August 13, 2024 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

“Once the weapons from Germany have been transferred to Ukraine, they already belong to Ukraine, they are Ukrainian weapons. There are no obstacles, so Ukraine is free to choose its options”, said Arno Kollatz, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense of the FRG.

Chair of the Bundestag Defense Committee Marcus Faber believes that the latest developments in the confrontation with the aggressor are a reason to “talk about more Leopard 2s” for Ukraine.

The German company Rheinmetall has informed about an order to supply 14 Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks and three Buffalo armored repair and recovery vehicles to the Czech Republic as part of an exchange to support Ukraine.

The European Union is launching a new humanitarian program for demining the territory of Ukraine, providing funding of EUR 2 million. As part of the initiative, 16 Belgian Malinois will become the first mine detection dogs to be deployed in Ukraine.

First Lithuanian FPV drones are to be delivered to Ukraine in September.

“Until Ukraine restores its territorial integrity and regains control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, constant intimidation and a high risk of a nuclear accident remain a harsh reality”, said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia Margus Tsahkna.

As of August 12, Ukraine has exported 4.9 million tons of grains and pulses since the beginning of the 2024-2025 marketing year, by 58.9% more than for the same period of last year.

Latvia has opened a summer camp on the Baltic Sea coast for Ukrainian children whose parents are serving in the Ukrainian Navy.

rf

Moldova's Information and Security Service (SIS) has ordered Internet providers to block the websites of russia's “promsvyazbank”, which is under the sanctions from the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Over the past three weeks, small banks in China, mostly operating in the domestic market, have begun to reject payments from russia. Earlier, due to the risk of international sanctions, large Chinese credit institutions refused to conduct financial transactions with russian companies. russians say that today 98% of Chinese banks do not accept direct transactions in yuans.

According to the federal customs service of the rf, in the first half of the year, imports of goods to the rf decreased by 8.1% to $130.4 billion. Deliveries of goods to the rf from European countries decreased by 14.1% to $34.9 billion, and from the United States – by 15.8% to $6.9 billion. Imports from Asia decreased by 4.8% to $86.6 billion.

Supplies to the rf of chemical products decreased by 14.1% to $25 billion, and of industrial machinery and equipment – by 5.2% to $66.1 billion. Exports of russian metals and metal products decreased by 5.2 % to $27.8 billion, and of food and agricultural raw materials – by 5.3 % to $20.8 billion.

russian exchange traders say that there have been more frequent cases of violations of the terms of shipment of petrol and diesel fuel purchased on the exchange by refineries, and even defaults on such transactions. The most critical situation is with AI-95 and AI-100 petrol, which are in rapidly increasing demand. Market participants attribute the disruption of shipment deadlines to the shortage of these grades, when refineries reduced production due to accidents, as well as to the shortage of tanks.

The price of AI-100 petrol at russian oil refineries has already exceeded RUB 100 thousand per ton, and the delivery time has been extended by more than two months. Over the past few months, almost 10% of contracts for the supply of petrol and diesel fuel to customers have been postponed. lukoil violates its contractual obligations more often because the nizhny novgorod refinery, which suffered a catalytic cracker breakdown earlier this year, has not resumed production in full.

Over the past week, the price of third-class wheat on the russian domestic market rose by 2.5% to 14.4 thousand rubles per ton, of fourth-class wheat – by 2.4% to 13.7 thousand rubles per ton, and of fifth-class wheat – by 4.3% to 11.1 thousand rubles per ton. At the same time, wheat of the fourth class in southern and central regions of russia increased in price by 4% to 14.3-14.8 thousand rubles and 13 thousand rubles per ton, respectively, in the Volga region – by 7% to 12.9-13.6 thousand rubles per ton.

The problem of shortage of professionals will become more acute in the rf: in the first seven months of this year, the number of vacancies in repairing base stations increased by 143% compared to the same period of 2023; the demand for station operation engineers and system engineers increased by 371%. On the habr_career website alone, 3.8 thousand ads were published to find system and operations engineers for the IT industry.

russian retail lending company “pochta-bank” has announced that it will cancel its mortgage program for households starting in September.

Subscribers of more than 135 russian regional telecommunications operators began to cancel their contracts with the companies en masse due to problems with YouTube. In view of this, the “rosteleset” association has sent a request to the ministry of digital development, communications and mass media and roskomnadzor demanding that they issue a single official statement on the reasons for the artificial slowdown of services and their “uneven degradation” in different telecom companies.

russia is disrupting arms supply contracts with foreign customers because of the war against Ukraine, director of the federal service for military-technical cooperation shugaev said at the “army-2024” forum.

The government of Lithuania has allocated almost EUR 65 thousand to the Ministry of Justice to pay for legal services in the interstate case against the rb on the illegal smuggling of migrants to Lithuania.

According to the Eurasian Economic Commission, the rb is the third fastest country in the EAEU in terms of the growth of electricity prices. Since the beginning of the year, prices for electricity in the rb have risen by 3.2%.

Self-proclaimed president of the rb lukashenko has proposed to add an article to the criminal code of the country that would make it a crime to use violence or threaten with violence against a former president and his family members. Violation of this article is punishable by up to eight years in prison.

Propagandists of the rb began to intimidate belarusians with drone attacks. Posts warning about “security measures during a drone attack” have appeared in pro-government telegram channels. Exactly the same texts are published in different telegram channels, and this is done almost simultaneously, which shows a planned information and propaganda campaign.