A meeting between U.S. President Joseph Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, scheduled for June 16 in Geneva, will be devoted to developing rules for their confrontation that are manageable and predictable for both sides, both in Ukraine and on a number of other international issues, political scientist believes, Director of the Institute of Global Strategies Vadym Karasiov said.
“The point of the Biden-Putin meeting will be to develop rules for the confrontation between the United States and Russia so that this confrontation is manageable. This also applies to Ukraine, judging by Putin’s recent interview. It should be understood that Ukraine remains for a long time a territory where the interests of the United States and Russia will come into contact. It is important for Biden and Putin to understand the limits of this influence and to make the overlapping of their interests more predictable and manageable and not turn into direct or even military clashes,” “Karasiov told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, it will also be important for the Russian President to hear from the U.S. President about his plans to provide Ukraine with the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP).
According to political scientist, Director of the Ukrainian Barometer sociological service Viktor Nebozhenko, “one should not expect sensations from the meeting between Biden and Putin, although the background itself and the upcoming negotiations will be quite sharp.”
“There are exaggerated expectations against an overly aggressive background. Biden fears the Republican party, which, criticizing him, is gaining strength. In turn, Putin fears losing control over gas transit, as once happened with Gorbachev [Soviet President Mykhail Gorbachev]. As a result of their meeting, there will be no easy decisions on certain issues. There will be an intricate text of the communique, a general press conference, but we will not get something that would give us the opportunity to draw quick conclusions,” Nebozhenko said.
According to the political scientist, “sensations should be expected by the autumn.” “After Putin and Biden, other players will come to the fore, namely, China, the EU countries, even Ukraine, each with its own political party.”
According to expert of Hardarika Strategic Consulting Corporation Kostiantyn Matviyenko, in the conversation between the presidents of Russia and the United States around Ukraine, the key issue will be the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
“They will try to find such a mechanism so that Russia does not ‘lose face’ in the gas pipeline construction, and the United States can show that they ensure the security of Ukraine,” he told the agency.
Matviyenko said the leaders of Russia and the United States will focus, in addition to Ukraine, on the issue of resuming the nuclear deal with Iran, the Russian initiative to ease sanctions, “since they are” hitting “its technical capabilities in the military sector,” as well as Russia’s access to world food markets and seeking informal quota arrangements.
According to PhD in Political Science, political scientist Ihor Petrenko, the talks between the presidents of the United States and Russia “will most likely focus on environmental issues, since it is in this that they can reach consensus and progress.”
“If you recall, Putin devoted a significant part of his address to the Federal Assembly in April to ecology. It was a kind of pass towards Biden. And ecology is one of the electoral promises of the U.S. leader, important for his political agenda,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
Allegations of the existence of a crisis of confidence between the leadership of the United States and Ukraine do not correspond to reality, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleh Nikolenko said.
“Allegations of the existence of a crisis of confidence between the leadership of the United States and Ukraine do not correspond to reality,” Nikolenko said in response to an inquiry from Yevropeiska Pravda (European Truth).
The speaker supported the recent statements from the US Embassy in Ukraine, where they promised that Joe Biden would call Volodymyr Zelensky soon, noting that the United States did not put forward any prerequisites for such negotiations.
“Earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and now the US Embassy in Kyiv, has clearly announced the preparation of a telephone conversation between the leaders of the two countries without any preconditions. There are no grounds to question the strategic nature of the partnership between Ukraine and the United States,” Nikolenko said.
He also accused certain public figures, without calling names, of “inventing contrived stories” about relationship problems. “There is a crisis of public assessments of some Ukrainian figures,” the diplomat said.
The financial company Investohills Vesta, together with investors from the European Union and the United States, has created the Investohills Helianthus $100 million seed fund to invest in the Ukrainian market of distressed debts, the company said on its website.
According to the report, the first issue of shares of the relevant fund (in the amount of UAH 1 billion in June 2020) was approved by the National Securities and Stock Market Commission and distributed among investors.
Investohills Vesta will manage the fund’s activities in the interests of foreign investors, as well as provide them with a range of services in the field of redemption and collection of bad debts, litigation, storage and management of distressed and collateralized assets.
“The Ukrainian bad debt market is interesting to foreign funds specializing in such investments. But they are stopped by Ukraine’s specifics: weak protection of creditors’ rights at the level of legislation and the judiciary. Investohills Group and the fund… has offered a full cycle of support for investment-attractive deals with bad debts,” the founder and managing partner of the financial company, Andriy Volkov, said.
According to the release, on August 19, 2020, the fund closed its first deal, having bought out a portfolio of troubled assets of VTB, Rodovid and Financial Initiative banks from the Deposit Guarantee Fund for UAH 1.314 billion.
EU, FUND, INVEST, INVESTOHILLS VESTA, US
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has extended the deadline for providing information on accounts under an agreement between Ukraine and the United States to apply the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) until December 31, 2020.
According to an official letter of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the extension is linked to the COVID-19 spread.
As reported, at the end of August, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission approved a list of financial agents in line with FATCA requirements.
The Ukrainian Embassy in the United States is gradually restoring the reception of citizens, it will be carried out exclusively by appointment, the Ukrainian diplomatic mission said.
“We inform that from June 9, 2020, the Embassy is gradually restoring the reception of visitors on consular issues,” the Embassy said on its Facebook page on Friday evening.
The Ukrainian industrial company Interpipe has designed, developed and tested a new connection Intrepid-SP, devised specially for the North American market.
According to the company’s press release, this product serves for the construction of directional and horizontal wells in order to extract shale oil and gas which are in hard-to-reach layers – shales, dense sandstones and limestones. Due to the “shale revolution” and new drilling technologies the United States doubled its oil production over the past decade.
At the same time, the purpose of Intrepid-SP is to maintain the column gas tightness under a complex load and ensure its safe rotation during descent. Such rotation is a necessary technological condition for the construction of horizontal sections of wells with large deviations from the vertical.
Intrepid-SP may also be used for the exploitation of traditional deposits but with hard-to-recover reserves, for example, in multilateral wells with horizontal endings or a new horizontal section is “added” to the main well of an existing well.
Interpipe CFO Denys Morozov said that to expand the line of threaded connections for oil and gas production entering new market segments.
“The new connection was developed considering the peculiarities of the North American market and is intended for companies that develop complex deposits. Intrepid-SP was tested in an independent laboratory. We are going to deliver the first shipment by the end of the year,” the top manager said.
