Russia Rejects Raiffeisen Appeal Against €2 Billion Court Order
A commercial appeals court in St. Petersburg denied Raiffeisen's attempt to reverse an earlier court order to pay Rasperia Trading Ltd. damages for a failed transaction, according to a bank spokesperson who confirmed a report from the Austria Press Agency.
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Fox News
44 minutes ago
- Fox News
Giving Putin the Donbas would hand Moscow powerful leverage over Kyiv's financial survival
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has firmly rejected proposals to concede land to Russian President Vladimir Putin, particularly the hotly-contested Donbas region. The Donbas, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, is Ukraine's industrial heartland where coal mining and steel production are the main drivers of economic growth. Ultimately, control of the region's mines and factories would hand Moscow powerful leverage over Kyiv's post-war economic survival. "Donbas offers both a military advantage and significant economic resources, making it a high-value target for the Kremlin," explained Elina Beketova, a fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. "The Donbas alone holds vast reserves of coal – especially anthracite, crucial for energy and metallurgy," Beketova said. "Of 114 mines in Donetsk region, only 15 remain functional," she pointed out, as many have been flooded, destroyed, or left inoperable by the war. Coal tells only half the story. Perhaps the crown jewel is salt: the Soledar salt mines, with an estimated 4.5 billion tons of rock salt—making it the largest reserve in Europe. These mines and the Artyomsol plant, Europe's largest salt producer, fell to Russian forces in 2022. Beketova underscored that, in the long term, natural gas could be the most strategically important resource in the region. "The region includes the Yuzivka gas field in Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts, with potential reserves of up to 4 trillion cubic meters—a direct challenge to Russian energy dominance, and likely another reason why Moscow wants full control of the area." "Beyond coal, salt, and gas, the occupied territories of Donbas—as well as neighboring Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—are also rich in gypsum, chalk, marble, granite, sand, and clay," Beketova said. Russian forces currently occupy approximately one-fifth of Ukraine's territory, primarily in the eastern and southeastern regions, including large swaths of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. These areas have been under partial or full Russian control at various points over the course of the Kremlin's war. For Kyiv, the Donbas is more than contested ground—it is an economic lifeline, whose coal, salt, and gas reserves could help bankroll recovery in a country already burdened with enormous post-war debts. The most recent joint assessment by the United Nations, World Bank, European Commission, and Ukrainian government estimates that Kyiv faces $524 billion in post-war reconstruction over the next decade. Of the total long-term reconstruction and recovery needs, housing accounts for the largest share at nearly $84 billion, followed by $78 billion needed for the transportation industry and $68 billion for the energy sector. Zelenskyy told reporters at the European Commission on Sunday that Putin has repeatedly tried and failed to seize the entirety of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine for a period of 12 years. Grace Mappes, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, noted that conceding the region would also mean relinquishing Ukraine's "fortress belt," the fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014. "After trying and failing to occupy this strategically vital terrain for over a decade, Putin is now demanding that Ukraine concede this critical defensive position, which Russian forces currently have no means of rapidly enveloping or penetrating, apparently in exchange for nothing and with no guarantee that fighting will not resume." Mappes added that Ukraine's substantial investment in reinforcing its "fortress belt" with defensive structures, logistics hubs, and defense industrial facilities, underscores its central role in the country's military resilience. "Putin's proposal is not a compromise, rather a ploy to avoid the years-long, bloody campaign that would be necessary to seize the fortress belt and the rest of Donetsk militarily," she added.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Trump's Tariffs Shock India, With New Delhi Weighing Its Options
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A decades-long partnership between the United States and India has come under sudden strain, as President Donald Trump's new wave of tariffs on Indian exports left officials in New Delhi caught off guard and scrambling for answers. Trump's decision to impose a 25 percent duty on Indian goods earlier this month—with plans to double it to 50 percent next week over India's continued purchases of Russian oil—landed with little warning and no clear path forward. It marked a stunning public rupture between two countries that have for years portrayed themselves as close strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. "This is the worst downturn since 2013 or 2014," Shajak Sengupta, a senior research associate at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, told Newsweek. "What makes it more serious is how public and high-level the criticism has been. This didn't come through backchannels—it came straight from the president." Sengupta cited multiple tensions behind the rift beyond Russian oil, including India's rejection of Trump's claims to have mediated a cease-fire with Pakistan, stalled trade talks on agriculture, and a broader desire to pressure Moscow. US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hold a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 13, 2025. US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hold a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 13, 2025. Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images "But when all of those issues get bundled into tariffs, with no signaling beforehand, that's when it becomes a structural problem," he said. Modi's Bet on Trump Falters Just months before the tariff shock, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump in Washington, declaring a new phase in the U.S.-India strategic relationship. "We're going to open up India like never before," Trump said during a joint press appearance at the White House, where he announced a target of expanding bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. Modi, in turn, called the U.S. "India's most trusted partner" and said he expected the "big deal" to be finalized "within months." "In the language of America, it's 'Make India Great Again' — MIGA," Modi said as Trump smiled along. "When America and India work together, this MAGA plus MIGA becomes a 'mega partnership for prosperity." Their February meeting was cast as a breakthrough moment: both leaders praised each other's vision, committed to deepening defense and economic cooperation, and previewed a bilateral trade agreement that was, by all public accounts, nearing completion. WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 13: U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 13: U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025 in Washington, optimism has since collapsed under the weight of Trump's August tariff orders, with the South Asian giant facing a penalty higher than that imposed on China, long cast as America's chief economic rival. "It's a lesson in the limits of chemistry," said Chietigj Bajpaee, senior research fellow for South Asia in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. That breakdown in personal diplomacy has quickly translated into real economic costs. The new tariffs, now among the steepest levied by the U.S. on any trading partner, strike directly at sectors central to India's export economy such as textiles and leather goods, which together accounted for $18.3 billion of exports to the U.S. in 2024. "With Trump, everything is leverage," Bajpaee said. "What seemed like alignment in February turned out to be a setup for pressure in August." Trade Fallout Spills Into Strategy What began as a trade dispute has quickly widened into a broader geopolitical reckoning. Indian officials are said to be furious at what they view as scapegoating by Washington. "It is extremely unfortunate that the U.S. should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest," the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. "We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable." The fallout comes at a time of renewed alignment among BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—all of whom are facing pressure from Washington on various fronts. Modi is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin later this year, following a planned BRICS summit in China that Modi will attend. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, at a BRICS summit, on October 23, 2024, in Kazan, Russia. Russia hopes to revive a three-way bloc... Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, at a BRICS summit, on October 23, 2024, in Kazan, Russia. Russia hopes to revive a three-way bloc with India and China."This has renewed the convergence of interests between India, Russia and China," Bajpaee said. "But India still seeks to project a benign worldview—non-Western, but not anti-Western. And the long-term rationale for working with the U.S. hasn't changed." Inside the White House, however, officials have sharpened their tone. "India portrays itself as being one of our closest friends in the world, but they don't accept our products. They impose massive tariffs on us," said Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff, in a Fox News interview. "They're taking advantage of us on trade and underwriting Putin's war effort." Stephen Miller: "India portrays itself as being one of our closest friends in the world; but they don't accept our products, they impose massive tariffs on us, we also know they engage in a lot of cheating on immigration policy." — captive dreamer (@avaricum777) August 4, 2025 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added fuel to that fire on CNBC Tuesday, accusing New Delhi of "profiteering" from the war by purchasing Russian oil at a steep discount, refining it, and selling it back on the open market while pocketing the profit. "This opportunistic arbitrage is unacceptable," the former hedge-fund manager said. The strategic cost of the rift could be significant. "India shares America's view that China poses the world's most significant strategic threat," Richard Rossow, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Newsweek. "A strong trade agreement would accelerate this growing partnership and bolster military cooperation—both bilaterally and through forums like the Quad," an informal diplomatic working group made up of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States and designed to counter China's influence in the Indo-Pacific. Alyssa Ayres, a former senior State Department official and now a professor at George Washington University, told Newsweek the downturn signals a shift in the president's focus during his second term. "In Trump's first term, he emphasized India's market access issues, but also worked to deepen the broader relationship," she said. "Now it looks like trade concerns are crowding everything else out." What Comes Next? Despite the tensions, both sides have reason to tread carefully. India remains the United States' ninth‑largest trading partner, while the U.S. is India's top export destination, importing over $86 billion in goods last year. "India is one of our ten largest goods‑trading partners and a key supplier of offshore IT‑enabled services," said Rossow. "And to India, the U.S. is easily the most significant economic partner—the largest destination for its goods and services exports, and the largest source of inbound foreign investment." Calls for diplomacy have grown louder. "The U.S. and Indian governments need to talk to each other in private and resolve their differences," Ambassador Atul Keshap, president of the U.S.–India Business Council, told Newsweek. "Washington and Delhi have proven they can have difficult conversations that address problems and keep 25 years of partnership on track. Business needs predictability and clear signals of continued technology and supply chain collaboration. Substantial investments in both directions create jobs and shared prosperity in both America and India—and are worth sustaining." Sengupta warned the standoff may already be taking a toll, with tariffs and uncertainty already slowing investment and economic activity in both countries. Indian firms have invested more than $40 billion in the U.S., supporting nearly 425,000 American jobs—a sharp increase from $22 billion and 125,000 jobs in 2020, according to industry data. "If ties continue to sour, you could see a plateauing or even decline in trade and investment—the kind of flows needed not just to fuel India's development, but also the U.S. strategy to reduce dependence on China." Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley reinforced the warning in a Newsweek opinion column published Wednesday, urging the administration not to lose sight of the larger picture. "Scuttling 25 years of momentum with the only country that can serve as a counterweight to Chinese dominance in Asia would be a strategic disaster," she wrote. Haley called for direct talks between Trump and Modi and said India should be treated "like the prized free and democratic partner that it is—not an adversary like China."
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
The 1600: What is Trump's Beef With India?
The Insider's Track Good morning, The irony of Trump 2.0 is, for all his bombast about America First, he may very well end up being remembered for the massive changes he is making to the global order, for better and/or worse. I'm trying to be optimistic about the endgame in Ukraine, but for all I know the deal Trump ends up making will be looked at in time as something akin to Munich in 1938, when the Europeans handed over the Sudetenland to Hitler in exchange for him promising to chill out. Remember, Neville Chamberlain arrived home to London from that summit hailed as a hero and a peacemaker. I am hopeful Trump is not walking a similar path with Putin. Russia aside, one of the other big geopolitical shifts that's happening under our feet has to do with our relationship with India. India is the second biggest democracy in the world. 1.4 billion people and counting. A hugely influential force in the Pacific, where, like it or not, the next Big War will probably play out. Our relationship with the Indians over the past 25 years has been one of mutual respect based on similar goals... or at least it was until recently. Trump, for reasons that remain hazy, has taken a particularly aggressive posture toward New Delhi and the Modi government, even though he and the populist Modi are both alike in many ways. We've hit India with some of the sharpest tariffs of any of our trading partners. A week from today, the effective tariff rate on Indian goods goes from 25% to 50%. India has a reputation for being a protectionist economy, but its mean tariff rate is under 5%, falling from 56% in 1990. As developing economies develop, they tend to lower their trade barriers, which is exactly what India is doing. Why Trump believes bullying the developing world is appropriate behavior for a global hegemon remains one of the more puzzling questions of his trade agenda. He's doing it to Brazil, too, but there his interests are purely political. For India, Trump has said the high tariff rate is punitive in nature—punishment for India continuing to buy oil from Russia and effectively helping to underwrite Moscow's war machine. I caught Scott Bessent on CNBC yesterday, where he accused the Indians of "profiteering" from the war by essentially buying Russian crude, refining it and selling it back at a higher price on the open market. I certainly get why we'd want them to stop doing this, but India is buying so much Russian oil because the oil is being sold at a steep discount. Isn't that just good business, capitalizing on the dynamics of the market? It's a bit rich for Bessent, a former hedge-fund guy, to be complaining about what he referred to as "opportunistic arbitrage," ie. the exact strategy that has made people like him unimaginable wealthy, often at the expense of American businesses and workers. I digress. Another reason for Trump's new hardline tact on India has to do with the brief shooting war between India and Pakistan that erupted in April, after a Pakistani terror attack that killed 26 Indian tourists in Kashmir. Trump has made it a point to take credit for bringing those two nuclear powers to the table and hammering out a ceasefire. The Pakistanis rushed to thank him, and even put him up for the Nobel he covets. India, though, has not credited Trump for brokering that ceasefire and, in fact, scoffs at the notion of any external mediation in its long-running conflict with its neighbor. It seems like Trump has noted this affront to the peacemaker-in-chief persona he is trying to cultivate and is retaliating as such. Beyond all that, there's also a deep undercurrent of anti-Indian sentiment that runs through MAGA, which Trump is probably aware of. I spend entirely too much of my precious waking hours trawling right-wing message boards and X threads to see what they're talking about (just as I do for the left, which can be equally tedious) and the racism and xenophobia toward Indians coming from the MAGA grassroots is pretty shocking... and I am not easily shocked. A lot of it has to do with this belief that Indians are scamming the H-1B visa program and taking jobs away from Americans, particularly in the high-paying tech field. But there are only like 400K H-1Bs approved every year. Foreign workers are an easy scapegoat for the broader trend of AI displacing labor, and the fact that these tech companies want to get the best labor at the cheapest cost. Again, free markets. Don't hate the player... Meanwhile, Trump is getting cozier with the Pakistanis, inviting their army chief to the White House, despite the fact that Pak is in bed with Beijing, harbored bin Laden and helped the Taliban take back Kabul from us in 2021. Not exactly our friends. At the same time, we're taking a hostile posture toward our actual friends who operate a sprawling democracy in a very strategically important region, where we need all the help we can get to counter China's rise. All the while, China continues to get the soft touch with lower tariffs than India while also avoiding sanctions for buying its own Russian oil. As Nikki Haley writes in a Newsweek op-ed today on this topic: "The United States should not lose sight of what matters most: our shared goals. To face China, the United States must have a friend in India." The Rundown Back in February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky left the White House early after a tense meeting with Donald Trump that ended in a heated exchange. This week, he stood in the same room smiling for cameras, cracking jokes with Trump, and accepting compliments on his suit from the assembled press pool as European leaders looked on. The shift in tone was stark. Administration officials described the atmosphere as "terrific" and "really productive," and Vice President JD Vance—who clashed with Zelensky during the previous visit—kept a low profile. Yet for Trump's MAGA base, the change in mood did little to ease concerns over what came next. Trump's sudden openness to offering NATO-style security guarantees to Ukraine has drawn a sharp rebuke from his hardcore allies, reigniting tensions over America's role in the war. Read more. Also happening: Russia-Ukraine: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow must be involved in decisions about security guarantees for Ukraine, calling it a "road to nowhere" without Russia's participation and consent. Lavrov said Russia supports the U.K., France, and Germany developing collective security guarantees "provided they are truly reliable." Ukraine's European allies are formulating plans, with U.S. support, for how to guarantee the country's future security and deter Russian aggression. One option under discussion is a collective defense agreement, similar to NATO's Article 5. Read more. Birthright citizenship: The Trump administration is seeking more time in federal court as it considers how to bring a challenge to birthright citizenship before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a consent motion filed on August 19 in the District of Maryland, government lawyers requested an additional 30 days to respond to an amended complaint in CASA Inc. v. Trump. Read more. This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
