Russia’s Lavrov praises Trump-Vance political posture; Kyiv and Moscow exchange 190 prisoners

Russia and Ukraine exchanged a total of 190 prisoners in a swap mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the sixth such transfer this year.

Russian ally Belarus has allowed visitors from 35 European countries visa-free access to its territory via land border crossings as the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, attempts to strike a friendlier tone in the face of growing tensions with Western neighbours.

Russia’s top diplomat praises Trump-Vance ticket on Ukraine stance

Russia’s top diplomat signalled a preference for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and especially his running mate JD Vance, praising their vocal interest in cutting a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Although the previous Trump administration imposed “more and more sanctions” on Russia, “at that time, dialogue was under way between us and Washington at the highest levels,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Wednesday. “Right now, there is no such dialogue.”

Trump has said he’ll bring the war to an end even before taking office if he’s elected in November, and vice-presidential nominee Vance has said he opposes any further financial support to Ukraine. It’s a sentiment that has gained favour among many Republicans who criticise the billions spent for weapons and other aid to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

“He’s in favour of peace, in favour of ending the assistance that’s being provided,” Lavrov said of Vance. “And we can only welcome that because that’s what we need — to stop pumping Ukraine full of weapons. And then the war will end, and then we can look for solutions.”

Read more: Trump picking Vance widens rift with foreign policy old guard

The Republican ticket’s stance contrasts with that of President Joe Biden, who said last month that the US and its allies would stand with Ukraine until it wins the conflict with Russia. Biden has overseen the flow of more than $175-billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began, and his administration opposes forcing Kyiv into negotiations that would freeze in place Russia’s occupation of the eastern Donbas region.

Lavrov’s comments follow remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said this month that he believed Trump “sincerely” hoped for an end to the war in Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine exchange 190 prisoners in UAE-brokered deal

Russia and Ukraine exchanged a total of 190 prisoners in a swap mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the sixth such transfer this year.

The Defence Ministry in Moscow said it handed over 95 Ukrainian prisoners and received 95 of its own military personnel. The UAE provided “humanitarian mediation” for the exchange, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday on Telegram. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the swap in a separate post on Telegram and thanked the UAE for its role in the transfer.

The deal brings the total number of captives released with UAE help this year to almost 1,400. The Gulf state has mediated numerous exchanges, not only between Russia and Ukraine but also between Russia and the US. It provided logistical support and the location of the swap when Moscow freed WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner in return for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022.

In early June, President Vladimir Putin said Russia was holding 6,465 Ukrainian prisoners of war and alleged authorities in Kyiv were holding 1,348 Russians.

Belarus expands visa-free regime for Europeans amid tensions

Russian ally Belarus has allowed visitors from 35 European countries visa-free access to its territory via land border crossings as the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, attempts to strike a friendlier tone in the face of growing tensions with Western neighbours.

Starting on Friday, citizens of the EU, UK and several other European countries will be allowed to enter Belarus by rail and road connections for short-term stays of up to 30 days, the Foreign Ministry said on its website. The scheme will run until the end of this year. The ministry’s statement also said that an earlier visa-free regime for European citizens entering via the country’s airports remained in place.

Belarus is under increasing pressure from EU and Nato neighbours Poland, Lithuania and Latvia who accuse the government in Minsk of fomenting a migration crisis on their borders. The country is also at odds with Ukraine after Lukashenko, a longtime supporter of Putin, allowed Russia to use his country as a launchpad for part of the invasion of Belarus’s southern neighbour in February 2022.

Lukoil supply to Hungary halted as Ukraine hardens sanctions

Hungary and Russia were working to resume oil deliveries by Lukoil after tougher sanctions by Ukraine kicked in against the company.

Ukraine last month hardened sanctions against Lukoil that effectively prohibit the firm from using Ukraine as a transit country for its product. Mol, the Hungarian energy company, and the Russian oil firm were working on a solution, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said late on Tuesday following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York.

“There’s now a legal situation in Ukraine based on which Lukoil is not currently delivering to Hungary,” Szijjarto said, without going into detail about what led to a stoppage. “Now we’re working on a legal solution.”

Lukoil is one of several Russian firms supplying crude to Hungary via the southern leg of the Druzhba pipeline in Ukraine, according to industry data. Mol currently relies on Russian supplies for two-thirds of its crude oil, but estimates that it will be able to fully substitute them from 2025, Fitch Ratings said earlier this year.

Hungary has intensified energy ties with Russia even after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, signing several deals to boost natural gas deliveries after Prime Minister Viktor Orbán secured an exemption from European Union energy sanctions.

The government in Budapest has clawed back almost the entire resulting windfall for Mol with a special tax aimed at plugging its budget shortfall.

Russian games make secret tanker oil switching harder to trace

Two near-identical oil tankers trying to beat Western sanctions. A secret transfer of Russian crude halfway between Iran and Oman. A supertanker giving a false location.

Welcome to the modern trade in Russian petroleum as Western sanctions get tougher.

Earlier this month, the supertanker Oxis collected about a million barrels of Russia’s flagship Urals crude from another vessel. The delivering ship was one of two owned and operated by Russia’s state tanker company Sovcomflot, according to TankerTrackers.com, which specialises in detecting secretive cargo movements.

Definitively identifying which one, though, is tricky because the two candidate vessels share the same dimensions and are essentially indistinguishable from above. The manoeuvres show how Russia can work around sanctions, and how challenging it will be to keep a permanent check on the flow of the nation’s oil if it makes increasing use of hidden cargo switches.

But the fact that Russian oil shippers feel the need to go to these lengths also suggests that buyers aren’t willing to openly defy US sanctions by accepting Russian cargoes delivered on sanctioned tankers. That will add to the cost of hauling barrels on those vessels.

The two candidate tankers, both of which have been under sanctions from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control since February, vanished from digital satellite tracking systems weeks ago.

The first, the Bratsk, loaded a cargo of about a million barrels of Urals crude at Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in May, according to shipping information seen by Bloomberg. The second, the Belgorod, did the same thing in early June.

Both were then picked up by automated tracking systems as they left the Black Sea through Turkey’s Bosphorus shipping strait and were tracked on their voyages across the Indian Ocean to locations south of India, where automated tracking signals stopped.

The Bratsk vanished from tracking on June 13, the Belgorod 11 days later.

Both have the same length and breadth, share the same reddish-orange deck colour and have indistinguishable pipework. Importantly though, there are no vessels outside of the Sovcomflot fleet that share their characteristics, according to Samir Madani, founder of TankerTrackers.com.

The Oxis was emitting a false automated position signal, showing it as being anchored in the Strait of Hormuz, close to Iran’s Jask oil terminal. However, satellite imagery shows no ship in its stipulated location and its reported latitude and longitude would imply that its transponder has moved by less than 1m between any pair of more than 1,400 signals in almost two weeks.

In reality, the Oxis was about 160km to the southeast, in the middle of the Gulf of Oman, when the cargo switch was made, satellite imagery shows.

The Belgorod reappeared on automated tracking systems on Tuesday, steaming along the southern coast of Oman toward the Red Sea having apparently unloaded cargo. There’s still no sign of the Bratsk.

Most of the 53 tankers used by Russia that have been sanctioned by the US, the UK or the European Union since October have remained idle since being designated. About half of the 21 sanctioned Sovcomflot tankers have been renamed since being designated, another way of trying to distance the ships from the sanctions.

Moscow is now slowly starting to bring some of them back into use.

The first to load was the SCF Primorye in April. Its cargo was moved on to the Ocean Hermana in the Riau archipelago in early June. The oil may have been moved on to a third ship, according to TankerTrackers.com.

The Bratsk and the Belgorod are the only other two sanctioned ships to have been brought back into use so far. Sovcomflot declined to comment. DM