MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. The International Maritime Organization has proposed evacuating merchant vessels and their crews stranded in the Persian Gulf; the EU Council has approved a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine along with the 20th package of anti-Russian sanctions; and Germany seeks to take the lead in Europe’s militarization. These stories topped Friday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.

 

Izvestia: Forty countries support plan to evacuate vessels from Persian Gulf

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has developed a plan to evacuate merchant vessels and their crews currently stranded in the Persian Gulf. Forty of the council's member states have already endorsed the plan, the IMO said. This concerns approximately 2,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers who have been unable to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran. Experts believe the evacuation mechanism can only be effective once there are signs of de-escalation and guarantees of safe navigation, and the details are still being worked out.

IMO Spokeswoman Natasha Brown told Izvestia that the organization will compile a list of ships that need to leave the area and coordinate the evacuation process. According to the International Maritime Organization, the proposed plan does not involve any coercive or enforcement measures and is purely coordinative in nature. Brown emphasized that the goal of the plan is to ensure that vessels can safely leave the area using the existing traffic separation scheme, provided safe conditions are ensured.

Under current conditions, the safe passage of ships out of the Persian Gulf can only be ensured through direct or indirect agreements between shipowners and the Iranian authorities, Russian Financial University associate professor Mikhail Khachatryan said. Tehran controls key sections of the Strait of Hormuz and the passage regime and is therefore capable of ensuring the escort and safe passage of ships, including bypassing potentially dangerous sections and areas of possible mining. However, this is possible only if the relevant agreements are reached. "The most likely scenario is that shipowners will delegate authority to the IMO to negotiate such agreements with the Iranian authorities and, likely, to handle payments," the expert added.

According to Yekaterina Yumasheva, co-owner of the Mains insurance brokerage, the International Maritime Organization can primarily serve as a mediating and coordinating platform in the current situation, providing technical and organizational support for the evacuation. "The IMO is an advisory and consultative organization that lacks the enforcement mechanisms to compel compliance with its decisions," the expert said.

 

Media: EU allocates 90 billion euros to support Ukraine amid ongoing conflict

The EU Council has approved a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine alongside the 20th package of anti-Russian sanctions. The allocated funds will allow Kiev to expand its arms purchases from EU countries. The new anti-Russian measures were passed after Hungary and Slovakia lifted their vetoes, following assurances regarding the resumption of oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline. However, Budapest still opposes Ukraine’s accelerated accession to the EU.

The European Commission will begin distributing funds from the 90-billion-euro package to Ukraine in the second quarter. About 60 billion euros of this amount is earmarked for military support. Kiev can use the funds to purchase weapons in Europe and establish joint ventures with EU countries, European Parliament member Pekka Toveri told Izvestia. According to him, this "paycheck" will cover Ukraine’s military expenditures for two years. The lawmaker noted that this would allow Ukraine to plan in the long term and use funds more effectively, for example, in the defense industry.

Moreover, the EU has stated that it reserves the right to use frozen Russian assets to secure this loan. Moscow has repeatedly denounced Western countries' attempts to use these assets as theft because it violates international law.

The Estonian Foreign Ministry reported that the latest package of sanctions against Russia was approved in a more limited form, without a ban on the maritime transport of Russian oil. This is likely due to the global oil shortage caused by the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. A ban on maritime oil shipments would have driven up global energy prices even further, which would have had a severe impact on the EU economy, Yekaterina Arapova, associate dean of the International Relations Faculty at MGIMO University, pointed out. "Furthermore, in practice, this measure — if adopted in the future — could lead to the confiscation of cargo and the seizure of ships entering the territorial waters of European states. This could create a serious legal dilemma and exacerbate political tensions, because Russia would have to respond," the expert stressed.

As political analyst Georgy Bovt told Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the new package of sanctions is not surprising. "Oil has largely been excluded from the sanctions package. Apparently, the Europeans do not want to exacerbate the situation," he said.

 

Izvestia: Germany seeks to lead Europe’s militarization

Russia takes Germany’s efforts to strengthen its military capabilities and assume a leading role in Europe very seriously. Berlin recently published a new military strategy that aims to expand the size of its armed forces to 460,000 servicemen by 2039, making them among the strongest in Europe. Experts believe that modernizing the German armed forces will require considerable time and resources and may raise the risk of direct military conflict between the West and Russia.

Germany’s plans for militarization, particularly its intention to expand its armed forces, "can and should be viewed as a bid for a leadership role in Europe," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Lyubinsky told Izvestia. "We take this very seriously, as do many of Germany’s allies in Europe. Not even all of [Germany’s] immediate neighbors view this unequivocally," the diplomat said.

Berlin has taken the lead in strengthening its own security by focusing on the militarization of the economy, having allocated more than 108 billion euros to the development of the military-industrial complex in 2026 alone, and earlier adopted a comprehensive plan to rearm the military over the next ten years at a cost of 377 billion euros, political scientist Yegor Belyachkov emphasized. "By investing in the military-industrial complex, the government is creating an engine for the economy within the framework of the military procurement system. However, the effect of such a policy can only be short lived, as it requires a constant flow of funds, which will be difficult to secure amid the economy’s structural restructuring," the expert noted.

Germany faces a long period of modernizing its armed forces and bringing them to a qualitatively new level, Artyom Sokolov, a senior researcher at the International Studies Institute of MGIMO University, pointed out. According to the expert, Germany’s neighbors are more concerned about competition in the defense industry than about the danger of revanchism. France, for example, is interested in ensuring that its armed forces are considered the most powerful in the EU, especially since they can rely on a nuclear component, which Germany does not have and is not expected to acquire.

 

RBC: Venezuela reintegrates into global financial system

On April 16, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank announced they would resume engagement with Venezuela, which had been suspended in March 2019 due to uncertainty regarding the government's recognition. This decision paves the way for the unfreezing of the country’s assets and the first external assessment of its economy in 20 years.

According to Igbal Guliyev, dean of the Financial Economics Faculty at MGIMO University, the decision by the IMF and the World Bank should be viewed as a pragmatic shift. "The global economy is fragmenting, sanctions pressure is intensifying, and competition for resources is growing particularly sharply, as confirmed by recent events in the Middle East. In this context, ignoring Venezuela has become economically impractical," the expert pointed out. Guliyev noted that Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves of 303 billion barrels. Its prolonged exclusion from the West’s institutional orbit has created difficulties for the West itself. "We are now witnessing an attempt at reintegration through international institutions," the economist stressed.

Viktoria Kuznetsova, an Economics Faculty expert at RUDN University, shares a similar opinion: resuming cooperation is a pragmatic and, in many ways, inevitable step, rather than a sign that the crisis has already been overcome. According to her, the country is once again entering the field of international macroeconomic analysis, and this is "itself an important political and economic signal." At the same time, the expert emphasized that this is not a "gift" to Caracas but rather an acknowledgment that it is impossible to return Venezuela to a sustainable trajectory without an international institutional framework.

Venezuela has long been perceived by the international community as an unreliable partner due to a governance crisis, corruption, and the deterioration of the socio-economic situation following the death of Hugo Chavez, who served as Venezuela’s president from 1999 to 2013, Irina Dashkina, associate professor in the Foreign Regional Studies Department of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). The expert described the resumption of IMF and World Bank operations in the country as a new phase that opens up new opportunities for Caracas.

 

Vedomosti: How Donald Trump and his family profit from US foreign policy

Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency on January 20, 2025, there have been several instances where some of his foreign policy decisions have resulted in financial gains for stock market investors. And while insider trading in the securities market is a common occurrence, profits derived from correctly "predicting" future events seem to be more than mere trickery or fraud.

The most telling example is the joint US-Israeli military operation against Iran. From the very moment it began on February 28, several large bets were placed on the Polymarket platform. For example, six new users bet on strikes against Iran within a few hours. Their total winnings amounted to $1.2 million. Virtually the same thing happened around news of a possible ceasefire between Iran and the US. A few minutes before Trump’s announcement of progress in the negotiations on April 7, about 50 newly registered users placed large bets on this outcome. According to the platform, three of them won nearly $486,000.

However, it would be incorrect to say that this only happens within Trump’s inner circle. The president and his closest allies, including family members, are known to openly abuse their positions for personal gain, Vladimir Vasilyev, a senior researcher at the US and Canadian Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed out.

The search for a universal tool for forecasting political and international crises has been going on for a long time, but it has yet to yield truly reliable results, Pyotr Punchenko, an advisor to the chairman of St. Petersburg’s Committee for External Relations, told Vedomosti. "The mere fact that someone placed a bet on an event a few minutes before it happened does not prove a leak. However, if we are talking about a series of overly accurate bets involving large sums of money placed right before important foreign policy decisions, that deserves the most serious attention," the expert emphasized.

According to him, betting platforms are interesting here not as a "prediction machine," but as an environment where information leaks and early signs of insider knowledge may appear. "In this sense, betting platforms can be considered a new factor in decision-making science. They are not an independent forecasting tool, but rather a possible indicator that a decision has ceased to be secret before its official announcement," Punchenko concluded.

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