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Press review: Moscow, EU envoys size up Helsinki and Senate eyeing new targets to sanction

Top stories in the Russian press on Friday

Kommersant: Russian Foreign Ministry meets with EU ambassadors to assess Helsinki summit

In Moscow, several sources from diplomatic missions around the EU told Kommersant that on July 18 Director of the Department of North America in Russia's Foreign Ministry Georgiy Borisenko held a briefing with ambassadors from the EU on the outcome of the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki. European diplomats asked for this meeting, which was held at the office of the Delegation of the European Union to Russia.

The sources told Kommersant that the information released at the meeting was generally consistent with what was said at the press conference between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump at the end of the summit. "Among the main results of the summit, Borisenko pointed to the agreement to continue dialogue on extending the New START deal, resolve differences over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and cooperate on settling the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, and around North Korea," a meeting participant told the newspaper.

Another European diplomat, who was present at the briefing, told Kommersant that representatives of a number of EU countries were particularly concerned about the future of the INF Treaty. "Its termination inevitably would have a negative impact on security in Europe, and it is important for us to receive guarantees that, despite mutual claims, the parties will do everything possible to prevent the return of missiles of this class to Europe," the source said. "However after Helsinki, we aren't that confident," the source added.

 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Republican-backed Senate bill seeks to sanction North Stream 2 participants

The US Senate introduced a bill to impose sanctions on Western participants of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote. The author of the bill, Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, believes that European countries need to diversify their imports of natural gas and make a choice in favor of organic fuel from the United States, rather than making deals with Russia. Along with this, senators are hashing over the idea of giving the intelligence services control over sanctions.

According to Senator Barrasso, Russian President Vladimir Putin uses natural gas to extort and threaten US allies. The bill includes restrictive measures against parties investing in Russian energy export projects, providing guarantees for loans to carry out these projects, or supplying goods and services for the project to the Russian side. The Russian leadership, in turn, noted that the Nord Stream 2 project is of purely commercial nature.

"There is some sort of agreement that can serve as a common position of both the president and that part of the Congress - first of all Republicans - that is ready to support pressure on Russia, and most importantly, pressure on Washington’s European allies because of Nord Stream 2," Director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations Feodor Voitolovsky told the newspaper. "Trump's public position on the project holds domestic political significance, because he trying to rack up additional political points and strengthen his position in the Republican Party. He wants to show that he is defending the interests of American gas producers and lobbying for the interests of US companies engaged in gas and LNG production in Europe," the expert added.

Voitolovsky points out that America’s European allies will bear the brunt of this standoff, and thanks to "non-market instruments (the EU allies) are being forced to buy more expensive American gas."

 

Izvestia: Russia's Human Rights Commissioner vows to fight for Russians’ rights in Ukraine, US

Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova is concerned about Russians civil rights being violated in Ukraine and the United States, she said in an interview with Izvestia.

Moskalkova noted that breaches of Russians’ civil rights in Ukraine raise particular concerns, as 400 Russians who are being held in prisons in Ukraine include both real criminals and those who are being used as pawns for prisoner exchanges between the countries.

"More than 400 Russian citizens are being held in prisons in Ukraine, including those who have committed real criminal offenses who should be punished, and citizens who, in my opinion, were victims of arbitrary arrests for creating a so-called ‘prisoner swap’ bank - when people are detained and then offered up for exchange for their citizens," the human rights commissioner stressed.

She added that in order to restore trust between the Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners, it is necessary to include representatives of human rights organizations and former ombudsmen of both countries in any bilateral talks.

In addition, Moskalkova plans to petition the US Department of Justice to release Maria Butina, who is being held in custody in Washington. "I will certainly write appeals to international organizations and the US Department of Justice with a request to look into the situation and release her as an innocent person," Moskalkova vowed.

 

Izvestia: US energy expert believes Russian-Saudi ties reflect changes in oil market

Global oil markets depend not so much on the shale factor, but rather on trade wars and shifts in production levels based on OPEC’s decisions, Vice President of IHS Markit, and top energy expert Daniel Yergin said in an interview with Izvestia. According to Yergin, the oil market is changing and presently regaining balance with some volatility, while relations between Russian and Saudi Arabia reflect changes within the oil market.

Yergin noted that the collapse of oil prices made diversification of the economy a priority for many export-oriented countries. The first to take this path was Abu Dhabi, and now diversification has become important for Saudi Arabia. This is obviously a crucial issue for Russia, the expert pointed out.

Yergin said he believes that the energy session held within SPIEF-2018 correctly reflected the changes in the oil market. The most important events were the speeches by Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih. Relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia continue to deepen and already go beyond oil prices alone, he added.

At the same time, Yergin does not believe that Russia and Saudi Arabia have built a friendship against the United States and its growing oil production. According to him, these new relations with Moscow are important for Saudi Arabia. The very fact that dialogue between the Saudis and Russia happened became a historic event, because it reflected changes in the oil market, and the real state of affairs, Yergin added.

Speaking about the recent review of OPEC+ quotes, Yergin said that in many respects the modifications to Russia’s share in the global market would mainly depend on specific policies of oil companies.

Even with strong demand, some analysts are not sure that Russia will be able to keep its production at a stable level after 2022. According to the expert, production growth is possible up to 2025, but then in the long term it will begin to taper off at 2-3% per year. However, technology can always bring surprises, opening up new opportunities, just as it happened with shale, the expert added. By the same token, it seems unlikely that shale oil will be the main point of growth for Russian extraction in the next 10 years.

 

RBC: Russia plans to create single system for monitoring cyber crime

The development of a unified system for monitoring cyber crime will be included in a plan of measures for the federal project dubbed -Information Security - two sources in the working group under the Digital Economy autonomous non-profit organization told RBC.

The strategy includes establishing a platform for countering cyber crime, where people, organizations, and law enforcement agencies can quickly exchange information "to prevent and suppress violations in the digital environment," one of the sources told RBC. "As the platform will have a large database of characteristics of attacks, this should allow a reduction in the response time of businesses to cybersecurity incidents and improve the quality of its elimination," the source told RBC. Members of the Competence Center (headed by Sberbank) and a working group on Information Security (headed by the co-owner of InfoWatch Natalya Kaspersky), as well as the Digital Economy itself, are the authors of the initiative.

Another source told RBC that the system would be based on the platform launched by the Association of Russian Banks in the middle of June. The system for bankers was developed by the company Bi.Zone (part of Sberbank).

The platform will make it possible to quickly exchange relevant information about hacker incidents, "which is vital after last year's mass attacks," one of the sources told RBC. How the platform will work and whether it will be fee-based has so far not been decided. "But no one is going to do business using it," one of the sources told the newspaper.

 

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