Orbán touts Russia-Kyiv ceasefire during talks with Zelensky; India’s Modi to visit Moscow
Orbán touts Russia-Kyiv ceasefire during talks with Zelensky; India’s Modi to visit Moscow
Worried by deepening China-Russia relations, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading to Moscow next week for talks with President Vladimir Putin, his first visit to the country since the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has been using Kaliningrad, its exclave that borders Poland and Lithuania, as one of its bases to disrupt European Union satellite systems, according to a United Nations agency that oversees communications technology.
Orbán pushes ceasefire plan in Kyiv talks with Zelensky
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider a ceasefire during his first visit to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion, putting on display the deep differences between the two leaders.
While Orbán’s comments reflect his long-standing call for a peace settlement, Zelensky has repeatedly dismissed demands for a ceasefire with Moscow, insisting that Russian forces withdraw from Ukrainian territory.
Still, Orbán’s presence alone was a reconciliation of sorts between Ukraine’s wartime leader and the Hungarian premier, who has maintained ties with the Kremlin and at times stalled aid. The two could be seen having an apparently heated exchange at a summit in Brussels last week.
“We focused on the period ahead,” Orbán, who arrived as he takes over the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency, said. “We would like to see a much better relationship between the two countries.”
Zelensky and Orbán didn’t take questions from reporters after delivering their statements. The president spoke first and didn’t respond to Orbán’s plea to “speed up peace talks with a quick ceasefire”.
Zelensky earlier noted Orbán’s participation in a Swiss-hosted summit last month aimed at advancing Kyiv’s demands — and thanked him for taking up the Ukrainian issue during the EU presidency.
“This is a clear signal of our common priorities, of how important it is to return a just peace to Ukraine and all of Europe,” Zelensky said.
It was a steady exchange with Orbán, who has acted as a disruptor among EU leaders since the invasion began in 2022, seeking to limit sanctions targeting Moscow.
Yet on the same day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, with the ministers praising cooperation between their countries and agreeing that Kyiv should “unconditionally ensure the rights of all national minorities living in the country”, according to a readout from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia and Hungary hadn’t discussed Orbán’s trip to Kyiv ahead of time, according to Russian news agency Tass.
Modi’s Russia visit dents West’s efforts to cast Putin as pariah
Worried by deepening China-Russia relations, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading to Moscow next week for talks with President Vladimir Putin, his first visit to the country since the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting, which will help Putin counter Western efforts to cast him as a pariah, comes two months after Putin went to China for the first foreign visit of his new term. That trip underlined Moscow’s increasing dependence on Beijing, which India has eyed warily.
“The deepening of the strategic alignment between Russia and China is uncomfortable for New Delhi because it’s like your best friend sleeping with the enemy,” said Swasti Rao, an associate fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, a Defence Ministry-backed research group in New Delhi. “Given that we have these concerns it makes sense for the prime minister to go there and talk to Putin at the highest level.”
It will be Modi’s first bilateral visit since he won a third term in office, with the prime minister breaking convention by visiting Russia instead of neighbouring countries like Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka, where he chose to go after previous election wins.
That underlines the importance New Delhi places on its ties with Moscow, people familiar with the matter said. India, the world’s third-largest crude consumer, has become a major buyer of Russian oil and is reliant on its military hardware supplies. At the same, relations between China and India have been at a low point since land-border clashes in 2020.
Modi’s last trip to Russia was in 2019, when he attended a Far Eastern economic forum in Vladivostok.
Russia used exclave of Kaliningrad to disrupt EU satellites
Russia has been using Kaliningrad, its exclave that borders Poland and Lithuania, as one of its bases to disrupt European Union satellite systems, according to a United Nations agency that oversees communications technology.
Russia should “immediately cease any deliberate action to cause harmful interference to frequency assignments of other administrations”, the International Telecommunications Union’s Radio Regulations Board said on Monday in a summary of its meeting last week.
The findings were based on geolocation of the disruption signals, which the board called “extremely worrisome and unacceptable”.
European satellite companies have been targeted by Russian radio frequency interference for months, leading to interrupted broadcasts and, in at least two instances, violent programming replacing content on a children’s channel. Complaints by several Nato members previously said the disruptions came from mainland Russia and occupied Crimea.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of the board’s claims, according to state-run news agency Tass.
Kaliningrad is a heavily armed territory separated from Russian ally Belarus by the Suwalki Gap, a corridor along the border of Poland and Lithuania that, if severed, would cut off the Baltic states’ land access to the rest of Nato.
The regulation board said the latest disruptions came from Russian locations including Kaliningrad and Moscow. The interference primarily affected TV and radio channels with Ukrainian content, according to the report.
Several countries, including Sweden, France, Ukraine and the Netherlands had appealed to the board about the issue. Russia has increasingly sought to disrupt European communication systems since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as it tests the preparedness of the EU and Nato.
Kim Jong-un says economy is on ‘upturn’ as Russian ties deepen
Leader Kim Jong-un said North Korea’s economy was on a “clear upturn” as his state claimed a successful test of a new tactical ballistic missile that could be sent to Russia in exchange for aid to help his regime.
During a major meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim said the country’s “political and economic potentials are rapidly growing stronger”, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Tuesday. The four-day meeting wrapped up in Pyongyang a day earlier as North Korea shot off two suspected ballistic missiles, in the second such weapons test in less than a week.
“We can sense a clear upturn in the economic situation in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year,” Kim was quoted as saying in the KCNA report.
North Korea’s economy, estimated by South Korea’s central bank to have been about $24.5 billion in 2022, had been on a downward slide due to global sanctions to punish Pyongyang for its pursuit of nuclear weapons and Kim’s decision to close borders at the start of the Covid pandemic — which slammed the brakes on the little trade it had.
But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than two years ago, the US and several of its partners have accused Kim of sending millions of rounds of munitions and scores of ballistic missiles to President Vladimir Putin to help with his grinding war.
In return, Putin has provided Kim with commodities and food to stabilise the country’s economy, and possibly technology to increase the threat his military poses to the region, Seoul and Washington have said. The aid could be providing the biggest jolt to North Korea’s economy since Kim took power about a dozen years ago.
Russia’s seaborne crude shipments rebound to highest since May
Russia’s weekly crude exports jumped by the most since March in the seven days to 30 June on completion of maintenance at major export terminals, with the less volatile four-week average rising to its highest in eight weeks.
Work affecting Primorsk on the Baltic Sea and Kozmino on the Pacific coast cut shipments through Russia’s two busiest oil terminals in the previous week, with no departures from either for four days during that period. But flows from both recovered fully in the most recent week.
Overseas shipments may have been boosted by a slump in crude processing, with refinery runs in the 1-26 June period the lowest since May 2022, as Ukrainian drone strikes and seasonal maintenance curbed operations.
The gross value of Russia’s crude shipments soared by 25% in the seven days to 30 June, with the jump in weekly export volumes boosted by a third straight week-on-week increase in oil prices, which lifted the value of Russian export grades to their highest since April.
Separately, vessels targeted by Western authorities that Moscow relies on to transport its oil are mostly remaining idle after being sanctioned. While three of the 21 ships owned by Russia’s state-controlled Sovcomflot have taken on cargoes and subsequently disappeared from automated tracking systems, others remain inactive. DM