Page 76 - Cisc News Today

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has made speed the top priority in military procurement, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday, in a push to overhaul procedures previously criticised as slow and ineffective.

Wintershall Dea (WINT.UL) Chief Executive Mario Mehren on Wednesday said Moscow's decree to establish control over energy firms Uniper and Fortum was not affecting his company so far, but Russia's policies were "unpredictable" and "unreliable."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday he had held a "long and meaningful" phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and hoped it would give impetus to relations with Beijing.

Russia's No. 2 lender VTB has raised its retail lending forecast for Russia this year to 17% from 11%, now expecting stable economic conditions to produce a 33.5-trillion-rouble ($410.3 billion) market, a senior bank official said.

Russia seized temporary control of assets of Finnish energy group Fortum and its former German subsidiary Uniper, sowing confusion over the fate of other Western companies in Russia as pressure grows to hit Moscow with more sanctions over Ukraine.

Russian state-owned bank VTB will launch a digital bank within the mobile messaging app of leading social network VKontakte, Russia's answer to Facebook, as Moscow seeks technological solutions to disrupted banking transfers.

He is now serving a sentence for fraud, contempt of court.

Ukraine has shipped significantly more grain over the last several months than originally expected, especially corn, easing worries that were prominent last year over the country’s export program.

Cuba increasingly is turning to Russia and Mexico for oil to ease an acute shortage of diesel and gasoline and supplement dwindling supplies of Venezuelan crude and fuel, according to shipping data and sources.

A reporter for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica was injured and his Ukrainian fixer died on Wednesday when they were ambushed in southern Ukraine, most likely by Russian snipers, the paper said in an article on its website.