Page 7 - bne IntelliNews weekly newspaper June 23

The Regions This Week
June 23, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
Russia warned the US-led coalition in Syria that its aircraft will be regarded as targets after the US shot down a Syrian military aircraft on June 18. “Any aircraft, including the international coali- tion’s planes and drones, discovered west of the river Euphrates, will be accompanied by ground and air-based anti-aircraft defences as aerial tar- gets,” the Russian defence ministry said.
EU leaders agreed to extend the sanctions imposed on Russia for its military aggression
in Ukraine by another six months, European Council President Donald Tusk said. The EU says Moscow had failed to implement the conditions
of the Minsk peace agreement. The leaders were rubber-stamping a decision that had previously been taken by EU governments. The move extends the sanctions until January 2018.
The trilateral OSCE-Ukraine-Russia contact group agreed to impose a new ceasefire in the Donbas region from June 24 until the end of August. At the same time, a new Normandy for- mat summit with the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine on ending the three-year-old armed conflict in East Ukraine will take place be- fore July’s G20 summit in July.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde and Ukrainian Pres- ident Petro Poroshenko “agreed on the need to accelerate the pace of reforms to secure strong- er and inclusive economic growth” in the war-torn country, during the president’s visit to Washington in the middle of June.
Ukraine’s National Reform Council (NRC) approved a draft of pension reform. Prime Min- ister Volodymyr Groysman said the government would submit draft legislation to parliament early in mid-June after considering some proposals voiced during the NRC meeting. Approval of the pension bill at the NRC level was needed to gather broader political support for the unpopular reform.
Russian oil majors Bashneft and Rosneft appear to have dropped their RUB170.6bn (€2.9bn) lawsuit against AFK Sistema investment conglomerate, Vedomosti reported on June
21. Earlier this month, Sistema’s independent directors sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin calling on him to look into the situation as the oil majors’ lawsuit is hitting not just Sistema, but is harmful for Russia’s investment climate.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Russia has to pay compensation to LGBT activists prosecuted under the country’s contro- versial “gay propaganda law”. Russia’s ministry of justice will appeal the ruling.
Thanks to higher-than-expected oil prices,Russia has not had to touch its rainy day reserves funds so far this year to prop up budget spending. But the ministry of finance says it will have to dip into them in the second half of this year and expects to at least exhaust the $16.5bn National Reserve Fund.
Russia’s industrial output in May remained strong, jumping by 5.6% year-on-year compared with 2.3% y/y growth seen in April and 0.1% y/y in first quarter overall. The y/y growth in the report- ing month was the strongest seen since February 2012 and doubled over the expectations of 2.7% y/y growth in a survey of analysts by Interfax.
Trade between Russia and China is on course to hit $80bn by 2017 and could reach $200bn in 2020, Russia’s deputy economic and trade min- ister said. Sino-Russian trade turnover averaged about $6bn in the 1990s.
Ukraine’s gross external debt inched up 0.1% to $113.6bn as of April 1, 2017, the National Bank of Ukraine reported on June 19. The amount was equal to 117.9% of GDP vs 121.8% of GDP at the end of 2016.