Timothy Ash, senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London, says European policymakers are belatedly waking up to the fact that the war in Ukraine is set to be prolonged — and that they alone may have to foot the bill.
Poland’s decision to close its border with Belarus in response to the quadrennial Zapad-2025 military exercises and Russian drone incursion on September 10 has abruptly severed one of the fastest-growing trade arteries between China and the EU.
US President Donald Trump complained that the EU is still importing too much Russian oil and that the White House will not put sanctions on Russia unless the EU cuts back on this business.
The European Commission is floating a new idea of how to “creatively” tap Russia’s $300bn of frozen assets without the need to appropriate, which is legally questionable, by replacing the money transferred to Kyiv with EU-backed bonds.
The Central Bank of Russia has quietly acknowledged growing financial distress among the country’s largest companies, identifying 13 corporations as "truly problematic" borrowers at the end of the first quarter.