious financial transactions.
A Frankfurt court spokeswoman said that while the tribunal received the filing, Usmanov hadn’t yet paid the legal fees needed to get the case going. As a consequence, UBS hadn’t received notice of the action, she said.
The tycoon was sanctioned by the US, European Union and the UK after Russia invaded Ukraine. He is among dozens of billionaires, including Roman Abramovich, and family members who’ve flocked to the bloc’s top courts in an attempt to extricate themselves from the list and have their funds unfrozen — with little success.
In 2022, German authorities carried out nationwide raids of properties linked to Usmanov as part of a probe looking into sanctions violations because he allegedly kept — and paid security staff to look after — a luxury compound in Bavaria.
UBS’s Frankfurt and Munich offices were searched by prosecutors as part of the probe. A Frankfurt court later ruled that the Usmanov-linked search warrants were illegal.
Usmanov founded USM, a Russia-based investment group that controls Metalloinvest, Russia’s largest iron ore producer. He is Russia’s seventh-richest person with a net worth of almost $19-billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On top of Russian citizenship, he is also an honorary citizen of Uzbekistan, where he was born.
Putin expands defence shuffle, appoints allies from inner circle
Putin dismissed four deputy defence ministers and appointed two people with close ties to the Kremlin elite as he continued a shake-up of Russia’s wartime leadership.
Putin named Anna Tsivileva and Pavel Fradkov as deputies to Defence Minister Andrey Belousov in an order published on Monday. Tsivileva has been named as a relative of Putin in UK government sanctions, while Fradkov’s father is former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who headed Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service for nine years.
A third appointee, Leonid Gornin, was named first deputy defence minister responsible for overseeing finance at the ministry. He served previously as Russia’s first deputy finance minister.
Putin ousted long-serving Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in favour of Belousov, an economist, after his inauguration in May for a fifth term following the March presidential election. He said the new minister’s key task was to improve the effectiveness of military spending on the battlefield. A series of high-profile detentions of top defence officials on corruption allegations have followed the appointment.
Talks to rework Ukraine $20bn debt fail to yield deal
The first formal talks on restructuring more than $20-billion of Ukraine’s international bonds ended without a deal as the creditors pushed back against Kyiv’s proposal for debt relief.
With bond payments set to resume this summer, Ukraine is asking debt holders to accept bigger losses that would allow it to finance its defence efforts against Russian aggression and prepare financial resources for economic reconstruction once the war ends.
“As we approach the deadline, we must urge our bondholders to continue productive and good-faith negotiations, with more substantial debt relief to be reflected in their proposals in line with the IMF parameters and Ukraine’s current macro-financial situation,” Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said in a statement on Monday.
The talks between Ukraine and a group of bondholders began two weeks ago with private creditors signing non-disclosure agreements to allow for the sharing of sensitive non-public information. Bondholders haven’t received any payments from Ukraine since 2022, when they agreed to a two-year moratorium after Russia invaded. The standstill expires on 1 August.
In a separate statement, the ad-hoc creditors’ group said they were committed to finding a deal, although they considered the haircut proposed by the government to be “significantly in excess of market expectation, which is consistent with a 20% haircut.”
Kyiv said it would continue discussions “with a view to making further progress and reaching an agreement in principle at the earliest opportunity”.
In the talks, Ukraine proposed exchanging its outstanding bonds for a series of new bonds with maturities up to 2040 and interest payments starting at 1% for the first 18 months, then progressively increasing to 6%.
The government also offered investors a so-called state contingency instrument that could begin payments only after 2027. Payments on that instrument would be related to Ukraine’s tax revenue targets set by the International Monetary Fund.
“Both options have been designed to deliver holders cash flows during the IMF programme period and provide for a nominal haircut ranging between 25 and 60% depending on the country’s recovery over the IMF program period,” the statement added.
Both the IMF and the country’s bilateral creditors, which include the US and the Paris Club, signed off on Ukraine’s proposals, according to the government’s statement. Ukraine’s group of official creditors has already extended a debt repayment standstill to 2027.
Ukraine’s global outreach hits wall as summit goals fall short
Volodymyr Zelensky is returning to Kyiv with €50-billion in aid, fresh security guarantees from the US and commitments to help rebuild energy infrastructure for a country battered by more than two years of war.
But the Ukrainian president’s foray to a Swiss mountaintop, where he gathered more than 100 countries and organizations, fell short in his bid to broaden international support. India, Brazil and South Africa, which sent delegates, opted out of signing the summit document. China had made clear it would have no part in it.
The failure to win over nations from the Global South shows that Russia remains far from isolated and that Ukraine’s best hope of fending off the Kremlin’s assault is with Western assistance. Securing their backing — essential to ambitions for a broad global alliance and the main thrust of Kyiv’s diplomatic agenda for almost two years — may be moving beyond reach.
The Ukrainian leader left his war-battered country this month and crisscrossed the globe in preparation for the meeting. He flew to Singapore to recruit Asian governments to his cause — accusing China of undermining the effort with Moscow — and made stops in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. A reconstruction conference in Berlin and the Group of Seven summit in Italy cemented support, especially from Western partners.
The intense diplomatic shuttling culminated with the meeting at the Buergenstock resort in Lucerne — and a nearly 500-word communique that had been narrowed to focus on three issues and to some extent was watered down to win maximum support. Even still, only 83 delegates signed on.
One of the holdouts was Saudi Arabia. A last-minute visit by Zelensky to the kingdom last week, to court Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s support, appeared to pay off when Riyadh sent Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan.
His Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, was seen strolling beside the Saudi top diplomat as delegates entered the Swiss meeting. There was speculation that an expected second summit would take place in Saudi Arabia.
But on Sunday, no Saudi signature came — and the second meeting went unmentioned in the communique text. During the first plenary session, the kingdom’s top diplomat said that Kyiv must be prepared to make a “difficult compromise” to put an end to the conflict.
It was a warning that echoed similar views in the Global South. India’s delegate, Pavan Kapoor, a state secretary in the foreign ministry and former ambassador to Russia, said only options that were “acceptable to both parties” could lead to peace.
Zelensky called the summit a “great success” — and expressed confidence that some non-signatories would still sign after consultations with their governments.
Camille Grand, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said much of the reticence of so-called BRICS nations could be attributed to Russian pressure, with promises of cheap energy, arms and useful votes at the United Nations.
The soft support could add pressure on Zelensky to make concessions. Countries outside the West have made clear that no forum designed to create conditions for peace was workable without the participation of Russia. China and Brazil have put forward a peace plan that involves the participation of both war parties.
Putin added to anxiety a day before the summit with a fresh set of demands — calling on Kyiv forces to withdraw from four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by his military as a condition for talks. Western leaders joined Kyiv in denouncing the ultimatum.
“No country would accept these outrageous terms,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Zelensky had racked up further commitments from Western allies, particularly after the G7 summit. US President Joe Biden hailed the new security pact and the $50-billion in aid as a clear signal to Putin that the US and its allies were not “backing down”.
But the follow-up in Switzerland didn’t garner the full focus of Ukraine’s allies, particularly with many leaders of allied nations facing turmoil at home. Biden skipped the Lucerne meeting, opting for a campaign fundraiser with the Hollywood elite in Los Angeles, and sent Vice-President Kamala Harris, who left after the first day. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also left early.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had offered Zelensky a warm greeting as she hosted the G7 meeting, was absent for the first plenary session, only arriving early on Sunday.
Russia set to begin trial of reporter Evan Gershkovich on 26 June
Russia set 26 June for the opening of an espionage trial against imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a step that may hasten negotiations for a possible swap deal.
The trial behind closed doors will take place at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, the court’s press service said in a statement on Monday. Gershkovich (32) and the newspaper have denied Russia’s accusations that he was spying when he was detained by Federal Security Service agents in the city in March last year.
The State Department has formally determined that he is “wrongfully detained”, allowing the US to negotiate on his behalf. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the state-run Tass news service shortly after Gershkovich’s arrest that talks on a possible exchange “could only be considered after a court verdict”.
Top shipping flag cuts approval for sanctioned Russian insurer
The world’s largest shipping register withdrew its approval for Russia’s Ingosstrakh Insurance to provide a key document enabling ships to enter ports.
The Liberian Register — under whose flag 16% of the world’s ships by capacity sail — said in a circular that it no longer authorises Moscow-based Ingosstrakh Insurance to issue so-called blue cards. Blue cards provide proof of cover against risks including oil spills and collisions. They are essential for port entry.
Last week, the UK sanctioned Ingosstrakh as part of a set of wide-ranging Group of Seven measures designed to target Russia as it continues its war in Ukraine. The firm has become an important provider of cover against spills and collisions for Russian oil exports, effectively displacing Western entities.
In practice, the Liberian Trgister’s move may well prove symbolic. There are only three vessels covered by Ingosstrakh that sail under the flag of Liberia and none of them are oil tankers, according to a vessel database maintained for the International Maritime Organization. However, the move reinforces a growing divide between the parts of the global shipping fleet that are able to serve Russia and those that can’t.
Despite its name, the Liberian register is headquartered in the US. National shipping registries are a common feature of the international shipping industry, applying common sets of rules that vessels must stick to in order to fly a nation’s flag.
Maimed Ukrainian power system may get more European bank support
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is studying increased support to help Ukraine overcome a critical shortage of electricity as a third winter in wartime approaches.
Russian attacks have destroyed 80% of coal-fired power output and a third of hydro generation, forcing Ukraine to impose sweeping blackouts for households and businesses. The central bank has cut borrowing costs three times and lowered the growth outlook in part because of attacks on energy plants.
The EBRD this month earmarked €300-million to help state-owned energy companies repair damaged facilities and build new decentralised generation capacity. The funding may yet increase, according to the London-based lender’s president.
“It is sort of a beginning, a starting point, it can be higher,” Odile Renaud-Basso said in an interview in Kyiv. “We are exploring how we can provide support and develop the electricity generation system,” with private companies also being able to qualify for funding.
The EBRD would continue its support of €1.5-billion to €2-billion a year for infrastructure, energy security, recovery and modernisation, she said. After Russia moved away from primarily attacking energy networks to destroying electricity plants, “businesses need to get more diversified in supplies”, Renaud-Basso said. DM