NEWSLETTER
Thursday / September 29Sep 29
Tuesday / June 28
Russia default
Russia has entered its first major foreign debt default for over a century, after a grace period on two international bond payments lapsed on Sunday night.
Interest payments totaling $100 million were due on May 27 and subject to a grace period which expired on Sunday night. Several media outlets have reported that bondholders have not received the payments, after Russia’s attempts to pay in its ruble currency were blocked by international sanctions.
The Kremlin has rejected the claim that Russia is in default. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia made the bond payments due in May but they have been blocked by Euroclear due to Western sanctions, this is “not [Russia’s] problem.”
Reuters reported Monday that some Taiwanese holders of Russian eurobonds have not received the interest payments due on May 27.
NATO plans
NATO will boost the number of troops on high alert by more than sevenfold to over 300,000, its secretary-general said on Monday, as allies prepared to adopt a new strategy describing Moscow as a direct threat four months into the Ukraine war.
"Russia has walked away from the partnership and the dialogue that NATO has tried to establish with Russia for many years," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels ahead of the June 28-30 NATO summit in Madrid.
"They have chosen confrontation instead of dialogue. We regret that - but of course, then we need to respond to that reality," he told reporters.
Stoltenberg said NATO in future would have "well over 300,000" troops on high alert, compared to 40,000 troops that currently make up the alliance's existing quick reaction force, the NATO Response Force (NRF).
The Crimea question
Any encroachment on the Crimea peninsula by a NATO member-state could amount to a declaration of war on Russia which could lead to "World War Three," Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, was quoted as saying on Monday.
"For us, Crimea is a part of Russia. And that means forever. Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country," Medvedev told the news website Argumenty i Fakty.
"And if this is done by a NATO member-state, this means conflict with the entire North Atlantic alliance; a World War Three. A complete catastrophe."
Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, also said that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Russia would strengthen its borders and would be "ready for retaliatory steps," and that could include the prospect of installing Iskander hypersonic missiles "on their threshold."
NATO's China perception
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has warned the statement coming out of this week’s G7 summit will take aim at China, yet stressed that Western nations sought neither confrontation with Beijing nor to divide the world into rival blocs.
“We do think that there is increasing convergence, both at the G7 and at Nato, around the challenge China poses and around the need – the urgent need for consultation and especially alignment among the world’s leading market democracies to deal with some of those challenges,” Sullivan said on Monday.
In particular, the expected G7 communique would address China’s “non-market economic practices, its approach to debt and its human rights actions”, he said. The Nato strategic concept would address China in “ways that are unprecedented,” he added. The strategic concept is a document guiding the transatlantic security alliance’s political, military and defence developments.
US stocks
U.S. stocks fell on Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 62.42 points, or 0.2%, to 31,438.26. The S&P 500 dropped 0.3% to 3,900.11, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7%, falling to 11,524.55.
Russia has entered its first major foreign debt default for over a century, after a grace period on two international bond payments lapsed on Sunday night.
Interest payments totaling $100 million were due on May 27 and subject to a grace period which expired on Sunday night. Several media outlets have reported that bondholders have not received the payments, after Russia’s attempts to pay in its ruble currency were blocked by international sanctions.
The Kremlin has rejected the claim that Russia is in default. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia made the bond payments due in May but they have been blocked by Euroclear due to Western sanctions, this is “not [Russia’s] problem.”
Reuters reported Monday that some Taiwanese holders of Russian eurobonds have not received the interest payments due on May 27.
NATO plans
NATO will boost the number of troops on high alert by more than sevenfold to over 300,000, its secretary-general said on Monday, as allies prepared to adopt a new strategy describing Moscow as a direct threat four months into the Ukraine war.
"Russia has walked away from the partnership and the dialogue that NATO has tried to establish with Russia for many years," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels ahead of the June 28-30 NATO summit in Madrid.
"They have chosen confrontation instead of dialogue. We regret that - but of course, then we need to respond to that reality," he told reporters.
Stoltenberg said NATO in future would have "well over 300,000" troops on high alert, compared to 40,000 troops that currently make up the alliance's existing quick reaction force, the NATO Response Force (NRF).
The Crimea question
Any encroachment on the Crimea peninsula by a NATO member-state could amount to a declaration of war on Russia which could lead to "World War Three," Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, was quoted as saying on Monday.
"For us, Crimea is a part of Russia. And that means forever. Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country," Medvedev told the news website Argumenty i Fakty.
"And if this is done by a NATO member-state, this means conflict with the entire North Atlantic alliance; a World War Three. A complete catastrophe."
Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, also said that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Russia would strengthen its borders and would be "ready for retaliatory steps," and that could include the prospect of installing Iskander hypersonic missiles "on their threshold."
NATO's China perception
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has warned the statement coming out of this week’s G7 summit will take aim at China, yet stressed that Western nations sought neither confrontation with Beijing nor to divide the world into rival blocs.
“We do think that there is increasing convergence, both at the G7 and at Nato, around the challenge China poses and around the need – the urgent need for consultation and especially alignment among the world’s leading market democracies to deal with some of those challenges,” Sullivan said on Monday.
In particular, the expected G7 communique would address China’s “non-market economic practices, its approach to debt and its human rights actions”, he said. The Nato strategic concept would address China in “ways that are unprecedented,” he added. The strategic concept is a document guiding the transatlantic security alliance’s political, military and defence developments.
US stocks
U.S. stocks fell on Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 62.42 points, or 0.2%, to 31,438.26. The S&P 500 dropped 0.3% to 3,900.11, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7%, falling to 11,524.55.
