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EU signs part of Economic Deal with Ukraine
BRUSSELS — The European Union and Ukraine on Friday signed part of a broad political and economic agreement that sparked the West’s escalating conflict with Russia.
On the second day of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yatsenyuk and European leaders signed several sections of the agreement that call for stronger political dialogue and security cooperation. But the most substantive sections of the deal—covering trade, law enforcement, anticorruption measures and macroeconomics—likely won’t be signed until after Ukraine holds elections in May.
The EU has already proposed to grant Ukraine the trade benefits of the deal—eliminating tariffs on most Ukrainian exports to the bloc—before the deal is signed.
These steps are intended to bolster Ukraine’s economy and fragile transitional government, months after former President Viktor Yanukovych, under pressure from Russia, refused to sign the agreement. That decision sparked protests, violent clashes with Ukrainian police and ultimately pushed Mr. Yanukovych from office.
“This deal meets the aspirations of millions of Ukrainians that want to be a part of the European Union,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said at the signing ceremony.
EU leaders also agreed to bring forward the deadline for finalizing political and trade accords with Georgia and Moldova. Those agreements, which would bind the two countries into much closer ties with the 28-nation bloc, were previously due to be signed by August.
The step was taken because of European concerns that Russia would step up pressure on Georgia and Moldova to abandon the agreements as it did with Ukraine last year.
The EU has already moved to alleviate Russian economic pressure on Moldova by lifting quotas on the country’s wine exports. It has also promised to ease the procedure for Moldovan citizens to travel to the bloc in the coming months.
Early Friday morning, the EU agreed on a new list of Russian sanctions targets, including members of President Vladimir Putin’s governing team. They will be added to a list of 21 Russians and Crimeans the EU had already slapped with a travel ban and asset freeze. Thursday’s action was coordinated with the U.S., which on Thursday brought its list of targets to 31 individuals and a Russian bank.The EU’s new targets, to be identified formally later Friday, are all Russians and don’t include businesspeople, according to someone familiar with the list. Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council—which comprises the national leaders of the EU’s member states—said that “some of [the targets] are really high-ranking.” The EU’s earlier list arguably didn’t include anyone in that category.
EU leaders maintained their silence Friday morning about who would be targeted on by sanctions. According to three people familiar with the list, it includes three figures who answer to Mr. Putin and were on the U.S. list issued Monday.
They include Putin aide Sergei Glazyev, a hard-liner who threatened Ukraine with economic retaliation last year as it contemplated whether to sign an Association Agreement with the EU. Also cited is Vladislav Surkov, another aide sometimes called “the Gray Cardinal” for his behind-the-scenes work at the Kremlin. When Mr. Surkov was hit with the U.S. sanctions earlier this week, he memorably joked that the things he liked about America were Tupac Shakur, Jackson Pollock and Allen Ginsberg, and he didn’t need to travel to the U.S. to appreciate their work.
Another target is Dimitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister. He, too, laughed off the U.S. sanctions, and tweeted to “Comrade Obama” that “some prankster” must have come up with the sanctions targets.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the bloc wouldn’t be cowed by Russian talk of retaliating against the European measures.
“Nobody is afraid of anybody,” she said when asked about the threats.
On Friday morning, Mr. Putin said his government won’t retaliate against the new U.S. sanctions on Russia imposed Thursday.
An unusual level of secrecy surrounded the names of the EU’s targets, as the bloc’s officials sought to prevent the individuals from moving their assets before the formal publication. The national leaders could bring no aides into their meeting, and they were deprived of Wi-Fi and phone service during the session, according to someone familiar with the situation.
European leaders also canceled an EU-Russia summit planned for June and said individual countries would cancel their own meetings with Russia. If Moscow continues to block a monitoring mission to Ukraine by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, they said, they would organize their own EU mission.
The leaders also said they had asked the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, as well as individual member states, to draw up plans for “targeted economic measures” if Russia continues to destabilize Ukraine.
They declined to specify what specific Russian actions would trigger such broader measures, such as embargoes. “We will assess each action, each incident in itself,” Mr. Van Rompuy said. “We will not put all our cards on the table…But the preparations are ongoing.”
Nicos Anastasiades, the president of Cyprus, whose banks and beaches make it a popular destination for Russians, told reporters the EU must pursue steps that avoid financially damaging its member states.
Other leaders said they are bracing for the possibility that just such steps will be necessary before long. “We need to prepare ourselves, and that means of course hurting ourselves in a way,” said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. “I think this is already happening. Sweden as a country has 400 companies present in Russia, and they are already worried.”
Others looked for different ways to send Russia a message. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Group of Eight industrialized nations, which had included Russia, is essentially defunct as a result of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.
“As long as there is no political environment for such an important political format as the G-8, the G-8 doesn’t exist anymore,” Ms. Merkel told the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament on Thursday.
-WALLSTREET JOURNAL
As crude oil deliveries bow to supply disruptions in the Middle East, oil giants, Exxon Mobil and Chevron have reported drops in profit in the first quarter of 2026 despite surging oil prices.
Exxon’s quarterly earnings fell to $4.2 billion from about $7.7 billion the same quarter last year, a decline of about 46 per cent, while Chevron’s profits fell to $2.2 billion from about $3.5 billion, down about 37 per cent. Still, both companies beat Wall Street expectations.
However, America’s two largest oil companies are still expected to eventually reap the benefits of soaring oil prices, which reached levels unseen since 2022 this week as the war in Iran continues, Reuters reported.
In a prepared statement, Exxon said that “timing effects” and volume impacts in the Middle East reduced reported earnings; when excluding those effects, the company reported $8.8 billion in profit. At Chevron, unfavourable timing effects totaled about $3 billion for the quarter, according to the company.
“One of the things that we called out in our press release was the timing,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chair and chief executive officer, said in an interview. “As you close the quarter in the volatile market, you book the hedges, the paper, but the physical barrels are in inventory until they get delivered.
“So you get this deferred profit that we wanted to basically highlight, and make sure that our investors understood that the work that we’re actually doing to meet the demands today are resulting in benefits not necessarily booked in the quarter,” Woods added.
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At the start of the war, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
Certain oil and gas companies are already reaping the benefits. BP announced that its profits more than doubled in the last quarter, crediting “exceptional oil trading” for its highest quarterly profit since 2023 – an announcement that led advocacy groups and some European finance ministers to call for greater taxes on windfall profits.
Other earnings reports indicate that it may take longer for oil companies to report clear gains. ConocoPhillips, a partner in Qatar’s state gas company, cut its forecast annual output due to disruptions in Qatar’s liquified natural gas operations caused by the war. Iranian attacks on QatarEnergy LNG’s export plant will take years to repair, state energy officials have said.
Chevron and Exxon’s stock jumped at the start of the war but eased in April as the US and Iran agreed on a ceasefire and the reopening of the strait of Hormuz. And Lockheed Martin, a key defense contractor with the federal government, initially saw its stock jump 25 per cent since the start of the year, but has since dropped to roughly the same levels.
Meanwhile, gas prices at the pump continue to climb, with the current average reaching $4.39, up from $3.187 a year ago. Americans are also facing fears of elevated inflation and slow job growth amid turmoil in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and five other OPEC+ countries increased their oil production quota on Sunday in an expected move aimed at demonstrating continuity at the cartel after the shock withdrawal of the United Arab Emirates.
The seven major producers will add 188,000 barrels per day to their total production quota for June amid the price pressure unleashed by the Mideast war, as part of “their collective commitment to support oil market stability”, according to a statement published by OPEC+.
The statement, following an online meeting of Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia and Saudi Arabia, made no mention of the United Arab Emirates, which quit the body on Friday, three days after announcing its withdrawal.
Rystad Energy analyst Jorge Leon told AFP that the silence on the UAE’s departure was a sign of tense relations.
Oil market analysts had widely expected the increase of 188,000 barrels, similar to the 206,000-barrel daily increases OPEC+ announced in both March and April when the portion allotted to the UAE was subtracted.
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“By sticking to the same production path — just minus the UAE — it’s acting as if nothing has happened, deliberately downplaying internal fractures and projecting stability,” Leon said.
Strait of Hormuz Bottleneck Remains
But raising the quota on paper may not have much impact on actual production, which is already short of the limit.
Untapped OPEC+ reserves are mainly located in the Gulf region, and exports there are trapped by the blockade of the vital Strait of Hormuz, imposed by Iran in response to the US-Israeli strikes that started the war on February 28.
Leon, the Rystad Energy analyst, told AFP on Sunday that the cartel was looking to send “a two-layer message” that the UAE’s exit would not disrupt how OPEC+ operates and that the group still exerts control over global oil markets despite massive disruption to oil trade due to the war.
“While output is increasing on paper, the real impact on physical supply remains very limited given the Strait of Hormuz constraints,” Leon told AFP. “This is less about adding barrels and more about signalling that OPEC+ still calls the shots.”
The Strait of Hormuz blockade is hitting Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The latter’s production will no longer count towards OPEC quotas.
“Total OPEC+ output with quota fell to 27.68 million bpd in March, against a monthly quota of 36.73 million bpd, a shortfall of approximately 9 million bpd driven almost entirely by war-related disruption rather than voluntary restraint,” said Priya Walia, another analyst at Rystad Energy, ahead of Sunday’s meeting.
Iran, whose exports are now the target of a retaliatory US blockade, is an OPEC+ member but is not subject to quotas.
Russia, the group’s second-biggest producer, has been the main beneficiary of the situation. But despite soaring energy prices, it appears to be struggling to produce at the level of its current quotas as its own war in Ukraine drags on and Ukrainian drones hit oil industry facilities.
‘A Big Deal’
Amena Bakr, an analyst at Kpler, described the UAE’s exist as “a big deal” for OPEC.
Previous withdrawals from the group by Qatar in 2019 and Angola in 2023 were less significant by comparison, Bakr told a video conference on the UAE withdrawal.
The UAE has invested massively in infrastructure in recent years, and state-owned oil company ADNOC plans to increase output by five million barrels a day by 2027 — far above the country’s last quota of around 3.5 million barrels.
ADNOC also pledged on Sunday to spend $55 billion on new projects over the next two years, confirming that the company is “accelerating growth and delivery of its strategy”.
There is also the risk for OPEC+ that other countries will leave such as Iraq and Kazakhstan, which have faced repeated accusations of surpassing their quotas.
AFP
Shareholders of Nigerian Exchange Group Plc (NGX Group) have commended the Board and Management for the Group’s performance and strategic direction, urging continued focus on growth and long-term value creation.
At the Group’s 65th Annual General Meeting (AGM), shareholders approved the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, alongside key resolutions including a final dividend of ₦2.00 per share, a one-for-three bonus share issue, and the corresponding increase in share capital. The re-election of Dr. Umaru Kwairanga, Group Chairman, Board of Directors, Dr. Okechukwu Itanyi, Independent Non-Executive Director and Mrs. Ojinika Olaghere, Independent Non-Executive Director reinforced continuity in governance and oversight.
They acknowledged the Group’s disciplined execution and its role in strengthening the Nigerian capital market, noting that recent developments reflect a more structured and better-regulated market environment.
Speaking during the meeting, the President, New Dimension Shareholders Association, Patrick Ajudua, commended the leadership of the Group for delivering a strong financial outcome, noting that the results reflect both improved market conditions and deliberate strategic execution. “The numbers speak to a business that is gaining strength and direction,” he said.
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Similarly, the Chairman of the Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Boniface Okezie, lauded the Group’s commitment to innovation and infrastructure development. “The market is becoming more forward-looking, supported by strong leadership at the Group level. Initiatives around market infrastructure and participation are yielding results, and this is positive for investors,” he noted.
Commenting during the AGM, Chairman of NGX Group, Umaru Kwairanga, appreciated shareholders for their continued support and reaffirmed the Board’s commitment to sustainable value delivery. He said, “The progress recorded reflects the strength of the Group’s strategy and the performance of its operating businesses. As a Board, our responsibility is to ensure disciplined oversight, uphold strong governance standards, and position NGX Group to deliver sustainable, long-term value to shareholders.”
Temi Popoola, group managing director/chief executive officer, focused on execution priorities, noting that the Group is positioning for scale. He said, “This next phase is about deepening momentum. Our priority is to scale infrastructure, broaden participation, and unlock new pathways for capital formation.”
The meeting reflected strong shareholder confidence in NGX Group’s leadership, with the Group reaffirming its commitment to playing a central role in the evolution of Nigeria’s capital market while delivering sustained returns to investors.
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