Four people wounded in third consecutive night of strikes on Ukraine’s capital; ‘We are returning home with a good result for our country’, says Ukrainian president
Russia-Ukraine war at a glance
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank to the Swift international payment system, sources have told Reuters.
Russia has threatened to ditch the grain deal, which expires on Monday, because several demands to dispatch its own grain and fertiliser abroad have not been met. The last two ships traveling under the Black Sea agreement are currently loading cargoes at the Ukrainian port of Odesa ahead of the deadline.
A key demand by Moscow is the reconnection of the Russian agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the Swift international payment network. It was cut off by the European Union in June 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An EU spokesperson said in May the EU was not considering reinstating Russian banks.
However, the EU is considering connecting to Swift a subsidiary of Rosselkhozbank to allow specifically for grain and fertiliser transactions, three sources familiar with discussions told Reuters on Wednesday. The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was, by the standards of international summits, an undiplomatic intervention. A clearly frustrated Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that Nato allies were showing Ukraine disrespect, that they were discussing his country’s hopes of joining the military alliance without him. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to Nato nor to make it a member of the alliance,” he wrote.