Scholz pledges new military aid for Kyiv; Putin discusses Syrian situation with Iran’s president

Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed the escalating situation in Syria with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian by phone, said the Kremlin on Monday.

The president of the International Criminal Court on Monday said threats facing the institution, including possible US sanctions and Russian warrants for staff members, “jeopardise its very existence”.

Scholz pledges new military aid to Ukraine during Kyiv trip

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced new military aid for Ukraine during a rare visit on Monday that he said sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Berlin would stand by Kyiv for as long as needed in the war.

The visit, his first to Kyiv since the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, comes ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and weeks after Scholz’s governing coalition in Berlin collapsed, threatening his future as chancellor.

The political upheaval in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, adds to a growing sense of uncertainty in Ukraine, with Russian troops advancing ever faster in the east. It is unclear how much Kyiv’s European partners can step up support for Ukraine if Trump cuts help from the US, its most powerful ally.

“My message from Kyiv to Putin: we’re in this for the long haul. Our support for Ukraine will not waver. We will stand by the Ukrainian people — for as long as it takes,” wrote Scholz on X.

Scholz used the trip to announce further equipment deliveries worth €650-million to be delivered this month. The package includes Iris-T air defence systems, Leopard 1 tanks and armed drones, said a defence ministry spokesperson.

Scholz and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky held talks in Kyiv and reviewed drones manufactured by Ukrainian and German firms at an undisclosed location. They also visited a hospital and spoke to wounded servicemen and medical staff.

Putin discusses Syria situation with Iran’s Pezeshkian

Putin has discussed the escalating situation in Syria with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian by phone, said the Kremlin on Monday.

“The focus was on the escalating situation in the Syrian Arab Republic,” said the Kremlin.

“Unconditional support was expressed for the actions of the legitimate authorities of Syria to restore constitutional order and to restore the political, economic and social stability of the Syrian state.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country was ready for any cooperation with Russia to control the regional situation and help resolve the crisis in Syria, according to the Iranian government’s website.

“We believe that the recent events are part of a dangerous plan by the United States and the Zionist regime [Israel] to disrupt the geopolitical landscape of the region in favour of Zionists, but this plan will fail thanks to the unity and cooperation of regional countries,” added Pezeshkian.

ICC president says war crimes tribunal is in jeopardy

The president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday said threats facing the institution, including possible US sanctions and Russian warrants for staff members, “jeopardise its very existence”.

Speaking at an annual conference of the court’s 124 members, President Judge Tomoko Akane did not name Russia or the US but referred to them as permanent members of the UN Security Council.

“It’s clear by any metric, by any benchmark, this assembly is at a pivotal time,” said ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan in his speech at the opening of the conference.

“We are facing unprecedented challenges. We see civil society victims, survivors, humanity at large, I think have unprecedented expectations,” said Khan.

Russia issued an arrest warrant for Khan two months after the court in The Hague issued a warrant for Putin.

The US House of Representatives in June passed a Bill to sanction the court in response to Khan’s request for an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, Yoav Gallant.

“The court has been subjected to attacks seeking to undermine its legitimacy and ability to administer justice and realise international law and fundamental rights; coercive measures, threats, pressure and acts of sabotage,” said Akane, adding that more warrants had been issued against court employees.

The ICC was also “being threatened with draconian economic sanctions from institutions of another permanent member of the Security Council as if it was a terrorist organisation. These measures would rapidly undermine the court’s operations in all situations and cases and jeopardise its very existence,” she said.

While the US is not a member of the court, the world’s preeminent military and financial power could undermine the ICC diplomatically and politically and with financial sanctions targeting its staff.

The court was established in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves.

Top Russian banker says sanctions-hit economy will slow in 2025

Russia’s sanctions-hit, militarised economy was expected to slow next year and banks’ profits would fall, while the benchmark interest rate may climb to 23% by the end of this year, said Andrei Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s second-largest lender, VTB.

Kostin predicted that GDP growth would slow to 1.9% in 2025, above the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of 1.3%. The government expects the economy will grow by 3.9% this year. He said inflation would slow to 6.4% from the current 8.5%.

“The war has been going on for almost three years, and a huge number of sanctions have been imposed. We are living in an absolutely unusual situation,” Kostin told Reuters in an interview late last week. One-third of the state budget was going to the military, he added.

“It is impossible for the economy to go through such events without consequences. But the country has been living for three years, there is economic growth, and overall a healthy economy,” he said.

Suspected Russian spies 'targeted journalist with Facebook honey trap’

A group of Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia targeted an investigative journalist with the Bellingcat news outlet and tried to lure him into a “honey trap” via Facebook, prosecutors told a London court on Monday.

Katrin Ivanova (33), Vanya Gaberova (30) and Tihomir Ivanchev (39) are accused of being part of a highly sophisticated spying network, run by a Russian agent named Jan Marsalek, which targeted people including dissidents.

Prosecutors say the trio — along with two men, Orlin Roussev and Bizer Dzhambazov, who have admitted being part of a spying conspiracy — also carried out surveillance on a US military base in Germany where Ukrainian forces were being trained.

Prosecutors allege that the three were acting under the direction of Roussev who in turn was receiving instructions from Marsalek, an Austrian national who used the false name of Rupert Ticz.

Marsalek is the former chief operating officer for the collapsed payments company Wirecard and his current whereabouts are unknown.

Ivanova, Gaberova and Ivanchev deny the accusations.

Their trial at London’s Old Bailey court continued on Monday, when prosecutor Alison Morgan said the group had conducted surveillance on Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian national who works for Bellingcat, in 2021.

Grozev was the lead investigator on Bellingcat’s reports about the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.

Morgan said Gaberova sent Grozev a friend request on Facebook as part of an attempt to gather information on him, which was directed by Marsalek and Roussev.

“Grozev seems hooked and in love with Vanya,” Roussev told Marsalek in a message shortly after Grozev accepted the Facebook friend request.

Marsalek expressed concern that Gaberova might “fall in love with him”, but Roussev replied: “Vanya is very, very assertive and strongly independent. True sexy bitch.”

Putin drops plan for ‘Friendship Games’ to rival Olympics

Putin signed a decree on Monday to shelve the planned hosting of the “Friendship Games”, a big multisports event that the International Olympic Committee had condemned as a purely political project.

Russia announced last year that it planned to relaunch the competition, first staged in 1984 as a Soviet-led alternative to the Los Angeles Olympics, which the USSR had boycotted in retaliation for a US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games.

The IOC said in March that the idea violated the Olympic Charter and urged countries not to take part.

Putin’s decree, published on an official website, left open the possibility of staging the games at some point in the future pending a “special decision of the president”.

Russia prides itself on its history of success at the Olympics but was barred from competing as a team at this year’s Paris Games as punishment for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Only a small number of Russians were cleared to take part as “individual neutral athletes”. DM