Press review: Envoy slams Novichok sequel as smear and Moscow airs offer on Helsinki talks

Izvestia: Amesbury poisoning likely staged to damage Russia’s reputation, OPCW envoy says

The poisoning of two British citizens in Amesbury, England, could have been deliberately engineered to destabilize the global situation and to damage Russia’s reputation, Moscow’s envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Alexander Shulgin said in an interview with Izvestia. This comes after a 44-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man were found unconscious in their home in Amesbury, and hospitalized in critical condition late on June 30. Scotland Yard's Counter-Terrorism Chief Neil Basu said later that they had been allegedly exposed to Novichok, the same nerve agent that was allegedly used to poison former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.

"What's alarming about the Amesbury situation is that such stories have been emerging prior to important events recently. Currently, the final stage of the FIFA 2018 World Cup and the Russia-US summit in Helsinki are imminent. It is hard to brush off the idea that all this has been engineered and deliberately planted for heating up the international situation and damaging Russia’s sway and its relations with other countries," Shulgin said. He emphasized that Britain has not sent a note to the OPCW technical secretariat about the incident. "Some media outlets have reported that the UK has sent a respective note to the technical secretariat. As far as we are concerned, there has been no note, only general information voiced verbally, not going beyond what British officials currently state," the diplomat explained.

Speaking about the Organization’s recent decision to adopt British amendments to its mandate giving it accusatory powers, Shulgin said that Moscow considers it illegitimate and plans to reiterate its reluctance to accept the project approved at a special session in The Hague on June 27. According to Russia’s envoy to the OPCW, the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention did not contain items on detecting perpetrators of using poisonous agents when the document was signed. "It does not contain a single word about detecting perpetrators. Neither Russia, nor other countries have subscribed to the obligation to participate in any quasi-supervisory operations," he said. Shulgin rejected allegations that Moscow is considering the option to withdraw from the organization: “I can say that Russia will do its best to make sure that the once successful organization returns to its full-fledged work based on consensus and mutual respect of the sides.”

Kommersant: Washington considering Moscow-proposed joint statement by Russian, US leaders

With only one week to go before the full-fledged summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, in Helsinki scheduled for July 16, a joint statement by the two leaders has been drafted by the Russian side and submitted across the pond for consideration, Kommersant writes citing two US government sources. One of the them said that the two-page document stresses the importance of maintaining dialogue between top officials, diplomats, military and intelligence services of the two countries, expanding economic ties and contacts between people. It also puts the Russia-US collaboration of the list of factors influencing regional and global stability, the newspaper says.

Both sources said that Washington is ready to take the Russian draft as a basis for a joint statement, though it considers it extremely important to state either in the declaration, or in a separate document, or even in an oral statement that the White House is concerned about Russian special services meddling in the US presidential election of 2016, and listen to guarantees that "it will never happen again." Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a week ago that the Russian president is ready to tell his US counterpart at the upcoming summit that Moscow did not meddle in the US presidential election if Washington raises the issue.

Meanwhile, Valdai International Discussion Club expert Dmitry Suslov agrees that the topic of Russia’s alleged interference in the election is the most important one of all related to Russia for the US today. "Its political relevance for Washington outpaces Ukraine, Syria, Iran and arms control taken together. This issue is the reason why the Trump administration has been unable to establish a normal, albeit adversarial dialogue, as this (narrative) is a key instrument in the Democrats’ hands to undermine the legitimacy of the US president," the expert told Kommersant. However, the Syrian issue is also on the agenda, similar to North Korea’s denuclearization, the paper adds. Regarding the Ukrainian crisis, the Russian and American sides are unlikely to deliver any progress, apart from their intention to stick to implementing the Minsk Accords.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Kiev mulls pension payouts for breakaway Donbass republics

Ukraine may resume pension payments for citizens of the Donbass regions beyond Kiev’s control, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. Ukrainian Presidential Representative in the Verkhovna Rada Irina Lutsenko raised the matter during parliamentary hearings devoted to the issue. Disputes over where, when and how retirement benefits should be paid to people in the territory of the DPR and LPR have been raging on for four years. The region was left without pensions following the start of military operations in the area in 2014, as Kiev closed all state agencies and bank offices in the breakaway republics. Citizens were given two options: either receive payments after the war, or move to other regions of the country and register as temporary relocated persons.

According to Lutsenko, a total of 1.5 mln people have been registered as having relocated inside the country. "Those are Ukrainian citizens, who we are responsible for," she said, adding that it is necessary "to think about how to make it possible for them to survive now." Vitaly Bala, the director of the Situation Modelling Agency, believes that Lutsenko’s statement might not necessarily be turned into reality. Kiev’s experts are discussing two possible reasons why this statement has been made recently, the first one being the intention of the Ukrainian authorities to send a signal to the Russian and US presidents of Kiev’s readiness to reintegrate this territory and solve the Donbass dilemma as soon as possible, prior to the 2019 election. Another reason is the wish to strengthen the party’s positions on southern and eastern territories before the election, the paper says. "However, we cannot rule out that the president’s representative voiced her personal viewpoint in the Verkhovna Rada," Bala noted.

RBC: Finance Ministry presents tax policy guidelines to 2021

The Finance Ministry has drafted and submitted to the State Duma (lower house) a document containing the main areas of Russia’s budget, tax and customs-tariff policies for 2019 and the planned period of 2020 and 2021, RBC says. The document will be discussed at parliamentary hearings later in the day. Initially, the document was planned to be presented in August, however, the Duma has decided to discuss it a month earlier, a source in the government’s financial and economic bloc told RBC.

The ministry has stressed the long-term nature of the new tax rules, including the already announced VAT hike from 18% to 20% and the preservation of subsidized VAT rates that will come into force starting January 1, 2019. The government’s main task is to demonstrate that no other serious changes will follow apart from those already announced, such as the VAT hike, the paper says.

As reported earlier, the government set forth a proposal to raise the value-added tax to 20% from 18% starting 2019 on June 14. First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov expects the measure to bring 600 bln rubles ($9.65 bln) worth of additional revenues to the Russian budget per year. The VAT rate hike will accelerate inflation by no more than 1.5 percentage points - from the expected 3% in 2018 to 4-4.5% in 2019, Siluanov said.

RBC: World Cup puts Russian footballers’ talents on display

Russia's sensational run to the FIFA 2018 World Cup quarterfinals may be followed by a mass sale of its players to overseas clubs, RBC business daily says. Currently, 23 players with Russian citizenship play abroad, not taking into account CIS countries and lower divisions. However, most of them do not represent top-rated leagues, playing for the Czech Republic, Finland, Cyprus and the like, the paper writes. Football experts interviewed by the publication assume that the scant interest of flagship European leagues, such as English, Spanish, Italian, German and French ones, in Russian players has particularly stemmed from the Russian team’s poor performance at major tournaments.

"Once a national team achieves any results at such huge sporting events as the World Cup, the leading leagues immediately zero in on these players," the owner of Follow Me Sports Agency Alexander Manyakov told the paper. However, Anton Yevmenov, a football scout, cautioned that a successful performance in global events does not automatically raise a player’s price. "There is not such formula rating the cost of a player by some certain percent after a successful match," he said, adding though that there is only an indirect dependence. "The World Cup is a big exhibition, and the matches are thoroughly monitored by all clubs. Players get an opportunity to attract more attention to them. The greater the attention a player gets, the higher his cost, this is how the market works," Yevmenov explained, adding that he expects no more than four Russian players to move abroad after the recent tournament.

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