Reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The European Union and 12 partner countries have met in Brussels to discuss the effectiveness of Western sanctions on Russia and ways to strengthen the G7 price cap on Russian oil, the EU Commission said on Tuesday.

In the first half of 2024, Western allies, including Bulgaria, the European Union and the United States, purchased around 2 billion dollars worth of oil products from Turkey that were refined from Russian crude oil, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the Center for Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Hungarian state oil company MOL is nearing the conclusion of negotiations to establish a new arrangement for securing Russian crude oil after Ukraine banned its main partner, Lukoil, from using Ukrainian pipelines.

Traders are moving Russian diesel cargoes to a new ship-to-ship (STS) loadings site in the northern Aegean Sea, as Western sanctions hit vessels carrying fuel loaded in Russian ports, LSEG and market sources data show.

Traders are moving Russian diesel cargoes to a new ship-to-ship (STS) loadings site in the northern Aegean Sea, as Western sanctions hit vessels carrying fuel loaded in Russian ports, LSEG and market sources data show.

Bulgarian military personnel will take part in training Ukrainian military forces within NATO member countries, as decided by the ministers of the "Glavchev" office.

European Union governments approved on Tuesday the first regular payment to Ukraine of 4.2 billion euros ($4.58 billion) of the €50 billion the EU has set aside as financial support for Kyiv, the governments, called the EU Council, said in a statement.

Gazprom reported a record loss of 480.6 billion rubles (about 5.6 billion US dollars) for the first half of the year. This follows last year's annual loss of 629 billion rubles (approximately 6.9 billion dollars), the first in over two decades. In 2022, Gazprom had recorded a profit of 1.23 trillion rubles.

Hungary has accused Ukraine of blackmailing both itself and Slovakia by halting oil supplies, according to a statement from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's advisor, Gergely Gulyas. The accusations come in the wake of Ukraine's decision to impose sanctions on Russia's Lukoil, which has disrupted the oil transit through the country.

The European Commission has made its first payment of 1.5 billion euros to Ukraine, derived from frozen Russian assets. This funding aims to bolster Ukraine's military capacity and contribute to the country's reconstruction.