Putin’s Security Council chief visits Iran; Mali cuts Kyiv ties over alleged aiding of rebel attack

Mali’s military leadership severed diplomatic ties with Ukraine over its alleged backing of a Malian Tuareg rebel group that carried out an attack in which scores of government troops and Russian-backed mercenaries died.

Hungary would not suffer any oil shortages because of Ukraine’s decision to block the transit of Lukoil’s crude, the chief executive officer of refiner Mol said.

Putin’s Security Council chief visits Iran amid Middle East tension

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu visited Iran for talks with President Masoud Pezeshkian and top officials amid mounting tensions over a possible retaliation attack by the Islamic Republic against Israel for the death of a Hamas leader.

Shoigu (68) would also meet his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Mohammad Bagheri, Russia’s state-run Tass news service reported. Iranian news agencies also reported the planned meetings to discuss regional and international issues.

Iran has threatened to retaliate for last week’s killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, while signalling it wants to avoid all-out war with Israel. Moscow and Tehran have forged closer ties since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Iran supplying drones to aid Putin’s military.

Read more: Iran says it will punish Israel but wants to avoid all-out war

Shoigu, who was defence minister from 2012 until being moved to the security council in May, is regarded as one of Putin’s closest allies. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Shoigu in June for alleged war crimes during the invasion.

Mali cuts Ukraine ties over alleged aiding of rebel attack

Mali’s military leadership severed diplomatic ties with Ukraine over its alleged backing of a Malian Tuareg rebel group that carried out an attack in which scores of government troops and Russian-backed mercenaries died.

Mali took the action after a Ukrainian military intelligence agency spokesperson said his country had assisted the rebels, without providing any details. Those comments showed “Ukraine’s involvement in a cowardly, treacherous and barbaric attack by armed terrorist groups resulting in the death of Malian soldiers”, government spokesperson Abdoulaye Maiga said late on Sunday.

The interview with the intelligence official went viral after it was shared in a post on the Ukrainian Embassy’s Facebook page, including a comment by its ambassador to Senegal “who openly and unequivocally displayed his country’s support for international terrorism”, said Maiga. The support “violates Mali’s sovereignty, going beyond the scope of foreign interference, amounting to support for international terrorism”.

Read more: Russia’s Wagner suffers most casualties since deploying to Mali

The post has since been deleted and couldn’t be independently verified. The embassy declined to comment when reached by phone on Monday. A spokesman for the rebels in Mali didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment.

Senegal’s foreign minister on Friday summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Yurii Pyvovarov over a video it said the embassy had posted on its Facebook page in which Pyvovarov “provided unequivocal and unqualified support for the terrorist attack carried out” in Mali.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Monday the decision to cut ties was “short-sighted” and “hasty”, calling in a Monday statement for a thorough investigation into the incident in northern Mali.

More than two dozen mercenaries from the Russia-backed Wagner Group and Malian soldiers were killed last month while fighting rebels in northern Mali, according to a pro-Kremlin news source. They suffered what was probably the group’s biggest death toll since 2021 — the year Wagner deployed to the West African nation to reinforce ties with the military-run government that’s been fighting a decade-long Islamist insurgency in which thousands of people had died and hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced.

Ukraine’s Lukoil sanctions ‘unlikely to cause shortage’ 

Hungary would not suffer any oil shortages because of Ukraine’s decision to block the transit of Lukoil’s crude, the chief executive officer of refiner Mol said.

“Let’s not cause panic,” Zsolt Hernadi, chairman and CEO, told a conference in a recording shared by the Budapest-based company on Monday. “I don’t think this will lead to an actual shortage.”

That contradicts assertions by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government and Slovakia, which called on the European Union to help resolve the situation. The EU rebuffed those concerns, saying Ukraine’s hardening of sanctions against the Russian producer would not affect transit operations by trading companies using the Druzhba pipeline.

Hungary has 90 days of strategic reserves and can also buy Russian crude via Croatia, Hernadi said at the conference on Friday. The nation was better off having more options for importing crude, he said.

Read more: EU rebuffs Hungary request for meeting on Lukoil transit ban

Hungary has been reluctant to diversify its oil supplies, claiming without evidence that costs would be significantly higher to import from alternatives such as Croatia.

Hungary and Slovakia, both landlocked nations that obtained exemptions from EU energy sanctions on Russia, each get at least a third of their crude supplies from Lukoil.

Gas carrier faking its location helps Russia avoid sanctions

A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker that’s docked at a sanctioned Russian gas facility has no known insurer, is managed by a little-known Indian company and is pretending to be somewhere else.

Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, identified the ship recently docked at the Arctic LNG 2 export plant as the Pioneer vessel, citing deck appearance and dimensions. He also said it was sending signals showing it was 1,300km away, a move known as spoofing – a classic hallmark of a shadow fleet.

The Pioneer is part of a suspected “dark fleet” of LNG vessels being amassed by Moscow to carry gas shipments to willing buyers, which is similar to a group of ships assembled to carry Russian oil. Satellite images taken on 1 August showed an LNG tanker at the Arctic facility, which had been struggling to start exports due to Western restrictions, for the first time.

Pioneer is currently managed by Ocean Speedstar Solutions, according to Equasis, a global shipping database. The company was incorporated in June and has a registered address about 150km outside Mumbai, according to India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Pioneer is owned by Zara Shipholding, which lists the same address as Ocean Speedstar, according to Equasis.

The US imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 plant in November to prevent the start of exports. While the facility began production in December, no fuel has so far been shipped as restrictions kept foreign companies away and stopped delivery of specialised, ice-ready carriers. DM