US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that G7 and European Union allies were 'very close' to finalising a $50bn loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets, with an expected US contribution of about $20bn.
If North Korea were to send troops to Ukraine to fight on Russia’s behalf it would significantly escalate the conflict, said Nato chief Mark Rutte on the social media platform X on Monday.
India’s Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the BRICS summit that he wanted peace in Ukraine and that New Delhi was ready to help achieve a truce to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War 2.
US, G7 allies ‘very close’ to finalising $50bn Ukraine loan
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that G7 and European Union allies were “very close” to finalising a $50-billion loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets, with an expected US contribution of about $20-billion.
Yellen told a news conference at the start of International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings that she had a high degree of confidence that the Russian sovereign assets, mostly held in Europe, would remain immobilised despite the continued need for EU renewal of the freeze every six months.
“We’re very close to finalising America’s portion of this $50-billion loan package,” said Yellen when asked about final negotiations over the loan intended to go to Ukraine by the end of this year.
She emphasised that the US contribution would be repaid from the earnings on Russian assets, and not by US taxpayers.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to “get out” of the Russia-Ukraine war, underscoring the G7 allies’ plans to finalise the loan ahead of the 5 November US election.
EU legislators earlier on Tuesday approved the bloc’s plan to use frozen Russian assets to loan up to €35-billion.
She said that the US was prepared to contribute some $20-billion toward the loan and that there was “nothing significant that still needs to be worked out”.
The US had pressed the EU for stronger assurances that the funds, held mainly by Euroclear in Belgium, would remain frozen for a long period, even if there were a truce that ended hostilities in Ukraine. That would reduce the risk that US taxpayers would be responsible for repaying the loan.
Yellen said the US was prepared to accept that the EU would keep the assets frozen long-term, especially given the current course of the war.
"I think the assurances are already there. We asked for some mild strengthening, but feel good that this is a secure loan that will be serviced by Russian assets, by Russia and not by American taxpayers," Yellen said.
In prepared remarks, Yellen said that as soon as next week the US would unveil strong new sanctions aimed at curbing Russia’s Ukraine war machine, including “intermediaries in third countries that are supplying Russia with critical inputs for its military”.
North Korea sending troops to Ukraine would escalate conflict, says Nato chief
If North Korea were to send troops to Ukraine to fight on Russia’s behalf it would significantly escalate the conflict, said Nato chief Mark Rutte on the social media platform X on Monday.
Rutte, who took office at Nato at the start of the month, said he had a discussion with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol about the alliance’s close partnership with Seoul, focusing on defence industrial cooperation and the interconnected security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on allies on Tuesday “not to hide” and to respond to evidence of North Korean involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He said in his nightly address that Ukraine had information about the preparation of two units — possibly up to 12,000 North Korean troops — to take part in the war alongside Russian forces.
“This is a challenge, but we know how to respond to this challenge. It is important that partners do not hide from this challenge as well,” said Zelensky.
Neither North Korea nor Russia, he said, took any account of the number of dead in a conflict.
“But all of us in the world have an equal interest in ending the war, not in prolonging it. We must therefore stop Russia and its accomplices,” he said.
“If North Korea can intervene in a war in Europe, then the pressure on this regime is definitely insufficient.”
British Defence Secretary John Healey said on Tuesday it was “highly likely” that North Korea had begun sending hundreds of troops to help Russia.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday the deployment of North Korean troops in Ukraine would be a sign of Russian desperation.
A top US diplomat said on Monday that Washington was consulting with its allies on the implications of North Korean involvement and added that such a development would be a “dangerous and highly concerning development” if true.
Modi calls for peace as he meets Putin at BRICS summit
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the BRICS summit that he wanted peace in Ukraine and that New Delhi was ready to help achieve a truce to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two.
Putin, who ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world after the US and its European and Asian allies tried to isolate Russia over the war.
Russia is expecting 22 leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping who arrived on Tuesday, to attend the summit meeting of the BRICS, which accounts for 45% of the world’s population and 35% of the global economy.
Putin, who is cast by the West as a war criminal, thanked Modi for accepting the invitation to visit Kazan, a city on the banks of the Volga, and said Russia and India shared a “privileged strategic partnership”.
Modi thanked Putin for his “strong friendship” and praised growing cooperation and the evolution of BRICS, but also said that India felt the conflict in Ukraine should be ended peacefully.
“We have been in constant touch on the subject of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” said Modi. “We believe that problems should be resolved only through peaceful means.
“We fully support the early restoration of peace and stability. All our efforts give priority to humanity. India is ready to provide all possible support in the times to come,” he said, adding that he would discuss the issues with Putin.
When asked by BRICS reporters about the prospects for peace, Putin said that Moscow would not trade away the four regions of eastern Ukraine that it says are now part of Russia and that Moscow wanted its long-term security interests taken into account in Europe.
Russia, which is advancing, controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it seized and unilaterally annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas — a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Putin said the West had now realised that Russia would be victorious, but that he was open to talks based on draft ceasefire agreements reached in Istanbul in April 2022.
On the eve of the BRICS summit, Putin met with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for informal talks that went on until midnight at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.
Putin has praised both Sheikh Mohammed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will not attend the summit in Kazan, for their mediation efforts over Ukraine.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general resigns amid draft-dodging scandal
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said on Tuesday he had resigned to take responsibility for a scandal in which dozens of officials are alleged to have abused their position to receive disability status and avoid military service.
Kostin’s resignation followed a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council, where officials discussed how to crack down on corruption and on loopholes being used to get draft deferrals.
It was not immediately clear whether Kostin’s resignation would have an impact on Ukraine’s efforts to hold Russia accountable for its invasion and the subsequent war crimes of which Kyiv, its allies and the International Criminal Court accuse Moscow.
Kostin’s office has recently been rocked by allegations that dozens of local officials, including prosecutors, allegedly misused their positions to obtain disability status.
“The Prosecutor-General must take political responsibility for the situation in the prosecution bodies of Ukraine, wrote Zelensky in a strongly worded statement published on social media after the council meeting.
Kostin’s resignation statement followed minutes later. The prosecutor called the situation around the false disability diagnoses “clearly amoral” and agreed with Zelensky about the need for personal responsibility.
The prosecutor’s office faced the brunt of public ire from the scandal after a Ukrainian journalist published a story last week saying 50 prosecutors in the western region of Khmelnytskyi had been registered as disabled.
Kostin subsequently ordered an investigation, which he said had discovered the number of prosecutors in the region with disabilities was 61, and that 50 of them had been registered disabled before the war.
Ukraine drones target Russian alcohol plants
Ukraine overnight drone attacks caused an explosion and a fire at an ethanol manufacturing plant and damaged two other alcohol-producing enterprises in Russia, said Russian officials on Tuesday.
A blast shook the Biokhim biochemical plant in Russia’s Tambov region, sparking a short-lived fire, said Tambov governor Maxim Yegorov on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to preliminary information, there were no casualties, said Yegorov.
Russia’s defence ministry said that its air defence units destroyed 18 Ukrainian drones, but it did not mention Tambov in its tally.
The governor of the Tula region, which borders Moscow to its north, said on Tuesday that a Ukraine drone attack damaged two distilleries, in the town of Yefremov and the village of Luzhkovskyi.
There were no injuries, said Tula governor Dmitry Miliayev on Telegram, adding the situation was “under control”.
Another Ukraine drone attack damaged a boiler house and a non-residential building in Russia’s western region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine, said its governor.
There were no injuries as a result of the attack, said Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz on Telegram.
South Africa sees Russia as a valued ally, Ramaphosa tells Putin
South Africa saw Russia as a valued ally, said President Cyril Ramaphosa at a bilateral meeting with Putin on Tuesday, on the eve of the BRICS summit of emerging economies that will take place in the Russian city of Kazan.
“We continue to see Russia as a valued ally, as a valued friend who supported us right from the beginning, from the days of our struggle against apartheid,” said Ramaphosa.
“We are going to have important discussions here in Kazan within the BRICS family.”
Xi tells Putin friendship with Russia will endure
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin that the international situation was gripped by chaos but that Beijing’s strategic partnership with Moscow was a force for stability amid the most significant changes seen in a century.
Xi and Putin in May pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the US, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.
“At present, the world is going through changes unseen in a hundred years, the international situation is intertwined with chaos,” Xi told Putin at the opening of the BRICS summit.
“But I firmly believe that the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations, and great countries’ responsibility to their people will not change.”
Putin called Xi “dear friend” and said the partnership with China was a force for stability in the world.
“Russian-Chinese cooperation in world affairs is one of the main stabilising factors on the world stage,” said Putin.
Georgia’s richest person tells voters: Don’t risk war with Russia
Georgia’s saviour. Russia’s stooge. Philanthropist. Oligarch. Bidzina Ivanishvili has been called all these things, and more.
The billionaire, Georgia’s richest person and the founder of its ruling party, is seldom seen in public and, of late, almost exclusively behind bulletproof glass. Yet his presence looms large over this small European country caught been Russia and the West and an election that could shape its destiny.
Ivanishvili can gaze down on downtown Tbilisi from a massive steel-and-glass clifftop mansion that rears about 60ms over the capital, complete with a helipad. He indulges in exotic passions like keeping sharks and zebras and collecting rare trees.
The 68-year-old is viewed by many friends and foes alike as Georgia’s most powerful figure, or eminence grise, even though he hasn’t held public office for over a decade. He has cast Saturday’s election as an existential fight to prevent a “Global War Party” in the West from pushing Georgia into a ruinous conflict with former overlord Russia, like he says it did with Ukraine.
“Georgia and Ukraine were not allowed to join Nato and were left outside,” he said in a rare public appearance at a pro-government rally in Tbilisi on 29 April.
“All such decisions are made by the Global War Party, which has a decisive influence on Nato and the European Union and which only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder.”
While most of Georgia’s 3.7 million people are keen to move closer to the West by joining the EU and Nato, and largely don’t trust Russia, opinion polls show, Ivanishvili’s message resounds with many who want to avoid Ukraine’s fate at all costs.
Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream is on course to become the country’s most popular party in the election, opinion polls indicate, though it is set to lose ground nationally since 2020 when it won a narrow majority in parliament. DM