MOSCOW, July 8. /TASS/. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban looks to change course of history with Ukraine "peacekeeping mission"; India's trade deficit with Russia to be main focus of talks between Putin and Modi; and Iran elects new president. These stories topped Monday's newspaper headlines across Russia.

 

Izvestia: 'Fasten your seatbelts': Orban going all out to facilitate peace in Ukraine

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is visiting China after going to Kiev and Moscow last week, Chinese media reported. On Sunday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto advised European politicians to "fasten their seatbelts" and watch Orban’s "peacekeeping mission" closely as Hungary’s top diplomat responded to Western criticism of Orban following the latter’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Among other things, Western politicians questioned the role of Hungary as the country serving the rotating presidency of the EU Council. The United States, too, condemned the visit. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Orban’s Moscow trip counterproductive in terms of promoting Ukraine’s sovereignty, integrity and independence as she highlighted Washington’s concerns ahead of a NATO summit to be held in Washington on July 9-11.

The Hungarian premier emphasized after his meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky that Hungary’s presidency in the Council of the EU does not give Budapest the right to hold peace negotiations but that such meetings could push the warring sides closer to dialogue.

Oleg Nemensky, leading expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, told Izvestia that Budapest had to sign off on quite a number of agreements limiting Hungary’s powers to influence the general European policy line before assuming the rotating EU presidency. "The initiatives Orban is currently working on cannot yield immediate results for now because European countries push back on those. I am afraid this trend will continue for some time even if [Donald] Trump comes to power and reverses the tide for Russia, something which itself is not guaranteed," Nemensky said.

French MEP Gilbert Collard told Izvestia that Hungary could play a constructive role in resolving the Ukraine conflict as Orban remains the only European leader capable of maintaining dialogue both with Moscow and Kiev as he himself has stressed. While this, Nemensky argued, may complicate Budapest’s relations with Brussels, it also puts Orban in a unique position to influence the course of history, and he is not shying away from this.

 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Modi, Putin to address $60 billion trade imbalance in bilateral talks

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia on July 8-9, defying pressure from Washington. The visit will show how firm the ties between the two countries are, dating all the way back to when India won its independence. Moscow remains one of New Delhi’s key partners in trade and defense, too. The Indian Foreign Ministry announced that Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss bilateral relations across the board as well as global and regional issues. While India has been a major buyer of Russian oil since the start of the special military operation, it has amassed a trade deficit worth around $60 bln in its dealings with Russia, something the coming talks will cover in depth.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the agenda of Modi’s visit would be quite busy. While the visit is an official one, Putin and Modi will be able to hold informal talks as well, and they will, of course, talk about Ukraine. Ahead of the visit, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra urged dialogue between the two combating sides, stressing diplomatic efforts over military ones. According to Indian newspaper Hindu, Kwatra dismissed speculations that the Indian premier would be seeking to show to NATO member countries that he is running an independent policy course. The talks between Modi and Putin come as the North Atlantic Alliance gets set to meet in Washington on July 9, mostly to discuss the Ukraine conflict.

Kwatra told Indian reporters at a press briefing that Modi’s visit to Moscow will be a purely bilateral event. According to the Indian diplomat, Modi and Putin will discuss Ukraine, especially how the Russian Army has been recruiting Indian citizens. But the two leaders will also focus on other pressing issues left over from their last summit in 2021. They will talk trade, space, oil, liquified natural gas, weapons supplies, projects to build nuclear power reactors in India and mutual settlements amid Western sanctions.

Head of the Center for the Indian Ocean Region at IMEMO RAS Alexey Kupriyanov said in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta: "While the trade deficit problem cannot be solved through negotiations, it can be resolved as the trade structure levels off and Indian exports to Russia grow. These mostly include high-tech products that India either produces itself or buys in the West to resell to Russia."

 

Kommersant: Iran elects reformist president

Messages of congratulations have come pouring in for Iranian president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian as he gets ready to assume Iran’s top post. Leaders of friendly countries to Iran, including Russia, have already congratulated the 69-year-old politician, who ran on a platform advocating Iran’s move away from international isolation. A heart surgeon by trade and a single father, Pezeshkian has been a reformist since 1997. US comments on his victory in the presidential run-off differed from other countries’ statements in that Washington dismissed the Iranian vote as not free or fair enough as it showed little faith that the Islamic Republic would change in any meaningful way.

Pezeshkian’s win is noteworthy as reformist politicians were defeated in the parliamentary election in March, while in 2021, the Guardian Council banned any reformist candidate from vying for the presidency.

The Iranian president-elect is an ethnic Azerbaijani who speaks Azerbaijani, Persian and Kurdish. Pezeshkian is the first president since 1979 from western Iran, which is considered more tolerant because of its language and religious diversity.

Still, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds all the decision-making power in Iran as he controls domestic and foreign policy of the Islamic Republic. The president has a limited say in those two spheres, with his key task being to implement the supreme leader’s instructions. Parliament, which has been dominated by conservatives since 2020, will also make it difficult for the new president to push any policy through.

"Iran probably won't revisit any foreign policy lines under Pezeshkian, who is unlikely to reverse the country’s course toward major rapprochement with Russia either," Vladimir Mesamed, an Israeli expert from Israel, told Kommersant. He expects the president to align with his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi’s policies and does not see any changes on the horizon in Tehran’s attitude toward the Jewish state.

Pezeshkian will be sworn in as the country’s ninth president later this month or in early August. Appointing cabinet posts will be his first task as president, with each requiring individual approval from legislators. Candidates for the key posts of foreign and interior ministers as well as the intelligence chief will have to be approved by the supreme leader, a move that will signal to what extent the new president will be able to put his ideas to practice.

 

Kommersant: Russian fertilizer producers get set to ride global demand wave

Solid demand on the global mineral fertilizer market should prop up prices. Analysts forecast that Russia’s exports of fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from Baltic Sea ports will become more expensive in the next few months and stay at higher levels through 2026. This, they argue, will allow Russian producers to increase production and exports by as much as 8%.

Nina Adamova, senior analyst at Gazprombank’s Center for Economic Forecasting, says stable demand from the global market and a flamboyant domestic market will be the main drivers behind Russian fertilizer production. "There are lots of projects at their final stages in Russia, especially in the nitrogen segment, which is a key driver for production growth in the mid-term," she explains. Adamova sees Russian fertilizer companies staying competitive globally, despite an expected increase in tariffs.

The forecast from Gazprombank’s Price Index Center shows that the situation globally will also allow Russian producers to increase exports. According to Adamova, Russia will keep diversifying its fertilizer exports as the share of the EU drops and Asian market share grows.

Sources with knowledge of the fertilizer industry told Kommersant they expect the domestic market to show more demand growth as they argue that the situation with exports will mostly depend on regulatory processes. Fertilizer export quotas are effective in Russia through November 2024, and market players have been regularly lobbying for canceling those.

 

Izvestia: Russian scientists working to create food out of thin air, solving global food shortages

Russian scientists are working to develop microbiological production methods to make new foods. They propose using bacteria that form organic matter from inorganic substances for these purposes through electrosynthesis, or electricity.

In general, embracing microbiological technology will make food more affordable, one of the authors, Nikolay Yankovsky at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, believes. That is why the scientist’s joint work with other leading Russian researchers has been submitted for consideration to the heads of academies of sciences across BRICS, as the grouping promotes building a fairer and more stable world order.

Dietologist Margarita Korolyova argues that introducing new food products could trigger problems for people’s immune systems, causing new diseases to appear. It will take at least 10 generations for people to adjust their stomachs to brand new foods, she added as she insisted that Russia should proceed with traditional agriculture and cattle farming to grow routine products instead as the country has significant resources for that.

Denis Kuzmin at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology says biomass often lacks the necessary amount of essential amino acids that a human body needs. Secondly, he argues, it is more expensive to produce such biomass than alternative proteins, including soy.

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