0725GMT//Widow of assassinated Japanese PM visits Putin
"WAR HERO" ASSASSINATED: A suicide bomber killed the deputy head of Stavropol, the former commander of bomber units that pounded the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2022. Zaur Gurtsiev was killed outside his home on Wednesday evening by a man who approached him with a homemade bomb hidden in a bag. (NOTE: Gurtsiev was something of a poster boy for the Kremlin. It promoted him through the ranks and then made him the deputy head of Stavropol as a reward. This is part of the Kremlin's 'Time of Heroes' scheme to promote its Ukraine war veterans. Russian news reports said that the bomber may have been a disgruntled former Russian soldier.)
PUTIN'S SURPRISE VISTOR, NO. 1: The widow of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe met with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. After their meeting, Putin lent Akie Abe a limousine to travel to the Bolshoi Theatre. Ms Abe is on something of a world tour to meet leaders who knew her husband, including Donald Trump who she met five months ago. She told Putin that her husband had met him 27 times. She also thanked Putin for making time to meet her and described the war in Ukraine as a "challenging situation". Shinzo Abe was assassinated in 2022 at an election rally. He was Japan's PM between 2006-7 and 2012-20. His cornerstone foreign policy was to bolster relations with Russia. (COMMENT: The visit of Akie Abe to the Kremlin is another PR win for Putin and an embarrassment for Japan which supports the West's position on Ukraine.)
PUTIN'S SURPRISE VISTOR, NO. 2: Also visiting Putin on Thursday was Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's former president. This was Nazarbayev's first meeting with Putin inside the Kremlin since he launched a failed coup to regain power in Kazakhstan from his successor, Kassym Jomart Tokayev. (COMMENT: Putin will have understood the sensitivities around hosting Nazarbayev in the Kremlin but, perhaps, he felt that he owed his one-time ally a meeting. Very little has been seen of the humiliated and ostracised Nazarbayev since his associates were arrested in January 2022 for mounting a failed coup. Putin did host Nazarbayev at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence in Moscow in December 2024.)
PEACE TALKS: The Kremlin will send the same negotiating team to the next round of peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2 as it did in May, Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday. (COMMENT: No real surprises here. The Kremlin portrays these talks as standard and a continuation of talks that collapsed in 2022.)
WORK FOR VETERANS: Russia's regions will force businesses with more than 100 employees to hire Ukrainian war veterans. The governor of the central Vologda region said that businesses that failed to "do their duty" would be punished and fined. (COMMENT: Other regions of Russia have announced similar measures. This is all part of the Kremlin's top-down approach to reward and promote its ex-soldiers who fought in Ukraine.)
WAR DEATHTOLL: The BBC and Mediazona said that they have now identified more than 110,000 Russian soldiers killed in the Kremlin's war in Ukraine. Analysts said that this was only likely to be 45-65% of the actual number of Russian soldiers killed in the war, which means that up to 250,000 Russian soldiers may have died. (COMMENT: The data shows the uneven spread of Russia's war dead. By far the largest proportion of dead Russian soldiers comes from Tuva, Buryatia and Altai regions -- highlighting the Kremlin's push to keep casualties away from Moscow and St Petersburg.)
SELF-CENSORSHIP: Another Russian publisher self-censored its books on Thursday. The children's book publisher Samokat told bookshops that it was withdrawing 23 books from their stores because of concerns that they infringed the Kremlin's anti-LGBT "propaganda" laws. (COMMENT: This move to self-censorship by Russian book publishers has accelerated over the past few weeks since police arrested several executives at the Eksmo publishing house.)
GOVERNMENT BUDGET CUTS: Russia's economic ministry is slashing funding for scientific development, aviation development and shipbuilding because of falling oil prices and the strengthening Russian rouble. (COMMENT: These changes to the federal budget were passed by Russia's parliament on Thursday. Cuts were inevitable with the surge in the value of the rouble and a drop in oil prices –- which Russia is so reliant on. And, of course, Putin's war industries are protected from the cull. For context, the price of a barrel of Urals oil is now $50/barrel, down from $70 in the initial budget, and the value of the Russian rouble is now at 78/$1, compared to a predicted 95/$1.)
INTEREST RATES: Russia's Central Bank will probably keep its core interest rate at 21% at a meeting on June 6, said the majority of economists in a poll for the Vedomosti newspaper. Of 24 economists who were asked for their predictions, 15 said the Central Bank would keep interest rates steady but nine said that it would lower them. (COMMENT: The important issue here is that an interest rate cut in Russia is now being openly discussed. Russia's Central Bank jacked them up to 21% in November but has been under pressure to cut them because of the stagnating civilian economy, collapsing housing market and rouble strength.)
CREDIT CARD PROBLEMS: Overdue credit card debt in Russia has surged by 70% in the past six months, according to the United Credit Bureau which analyses borrowing habits in Russia. Analysts at the United Credit Bureau described the rise in bad credit card debt in Russia as "very fast" and potentially a major problem for the economy if macroeconomic indicators in Russia continued to worsen. (COMMENT: This is another sign of the worsening civilian economy in Russia.)