August 6, 2024 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

Ukraine has received a $3.9 billion grant from the United States through the World Bank.

“I hear talk of ordinary russians’ innocence, but then I see ordinary russians murdering ordinary Ukrainians. I see ordinary russian mothers saying goodbye to their ordinary russian sons and wishing them good luck with their ordinary russian war crimes. I see ordinary russians celebrating murder”, said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis, explaining why he was surprised by the calls not to punish “ordinary russians” with sanctions.

Ukraine and Japan have signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of law and justice.

The Republic of Botswana has signed the Joint Communiqué of the Peace Summit.

A resolution on the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war has been registered in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and a document on civilian hostages is being prepared.

The Lithuanian government has allocated EUR 8.7 million for programs to support Ukrainians in Lithuania. In total, Lithuania has spent over EUR 114 million to support Ukrainian refugees.

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70 members of the European Parliament demand that the European Commission suspend Hungary's participation in the Schengen zone after Budapest decided to ease visa requirements for citizens of the rf and rb.

Michael McElgunn, head of the Irish police's security and intelligence unit, believes that the rf is one of the few countries actively trying to conduct espionage activities in his country.

German manufacturer of clothing and related products Hugo Boss has completed the sale of its subsidiary “hugo boss rus” in the rf.

On July 26, the russian “raiffeisenbank” stopped opening new brokerage accounts for retail investors. The bank pointed out that due to the European Central Bank's requirement to the RBI group, “raiffeisenbank” will reduce the volume of operations in russia.

In June, Turkey imported $835 million less goods from the rf than in May.

The russian power grid operator “rosseti” insists that the russian government should almost double the minimum rate for connecting households to the power grid from January 1, 2025, to 10 thousand rubles per 1 kW instead of the current 5.57 thousand rubles; the maximum rate is proposed to be increased from 11.17 thousand rubles to 20 thousand rubles. An official letter addressed to the prime minister of the rf states that a number of companies of the “rosseti” group have reached a “critical level of credit debt”, which has led to “the inability to fulfill 50 thousand contracts for technological connection, and by the end of the year the number of overdue contracts may increase to 100 thousand”.

The ministry of agriculture has published a draft decision of the russian government, according to which rural and urban settlements located 30 km from large cities (with a population of more than 100 thousand people) and 50 km from the capitals of the regions of the rf are excluded from the program of providing mortgages to the population. The decision was prompted by the need to reduce mortgage issuance due to the increase in household debt. According to “rosselkhozbank” (which provided more than 70% of all loans), since the beginning of the rural mortgage program, as of early June 2024, the bank has issued loans for more than RUB 250 billion.

According to the central bank of the rf, from January to June 2024, russian banks received 1.67 million applications from the population to change the terms of loan agreements. It was emphasized that in the first half of 2024, more applications for loan repayment holidays on consumer and mortgage loans were received than in the entire previous year. In particular, 180.9 thousand borrowers applied for the consumer loan repayment holidays from January to June, compared to 116.8 thousand last year, and 8.6 thousand people have already applied for the mortgage repayment holidays, compared to 6.4 thousand last year. At the same time, the approval rate for the loan repayment holidays for individuals has fallen sharply: for consumer loans this year, it was only 7.6% (14 thousand), compared to 35.7% last year. For mortgage repayment holidays, the approval rate dropped from 51% last year to 37% in the first half of this year.

The russian association of manufacturers of specialized equipment “rosspetsmash” has reported that in the first half of 2024, sales of excavators in the rf decreased by 60%, of truck cranes – by 22%, of mini loaders – by 14%, of pipe-laying cranes – by 12%, and of motor graders – by 2%. The main reasons for this are “aggressive imports”, the high central bank rate, and rising production costs. It is emphasized that the situation is “especially acute” in the segments of excavators, front-end loaders, and asphalt pavers, where foreign machines, mostly from China, occupy 90% of the russian market.

On August 5, the EU Council decided to impose sanctions on another 28 people for their role in repressions and human rights violations in the rb. Restrictive measures were applied to two deputy heads of the main department for combating organized crime and corruption (gubopik) of the ministry of internal affairs of the rb as one of the main bodies responsible for political persecution in the rb, including arbitrary and illegal arrests and ill-treatment, including torture, of activists and members of civil society.

Leonid Sudalenko, a representative of the “Vyasna” Human Rights Center, has said that since 2020, since the beginning of the presidential campaign, more than 50,000 people have been detained in the rb for political reasons. During this time, more than 3,380 people have been recognized as political prisoners. Almost two thousand of them have been released, i.e. they are former political prisoners. Out of those two thousand people, about 1,134 had fully served their sentences and were released (the rest were in pre-trial detention centers and/or left the country without serving their sentences). At present, human rights activists of “Vyasna” know about at least 5,472 people convicted in politically motivated criminal cases. By the number of “political” criminal sentences: in 2020 - 900 people; in 2021 - 1,225; in 2022 - 1,242; in 2023 - 1,603 people.