Oil Extends Gains on OPEC+, Geopolitical Premium
Oil futures rose after Ukrainian drones attacked inside Russia, and a nuclear deal with Iran remained elusive, but Spartan Capital didn't anticipate a sustained rally, as oversupply continued to be a concern.
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San Francisco Chronicle
43 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tried and tested in war: For European drone manufacturers, Ukraine is the place to be
LE BOURGET, France (AP) — About once a month, French drone manufacturer Henri Seydoux makes what has become a necessary pilgrimage for many in his business — he goes to Ukraine. Because for drone technology, there is no harder place to survive than the frontlines of the war against Russia's invasion, where both sides are using unmanned aerial machines of all shapes and sizes to kill and to observe, reshaping modern warfare. And because the battlefields also bristle with electronic countermeasures and weapons to confuse, jam and shoot down drones, Ukraine has also become an extreme real-life proving ground for advances in drone technology, some of which has started to spill over into non-military sectors. For manufacturers, being able to say that their drones and related equipment have been battle-tried and tested by Ukrainian forces is becoming a sales pitch as they market their wares not just to national defense departments, but also to police forces, border authorities, rescue services and civilian users. 'When we say, 'This is a good machine, it works,' people can believe us or not. But when it's guys in Ukraine and others saying they're happy, it has greater value," says Bastien Mancini, president and co-founder of French drone manufacturer Delair, which has teamed up with European defense contractor KNDS to supply Ukrainian forces with 100 exploding drones. KNDS' sales literature notes that they are 'combat-proven." Mancini says civilian users of Delair's other non-military drones 'see things that work in Ukraine and say to themselves, 'It resists jamming, it resists the loss of a radio connection and whatnot and so it's going to be fine for civilian use, like inspecting electric cables or whatever." 'It really has helped us win markets. It gives people confidence," he told The Associated Press at the Paris Air Show, a major shop-window for the aviation and defense industries. 'Drones saved Ukraine' Henri Seydoux, the founder and head of French drone maker Parrot, says Ukraine is 'fascinating' from a drone-technology perspective because 'it changes so quickly, there are new ideas non-stop.' He's been making regular trips since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 to meet Ukrainian drone manufacturers, drone software developers and the military authorities. 'Every quarter, the situation changes completely,' he said in an interview. 'Every company, let's say, that makes military equipment or every army is very interested by drones. But the ones that really use them and understand how to use them is the Ukrainians." For Ukraine, trying to defend against swarms of Russian drones that target cities and waves of drone-supported Russian troops is a matter of survival. So, too, is finding workarounds to counter electronic warfare systems that Russia deploys to jam and disable Ukrainian drones, igniting what has become a drone-technology arms race between the two sides and for manufacturers outside of Ukraine, too. Small drones that drop bombs and explode against targets — mass-produced at a fraction of the cost of other more complex weapons systems that its allies have supplied — have become increasingly vital for Ukraine's resistance. Its Defense Ministry has said that it plans to buy 4.5 million drones this year, all Ukrainian-made, that allow their operators to see what the machines see, so they can guide the flights in real time — exploding in a Russian trench, for example, or even against a single enemy soldier. That's three times more drones than the ministry bought last year, it says. 'Drones saved Ukraine,' said Alex Vorobei, the Ukrainian sales representative for Ailand Systems, a Ukrainian start-up developing a drone that detects land mines. Vorobei and others in the drone business say that manufacturers not involved in Ukraine risk being left behind. 'If you're in the defense field and still not in Ukraine, it means you are nowhere," Vorobei said at the Paris show. Civilian uses for Ukrainian lessons A micro surveillance drone unveiled by Parrot at the Paris show has a nod to Ukraine in its name — the Anafi UKR — and also has been field-tested in what Seydoux describes as the 'very harsh environment' on the frontline. It's equipped with artificial intelligence technology to enable it to find its way when radio and navigational signals are jammed. Parrot says the drone's ready-for-war resilience and features also make it a good fit for law enforcement operations, such as monitoring crowds, tracking suspects or keeping watch over borders, and for rescue services in remote areas or during fires and accidents when navigational signals might go down. Ukraine has been 'a real laboratory or test for us, to see if our products worked,' said Delair's Mancini. Its Oskar exploding drone, which has polystyrene wings, carries a half-kilogram (one pound) warhead to detonate against troops and lightly armored vehicles.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Putin Isn't Actually Enjoying This
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Within weeks of Donald Trump's second inauguration, pundits began saying that his return to office opened new doors for Vladimir Putin, offering Moscow opportunities it hadn't seen in years. The deference the new administration afforded the Kremlin appeared to be rivaled only by its hostility toward its own national-security establishment. Trump entered negotiations to end the war in Ukraine by presenting Putin with a bouquet of inexplicable concessions. Washington ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine—then proposed that it might recognize the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula as Russian (in a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy), allow Russia to retain most of the territory it had seized since 2022, and lift sanctions. The U.S. even sided against its European allies when they presented a resolution at the United Nations condemning Moscow—and then it drafted a peace proposal that omitted any criticism of Russia. You'd think Putin would be delighted by all of this. Instead, he's been thrown on his heels. Trump's efforts at rapprochement have left Russia's propaganda apparatus, foreign policy, and economic stability in worse shape than they were before January 20. Whatever the intent, Washington has robbed the Kremlin of its north star: opposition to the United States. After years of routinely threatening to drown the Eastern Seaboard, Moscow can no longer afford the luxury of calling America its enemy No. 1. Thanks to Trump, the Kremlin now has to portray Washington as a rational negotiating partner—even as American-made missiles continue to rain down on Russian troops. The title of Russia's civilizational enemy has been reassigned to the European Union. The Russian propaganda machine has some flexibility, but being locked in an existential struggle with the Netherlands is far less flattering to the imperial mindset than going up against the world's leading superpower. And so Russia's information mills seem to be glitching out. In a May 25 Truth Social post, Trump wrote that Putin was absolutely 'CRAZY' for bombing Ukrainian cities in the middle of negotiations. 'We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally,' Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in response. The last time I scanned Russia's top propaganda sites, I couldn't find a single hostile reference to the United States. On May 20, Konstantin Kosachev, the deputy speaker of the Russian senate, described two emerging camps: a 'Russian American' one 'discussing prospects for achieving peace,' and a 'Ukrainian European' one 'exploring options for continuing the war.' The reversal isn't just a problem for Putin's media proxies. The Russian leader himself has been forced to improvise. For years, Putin claimed that direct talks with Ukraine were impossible because President Volodymyr Zelensky's government was illegitimate and, more important, Ukraine wasn't a real country—merely a proxy for the American imperial project. He framed the war as a conflict that only Russia and the U.S. could resolve, in a Yalta-style deal between great powers—preferably in occupied Yalta itself. Along came Trump, who repeatedly sidelined Ukraine and the EU to speak with Putin one-on-one. Putin looked set to get what he wanted. But then that changed, as all things Trump tend to do: By May, Putin wasn't carving up Europe with Trump—he was competing with Zelensky to convince the White House that the other side was out of control. Trump's point man for Russia is the billionaire real-estate developer Steve Witkoff, whose bewilderingly affectionate approach to Putin continues to flummox the Western media. His meetings with the Russian dictator last for hours. He forgoes American translators (relying instead on Russian intelligence assets), sits alone with top Kremlin negotiators, and emerges voicing Moscow's talking points without even being able to name the Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own. Even seasoned diplomats have to resist being crushed by Russia's imperial grandeur when they are received like state dignitaries inside the Kremlin complex. Someone who devoted his life to building condos barely stands a chance. Still, the Kremlin surely knows that Witkoff has no authority over what America can offer Russia. Only Trump does. For now, the man trying to rebuild the Russian empire is forced to negotiate with the king of Manhattan real estate. And negotiate he must, because Trump has made forging a settlement between Russia and Ukraine a defining foreign-policy objective. The goal is an elusive one: Washington has so far failed to secure even a 30-day cease-fire. On May 1, the administration threatened to withdraw from the peace talks. Many in the West expected that this would translate into a win for the Kremlin: Trump, they assumed, would abandon Ukraine and strike a separate deal with Moscow. But Russia has reason to be wary that a thwarted Trump administration might not prove so amenable. The U.S. president apparently wants a diplomatic victory, and if he feels that he's been pushed aside, he may have less reason to end arms shipments to Ukraine—especially now that Kyiv is purchasing munitions—and more reason to blame Moscow for sabotaging the peace process. For the Kremlin, standing between Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize is risky, but agreeing to a cease-fire while Russia is making steady, if incremental, gains on the battlefield is a step too far. So it opted for a third path: Putin held a rare late-night press conference inviting Ukraine to bilateral negotiations, dodging the cease-fire while handing Trump a symbolic win that he could sell as a breakthrough. For the Russian dictator, whose foreign and domestic policy is shaped by Brioni-clad men playing by prison-yard rules, the need to appease the U.S. president in this way is a distinctly uncomfortable—and demeaning—shift from the predictable antagonism of the Joe Biden years. Trump frequently holds out the prospect of lifting sanctions or striking lucrative deals as incentives for Moscow to end the war. Russia was even spared from Trump's sweeping tariffs. But what the U.S. can offer Russia is ultimately underwhelming. The sanctions that hurt Russia the most—an oil-export ban, the freezing of two-thirds of its foreign reserves, and its exclusion from the SWIFT bank-to-bank payment network—all came from the EU. Russian exports to the United States were at their peak in 2011—before the annexation of Crimea, the full-scale war in Ukraine, and the U.S. energy boom—and amounted to just $34.6 billion worth of goods. That figure offers little hope for meaningful bilateral trade, especially now. What does matter to Russia is oil sales. And in the months before the renewed conflict between Israel and Iran, oil prices dropped by 20 percent, largely because of the Trump administration's global tariff war. This forced Moscow to revise its federal budget for 2025–26; triple this year's expected budget deficit, from 0.5 to 1.7 percent of GDP; and, as a result, tap its fiscal reserves for $5.51 billion, or about one-tenth of its liquid assets, to balance the budget. It also cost Russia $39 billion in anticipated hydrocarbon revenue—more than the proposed deals with the U.S. could make up for. In other words, without imposing a single new sanction, Trump has significantly intensified fiscal pressure on the Kremlin simply by dint of his erratic economic policies. Washington's public stance on Russia has certainly changed. One popularly circulated YouTube clip shows Secretary of State Marco Rubio refusing to call Putin a war criminal during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on May 21. But as someone who once worked with the Kremlin (I produced a talk show for Russian state media in the late 2000s), I can assure you: Putin would much rather be labeled a war criminal with oil at $70 a barrel than a rational leader looking to end the war with oil at $56. During the first three years of Russia's all-out war in Ukraine, the United States and the EU presented a united front against Russia that proved, perhaps paradoxically, manageable for the Kremlin, in terms of both propaganda and strategic positioning. Trump has shattered that coherence, and now the Kremlin finds itself in an uncomfortable position, despite its triumphalist rhetoric and maximalist demands: It's scrambling to keep pace with an American president who has no idea where he's going.
Business Insider
14 hours ago
- Business Insider
Zelenskyy opens up about his clash with Trump in exclusive interview
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talks about his relationship with Donald Trump, his doubts, and whether Ukraine can win the war with Russia in an interview with the Axel Springer Global Reporters network, of which Business Insider is a part.
