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Morning Headlines
The Guardian: Divisions over whether Ukraine can lawfully be handed an extra €30bn loan drawn from €270bn in seized Russian state assets are likely to be aired at a meeting of G7 finance ministers this week in Stresa, northern Italy.
Reuters: Russia was China's top oil supplier in April for a 12th month, with volumes rising 30% from a year earlier, official data showed, as refiners continued to cash in discounted shipments, while supplies from Saudi Arabia fell a quarter on higher prices.
Euromaidan Press: Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has stated that NATO allies training soldiers within Ukraine itself does not risk escalating the war or provoking direct conflict with Russia.
ISW: Russian milbloggers appear to be experimenting with different ways to express critical opinions of the Russian Ministry of Defense following the recent appointment of Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov.
AP News: Iranian media has confirmed the death of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, aged 63, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian following a helicopter crash in the country's mountainous province of East Azerbaijan.
19.05.2024
Reuters: Russia struck a busy lakeside resort on the edge of Ukraine's second largest city on Sunday and also attacked villages in the surrounding region, killing at least 11 people and wounding scores.
Euromaidan Press: Jean-Louis Bourlange, Head of the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, has written a letter to the French leadership calling on them to abandon the restriction put on Ukraine with striking Russian territory with French weapons.
RBC-Ukraine: Ukrainian defenders attacked a military airfield and an oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai, as well as an oil depot in Leningrad Oblast. This occurred overnight on May 19, as reported by RBC-Ukraine citing sources.
Bloomberg: The UK government said the growing alliance between Russia and China is a threat to Western nations, as it urged European countries to boost lethal aid to Ukraine (archive).
Reuters: Italy's foreign minister and officials will meet on Monday to discuss Russia's recent action to seize assets or impose restrictive measures on Italian companies including UniCredit.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine’s Navy said on May 19 that it had “destroyed” Russian sea minesweeper Kovrovets overnight, refuting Moscow’s earlier claims of having repelled strikes on occupied Crimea.
Euromaidan Press: British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has said that Ukraine will receive a hundred air defense missiles from Britain during May and urged allies to speed up military aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s offensive in Kharkiv region.
Sky News: Troops from a brigade in Kharkiv have told Sky News how they scrambled to counter a new Russian assault earlier this month - and described the chaotic scenes in the battle that erupted.
BBC News: Russia is increasingly using "glide bombs" - cheap but highly destructive ordnance - to advance its offensive in Ukraine. More than 200 of them are thought to have been used in just a week to pound Ukraine’s northern town of Vovchansk during Russia’s current cross-border advance near Kharkiv.
ISW: Russian forces are likely preparing for the second phase of their offensive operation in northern Kharkiv Oblast, which Russian forces likely intend to launch following their anticipated seizure of Vovchansk.
18.05.2024
The Telegraph: Russia and China are “manipulating” public opinion in Britain by promoting pro-Palestinian influencers online in an effort to stoke division, Whitehall sources believe (archive).
The Kyiv Independent: The French dairy products company Danone has finalized the sale of its Russian operations, accounting for about 5% of its global sales, after more than 30 years in the country.
RBC-Ukraine: Anti-aircraft gunners of the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade shot down a Russian Su-25 attack aircraft in Donetsk region.
FT: A St Petersburg court has seized over €700mn of assets belonging to three western banks — UniCredit, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank — according to court documents (archive).
Reuters: Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating as a potential war crime a Russian air strike on a residential area of the regional capital Kharkiv in which six civilians were wounded, including a 13-year-old girl, 16-year-old male and an eight-year-old.
Euromaidan Press: Ukraine expects that the participants of the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland will together draw up a three-point action plan related to free navigation, energy security, prisoner exchange and the return of deported children.
Reuters: Poland will invest 10 billion zlotys ($2.55 billion) in a programme to secure its eastern border, the prime minister said on Saturday, in a bid to bolster its defences against what it says is a rising threat from Russia and Belarus.
AFP: Nearly 10,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region since a ground attack launched by Russian forces on May 10, its governor said Saturday.
CNN: Russian forces have captured dozens of civilians in the border town of Vovchansk, a Ukrainian official has said, with a top regional police officer accusing them of using the captives as “human shields.”
RFI: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told AFP in an exclusive interview he expects Russia to step up its offensive in the northeast and warned Kyiv only has a quarter of the air defences it needs to hold the front line.
17.05.2024
Bloomberg: Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure earlier this year disrupted 14% of the country’s oil refining capacity and drove up domestic fuel prices, but had minimal impact on electricity output, the Pentagon’s intelligence agency said (archive).
Reuters: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will push fellow G7 finance officials next week to agree to a plan to bring forward the interest earnings on frozen Russian assets to provide more money to Ukraine quickly, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Friday.
FT: The European Central Bank has told all Eurozone lenders with operations in Russia to speed up their withdrawal plans because of fears they could be hit by US punitive measures (archive).
Reuters: Ukraine will lift a temporary ban it imposed on consular services for military-age men living abroad starting on Saturday, the foreign ministry said.
The Kyiv Independent: Starlink terminals operated by Ukraine's 125th Territorial Defense Brigade in Kharkiv Oblast were completely disabled in the first such incident since 2022, the Washington Post reported on May 17.
The Moscow Times: Microsoft has started blocking Russian corporate clients from using its cloud services in compliance with Western sanctions, a Russian distributor of the tech company’s products Softline said Friday.
Reuters: Ukraine attacked a power substation in Russian-occupied Crimea, an oil depot and railway station in Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and an oil refinery in the port town of Tuapse overnight.
The Kyiv Independent: Hungary has vetoed a resolution in the Council of Europe to officially recognise and support President Volodymyr Zelensky's 10-point peace formula, the country's foreign affairs minister said on May 17.
AFP: The European Union on Friday imposed broadcasting bans on four Russian-controlled media, including an outlet at the heart of a probe into alleged interference in the European Parliament.
AP News: Russia and China are helping each other expand their territorial reach, and democracies must push back against authoritarian states that threaten their rights and sovereignty, Taiwan’s outgoing foreign minister said.
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