MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. Russia hopes the Trump-Putin Alaska summit sparks bilateral progress; Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu announces a wider military offensive to "finish the job" against Hamas in Gaza; and Russia mulls a strategic gas route through Serbia to Hungary and beyond amid a transit halt by Ukraine. These stories topped Tuesday's newspaper headlines across Russia.
Izvestia: What Russia expects from Alaska summit
Russia hopes that the upcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US leader Donald Trump in Alaska on August 15 will give a new impetus to bilateral relations and help resolve a number of key issues, including reopening flights between the two countries, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Izvestia. On August 11, the US president, too, said trade relations between Russia and the United States could be normalized. He also said that his talks with Putin will likely be preliminary and that a Russia-Ukraine summit will take place some time in the future. At that, Kiev will have to swap some land for peace. Experts interviewed by Izvestia agree that territorial concessions from Ukraine are inevitable and that any refusal to do so will be highly deleterious for Ukrainian troops. The European Union convened an emergency foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday saying that any Ukraine peace deal made without the participation of Kiev and Brussels would be inadmissible.
As contacts between the United States and Russia intensified significantly after Trump came to power, diplomats from both countries held a number of high-level meetings aimed at normalizing embassy operations and overcoming obstacles in bilateral relations. However, how to resolve the Ukraine conflict remains a major stumbling block in the relationship between Moscow and Washington. Media reports about potential territorial agreements have recently emerged as Western journalists cite officials familiar with the course of negotiations between Russia and the United States.
Judging from the sharply negative reaction from Vladimir Zelensky who stated that Ukraine will under no circumstances cede its land, the outlines of a potential deal may coincide with what is being actively discussed in the media right now - scenarios of a territorial swap that would be clearly unfavorable for Kiev.
Professor of History Peter Kuznick, Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, criticized Zelensky’s refusal to cede land as unwise. "There is no chance of retaking Donbass or defeating the Russians. The longer the fighting continues, the weaker Ukraine's position becomes and the more land Russia will control. This is the maximum Zelensky can achieve. And the recognition that Ukraine will not join NATO is an obvious step," he told Izvestia.
According to Kuznick, European leaders will continue to put pressure on Trump. "The Europeans from the 'coalition of the willing', who are ready to fight to the last Ukrainian, do not want a peaceful solution, but seek to weaken and punish Russia. It's dangerous and sad," he lamented.
Polish political analyst Mateusz Piskorski said Moscow and Washington could reach an agreement without either the EU or Ukraine. "As the conflict was provoked by the US administration, it is they who can put a stop to it," he argues.
Vedomosti: Israel to expand its offensive in Gaza
Israel will launch a wider military offensive in the Gaza Strip "to finish the job and destroy Hamas" and release Israeli hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at a news conference in Jerusalem on Sunday evening. The announcement came three days after the Israeli military-political cabinet greenlit a plan to take Gaza City, the enclave’s largest, under control.
Soon after Netanyahu’s speech, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made his own announcement at a news briefing on August 11, saying his country would join France, Britain and Canada in recognizing Palestine next month. Out of the 193 UN member countries, 143, including Russia and China, have so far recognized the state of Palestine.
In turn, Hamas dismissed Netanyahu's statements as "a blatant attempt to justify genocide against Palestinians."
The Gaza offensive plan announced by Tel Aviv was met with consternation in Australia, Britain, Denmark, China, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Finland, and Spain. Against that backdrop, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Berlin will suspend sending weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza.
There are some in the Israeli chain of command who don't think the upcoming military operation in Gaza is the right move, Lyudmila Samarskaya, Research Fellow at the Center for Middle East Studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Vedomosti. "Not everybody views military solutions to problems as effective or believes that they will save hostages. While the announcement of a new operation may have been made to exert pressure on Hamas, it so far has had no effect," she said.
Israel’s new offensive is unlikely to trigger Western sanctions against Tel Aviv, Yury Lyamin, a senior researcher at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, noted. Even as Washington can be unhappy with the actions of its ally, ties with the Jewish state are quite strong, he added. However, the expert said Europe could as well introduce an embargo on arms deliveries to Israel. According to Samarskaya, any Israeli offensive in Gaza will cause more Western pressure on Israel, including using political or economic tools.
Izvestia: Russia, Serbia explore new gas pipeline routes to Europe, bypassing Ukraine
Russia and Serbia are discussing building gas pipelines that could reshape the energy map of Southeast Europe. As Ukraine has refused to transit fuel supplies from Russia, Moscow and Belgrade have found a workaround. At least two European allies of Russia, Hungary and Slovakia, could benefit from a new route across the Balkans, Izvestia has learned. Serbia, for one, has made clear its intention to buy even more Russian gas even as its share reached a record 93% last year. Moscow, Belgrade, and Budapest are studying the economic feasibility of launching an oil pipeline with an annual capacity of up to three million metric tons that would connect Serbia to the Druzhba pipeline in Hungary. Serbian officials clarified that they are fully committed to this project.
Serbia and Russia are cooperating closely regarding the potential construction of new gas pipelines, a Serbian cabinet official told Izvestia. According to him, a gas pipeline from Serbia to Hungary that could be used to increase supplies to Slovakia, Austria and other EU countries is the most likely option.
Belgrade intends to receive more Russian gas in the future through the Balkan Stream, an extension of TurkStream, the Serbian Ministry of Mining and Energy confirmed to Izvestia. "Serbia is pursuing a sovereign policy course, and we plan to continue doing so, that is, to continue receiving as much gas through the Balkan Stream in the future as possible," the ministry said.
In the wake of the EU’s decision to wean itself off Russian natural gas by 2027, the construction of a new pipeline from Serbia to Hungary would be risky for Gazprom. Besides, the volumes Slovakia and Hungary currently get along the existing routes are enough, so it’s more likely that those could see upgrades in the future, Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, shared with Izvestia.
Kommersant: Syria looks to bring Russian military presence back to country's south
Damascus has expressed interest in Russian military police resuming patrols of Syria’s southern governorates, as they did before the demise of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024, Kommersant has learned. A source explained to the newspaper that such a measure could, as the interim government sees it, limit Israel’s military activity in occupied parts of Syria’s southern areas, where it has been conducting operations since December of last year. Meanwhile, Russia has reinstated patrols in another Syrian region near the northeastern city of Qamishli for the first time since the government changed in Damascus, Arab media outlets reported. According to them, this happened days after Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani visited Moscow on July 31-August 1.
In an interview with Kommersant, the source called the Russian activity in Qamishli a result of intensified cooperation between the transitional government and Moscow.
As regards Syria’s southern areas where bloody clashes are still taking place for ethnic and religious reasons, Israel remains the dominant external force there. It calls for demilitarizing the land lying between its own borders and southern suburbs of Damascus and it has been extremely wary of the emergence of the transitional government’s troops in those areas.
An Israeli official told Kommersant that multiple factors will determine the attitude of the Jewish state to the return of Russian patrols to southern Syria. "These, among other things, include agreements between Russia and Israel and the position Russia will take if it reaches agreement with the new government (on resumed patrols - Kommersant)," the official told the newspaper.
Russian International Affairs Council expert Kirill Semyonov pointed out to Kommersant that, before the government in Damascus changed, the Russian military presence in southern Syria suited the interests of Israel. "Russian patrols were supposed to prevent any deployment of pro-Iranian groups in southern Syria," the Israeli source told Kommersant. "However, doing so was difficult due to the lack of clarity regarding exactly what `forces affiliated with Iran’ could mean," he explained. And Semyonov recalled that lots of pro-Iranian units joined the armed forces and special services of the Syrian Arab Republic under the previous government.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: How oil market could react to Russia-US summit
The upcoming meeting between the Russian and US leaders in Alaska on August 15 has the potential to not only fully reshape the global geopolitical landscape but also shake up the global economy, mostly through how it affects the global oil and gas market. And the future of the anti-Russian sanctions regime, as well as the discount on Russian oil and the trajectory of oil and gas prices, too, will directly depend on the outcome of the talks.
Experts interviewed by Rossiyskaya Gazeta believe that the negotiation process will go beyond the Alaska talks as one meeting will not be enough to address all the issues that have so far piled up or resolve differences. Friday’s talks will give a start to a larger negotiation process that could run through the end of the year, energy expert Kirill Rodionov argues.
Moreover, Konstantin Simonov, General Director of the National Energy Security Fund notes, paradoxically enough, successful talks will not be positive news for the global oil market anyway, for they would push oil prices down.
Rodionov is more bullish about the talks, believing that the discount on Russian oil could narrow to $10 per barrel as a result. He doubts any additional sanctions will be imposed on Russia and he expects that the key restrictions will be lifted on it in the mid-term, namely the EU’s embargo on Russian oil and petroleum imports as well as the EU’s ban on exports of oil refining equipment to Russia.
Nikolay Dudchenko, an analyst at Finam, too, expects the upcoming talks to be a success, albeit they may not satisfy, say, Ukraine and the EU. And even the most positive scenario would imply quite low chances of lifting all sanctions on Russia, for that would simply not be feasible, he said, even as part of the restrictions could be lifted. In that scenario, the discount on Russian oil blends will narrow, the expert predicts.
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