Eastern Europe

IRKUTSK. March 10 (Interfax) - Gazprom intends to build a pilot plant for the production of lithium carbonate with a capacity of up to 960 cubic meters of feedstock per hour at Kovykta, Vladimir Vagarin, general director of Gazprom Design, writes in Gas I...

MOSCOW. March 10 (Interfax) - The projected sowing areas of the main spring crops for the 2023 harvest in Ukraine are 5.7 million hectares, which is 206,500 hectares or 3.4% less year-on-year, Ukrainian media reported, citing the website of the Ministry o...

KRASNOYARSK. March 10 (Interfax) - Krasnoyarsk-based Kizirlesprom will invest 3 billion rubles in the creation of a wood processing enterprise in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Yenisei Siberia Development Corporation website said.As part of t...

MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - The Russian government at a meeting on Thursday approved a bill that removes restrictions on the export of LNG from the Arctic regions of the country.Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on March 9 signed an order to submit the co...

WASHINGTON. March 9 (Interfax) - The manned spacecraft Crew Dragon developed by SpaceX with Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina in the crew is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 11, the National Aeronautics and Space Admin...

ROSTOV-ON-DON. March 9 (Interfax) - The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Energodar is again receiving electricity for its own needs from the Ukrainian grid after power supply was cut off early on Thursday, Renat Karchaa, an aide to the head of Ros...

TASHKENT. March 9 (Interfax) - A referendum on a new Uzbek constitution, rather than amendments to the current one, has been proposed at a meeting of the Uzbek parliament's lower house, the Legislative Chamber, on Thursday."There is every reason t...

MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - Inflation in Russia could reach 6% in 2023, and GDP may contract by 1.1%, according to analysts surveyed on March 2-6 by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) for a monthly report.The forecast for the contraction in GDP has improve...

MOSCOW. March 7. (Interfax) - The negative impact of the termination of business by Germany's SAP, a global manufacturer of enterprise management software, in Russia and Belarus, was about 410 million euros in 2022, according to the company's annu...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Unions have begun halting operations at all four LNG terminals in France in order to protest pension reform in the country, with three Elengy facilities ceasing operations for a week, and the Fluxys terminal shutting down for ...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) expects domestic banks to generate net profit of 1.2-1.5 trillion rubles in 2023 under the CBR's baseline forecast, and 1.2-1.7 trillion rubles in 2024, according to the regulator's ove...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Russian ESPO crude, which has become a firm favorite of China's private refiners, is starting to attract buyers in India, which could increase competition between the two largest Asian importers of crude, S&P Global Commod...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) has granted a citizen of Georgia, who was not named, permission to buy BTA Bank Ukraine, Ukrainian media reported, quoting a statement on the agency's website."Permission wa...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Economic activity in Russia increased in early 2023 in the absence of new significant challenges, and the GDP trend in 2023 may turn out better than expected in the Central Bank's baseline forecast, analysts from the CBR&#...

DUSHANBE. March 7 (Interfax) - The President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon discussed issues of current cooperation and prospective interaction with Vice President of the World Bank for Europe and Central Asia, Anna Bjerde, the republic's presidential p...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Avet Mirakyan's Insight Group has closed a deal to buy the Russian leasing subsidiary of American Deere & Co. , the world's largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery and equipment, data from the Unified State Regi...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The number of employees in the 50 largest IT companies in Ukraine decreased by 5.3% to 92,400 from August 2022 to January 2023 due to relocation to their companies' foreign offices and legalization abroad, Ukrainian media ...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The cost of risk for the corporate portfolios of Russian banks will be 1.1%-1.4% in 2023, and the cost of risk for their retail portfolios will be 2.1%-2.4%, according to the analytical overview of the Central Bank of Russia (...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Andrei Verevsky, the majority shareholder and chairman of the board of directors of Kernel, one of the largest Ukrainian agricultural holdings Kernel, thinks there is no value in Kernel shares remaining listed on the Warsaw St...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Severstal will make the next coupon payment on dollar-denominated Eurobonds maturing in 2024 in rubles, the company said in a statement.Last November, the company received consent from bondholders to make ruble payments on it....

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Ukraine's Naftogaz on March 10 will present a plan for exiting default on its Eurobonds with repayments to holders of these obligations in 2022 and 2026, and will hold a conference call with them together with Yuri Butza, ...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Sberbank plans to increase the share of in-house IT services by 10 percentage points to 90% in 2023, CEO Herman Gref said during a working meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin."The groundwork that we laid by build...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Huberte Bettonville, head of the Supervisory Board of Main Gas Pipelines of Ukraine JSC (MGP), will resign as a member of the board on March 20, 2023.This is stated in her letter to Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenk...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), as part of a joint project with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), will provide state-owned Ukrgasbank, Ukreximbank and Oschadbank with a total of ...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky expects that talks on Ukraine's accession to the European Union would start as early as this year; he made such statement following a meeting with President of the European Parliament ...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - A certain combination of factors gives reasons to speak of a more positive development of the economic situation in Ukraine in the first half of 2023 than the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) anticipated in January, NBU Deputy G...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Crew Dragon spacecraft developed by SpaceX Corporation with a crew including Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina onboard is set to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 9, Russian state corporation Roscosmos sai...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers appointed Semen Krivonos, head of the State Architecture and Urban Construction Inspectorate, director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) at an extraordinary meeting on Monday, Ukr...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - The Russian economy continued to recover in January, seeing seasonally adjusted growth in GDP, industry, freight turnover and construction, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said at a meeting with State Duma comm...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Russia is maintaining the course to achieve carbon neutrality, though implementation will account for the current realities, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said at a meeting with the relevant State Duma commit...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Yandex Eats, the food and restaurant order delivery division of Russian technology group Yandex , has launched operations in Uzbekistan.Users can currently access orders from 200 establishments in Tashkent. Going forward the s...

KAZAN. March 7 (Interfax) - Russia has exported 40 million tonnes of grain to date since the start of the current agricultural year that began on July 1, 2022, Roman Nekrasov, director of the Agriculture Ministry's crop production department, said on ...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Russia's Agriculture Ministry is not planning to revise the export duty on grain before the end of the current agricultural year, which runs to June 30, 2023, or increase grain purchases for the intervention fund."I th...

MOSCOW. March 7 (Interfax) - Taking into account implemented LNG projects and those under construction, Russia in the coming years should reach output of 66 million tonnes of LNG per year, and the strategic task is to develop LNG production to a volume of...

KAZAN. March 6 (Interfax) - Kamaz is working to create an Atom electric vehicle line that will include two basic models with versions for taxi and delivery, the Tatarstan branch of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development said in a statement following ...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The largest foreign oil and gas companies in 2022 wrote off about $58 billion from their balance sheets related to projects in Russia, Interfax calculated based on data from company reports.British BP plc , as one of the large...

BRUSSELS. March 3 (Interfax) - The European Union has expressed its condemnation after Belarusian rights activist and Nobel prizewinner Ales Belyatsky and his colleagues from the Viasna unregistered human rights center were given prison sentences in Minsk...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Novawind, the division in Rosatom responsible for developing renewable energy, has terminated its lease contracts with Dutch Red Wind due to sanctions, according to the Russian company's 2022 RAS financial statements.Red W...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has extended restrictions on the withdrawal of funds abroad for another six months until September 9, 2023, the regulator said in a statement.The Central Bank has kept all existing limits on th...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal, co-leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SDP) Lars Klingbeil and head of the SDP faction in the German parliament Rolf Muetzenich have discussed Germany's further support ...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The engines of the Progress MS-22 resupply spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS) have been burned to perform a maneuver to evade a potential collision with space debris, the Russian state space agency Ro...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Ukraine is closing the heating season with a surplus of capacity and sufficient reserves of energy resources, and is already preparing for the next autumn-winter period, Ukrainian media reported, citing information from the co...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Moscow is concerned about another outbreak of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh area and calls on the parties to the conflict to exercise restraint, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said."We express our...

MOSCOW. March 6 (INTERFAX) - Kernel, one of Ukraine's largest agricultural holdings, purchased the Dunai Prom Agro river grain terminal in the Ukrainian port of Reni, Ukrainian media reported with a reference to the company's H1 2023 financial rep...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian government has asked the National Bank to allow Ukrgasvydobuvannya transfer $26.740 million abroad in payment for equipment from China's Sichuan Honghua Petroleum Equipment Co."The Ukrainian government as...

MOSCOW. March 6. (Interfax) - Russia's Rosenergoatom intends to take 40% of the country's electric car charging market by developing charging infrastructure in cities with one million or more population, including Moscow, as well as on the largest...

TASHKENT. March 6 (Interfax) - The Uzbek Competition Development and Consumer Rights Protection Committee will check the operation of Yandex.Taxi, a taxi service aggregator, for signs of dominance on the taxi services market in the country, the committee&...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - The Interconnector gas pipeline from Britain to Belgium halted operations this past Saturday because of an accident.The UK partially functions as an offshore LNG terminal for Europe, with a developed system of receiving facili...

BERLIN. March 6 (Interfax) - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi told the Board of Governors on Monday that he has intensified consultations on establishing a safety and security zone around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Powe...

MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Saudi Arabia has sent three planes with humanitarian aid to Ukraine within the framework of the $100-million program, chief of staff of the Ukrainian Presidential Office Andrei Yermak said."The provisions include 135 heavy...