Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met the political leadership of Mozambique after having visited Kenya and Burundi, according to Tass news service.

President Vladimir Putin pledged to boost air defences around Moscow after the Kremlin blamed Kyiv for the biggest attack on the Russian capital since the invasion of Ukraine started. A drone attack caused a fire at an oil refinery in Russia’s Afipsky territory, according to an Interfax report on Wednesday.

Latest developments

• Moldova sees EU entry by 2030 along with Russian-occupied region
• Putin orders tighter defences after drone strikes on Moscow 
• Ukraine, IMF reach agreement for $900m loan disbursement
• Russian oil flows stay high three months into pledged output cut
• Here is what’s behind rising Serbia-Kosovo tensions: QuickTake

Irish court appoints liquidators to Russian state-owned lessors 

Liquidators have been appointed to two European units of sanctioned Russian leasing company GTLK after their bid to win the protection of the Irish courts failed.

Hamstrung by penalties over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, state-owned GTLK was unable to make interest payments to creditors on its foreign bonds, which went into default last year. Like many Russian Eurobond issuers, the company — one of the largest lessors of aircraft in Russia — used Ireland-registered subsidiaries to sell and service its foreign notes.

Judge Conor Dignam appointed Damien Murran and Julian Moroney of Teneo Restructuring Ireland as joint liquidators to GTLK Europe DAC and GTLK Europe Capital DAC after a hearing at the High Court in Dublin on Wednesday

The firms had sought to have an examiner appointed after debts of $1.5-billion were forgiven by the Russian government. Examinership is a mechanism that provides for the rescue and return to health of ailing, but potentially viable companies. The company has to have a reasonable prospect of survival.

The judge on Wednesday refused to appoint an examiner. He found that the firms had not acted in good faith and had not demonstrated that they had a reasonable prospect of survival. He ordered the winding up of the companies instead.

Ukraine’s allies push back on striking targets in Russia 

The US and European allies urged caution on whether Ukraine should have the right to strike inside Russia, amid concerns that a potential escalation could drag them into a broader war.

Countries supporting Ukraine are taking varying stances on how it should beat back Moscow’s invasion, as Russian territory is increasingly targeted. The US has publicly leaned against the strategy of attacks within Russia.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told reporters in Estonia this week that Ukraine “has the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself”. Cleverly, who said he wasn’t commenting on Tuesday’s drone strikes on Moscow, added that “legitimate military targets beyond its own border are part of Ukraine’s self-defence”.

But other allies are more cautious. While France backs Ukraine’s right to defend itself, French military support should not be used to attack Russia, a French official said. The official added that if Ukraine wanted to do more with its own forces, it was not France’s place to dictate to Kyiv how to conduct this war.

Another European diplomat said that allies tend not to discuss the question because it is divisive.

Russia has faced minor attacks on its own territory for months, including this week when Russia said five drones aimed at Moscow were shot down and three intercepted by electronic jamming. The city’s mayor said several residential buildings were damaged in the attack. Nobody was hurt.

Russian regions near Ukraine have come under fire repeatedly in recent weeks, with officials ordering some residents in the Belgorod region to evacuate their homes. A drone attack caused a fire at the Afipsky oil refinery in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, the local governor said on his Telegram channel Wednesday, adding that it was later extinguished.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was reluctant to be drawn on the use of Western weapons to attack Russia. “The operational choices about how they use the weapons must be made by Ukrainians themselves,” Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday. “There are difficult choices.”

John Kirby, the spokesperson for the US National Security Council, told CNN on Wednesday that once Washington provided systems to the Ukrainians, they get to decide what to do with the arms. “Now, they have given us assurances that they won’t use our equipment to strike inside Russia. But once it goes to them, it belongs to them,” Kirby said.

“We don’t want our systems… we don’t want to encourage or enable attacks inside Russia,” Kirby said.

Poland’s leader pushes back against US rebuke of Russian probe

Poland’s president hit back at criticism from the US and the European Union over a law that would potentially put the country’s opposition leader under investigation ahead of a crucial election, saying the objections were unjustified.

President Andrzej Duda offered to speak to President Joe Biden directly to explain new legislation that would create a special committee to probe alleged Russian meddling in Poland. The US and the EU said the panel, which would be likely to target opposition leader Donald Tusk, could be misused to sway a tightly contested vote slated for October.

The torrent of criticism after Duda approved the legislation on Monday caught the establishment in Warsaw off guard.

“I don’t quite understand the reaction of our allies,” Duda said in an interview in his office in the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Tuesday. “I don’t know if they were misled by opposition politicians, if they were misled by errors in translating the bill — or if someone just didn’t explain it.”

The clash casts a shadow over Poland’s efforts to forge closer transatlantic ties, in which Duda has been instrumental in asserting the country’s central role as a main access point for efforts from Nato and its allies to defend Ukraine. Biden has visited the country twice since the war began in February last year and the US has deployed 10,000 troops to Poland.

Duda, who has developed a personal friendship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has himself gained traction as a lead advocate of tank and jet deliveries to Kyiv.

Macron says Putin revived ‘brain-dead’ Nato

Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reawakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation almost four years after the French president branded the military alliance brain dead.

“In December 2019, I had harsh words for Nato, underlining at the time the divisions that existed at its heart between Turkey and several other powers by speaking of brain death,” Macron said in a speech at the Globsec summit in Bratislava on Wednesday.  “I could say today that Vladimir Putin has revived it with the worst of electroshocks.”

Macron angered some allies, especially in eastern Europe, at the time with his criticism of Nato as he pushed for Europe to build up its own defence capabilities and a more independent foreign policy.

The French leader said on Wednesday he wants European Union member states to discuss deeper cooperation to acquire their own striking capabilities and guarantee their own security.

He said the point wasn’t to replace Nato with a Franco-German-dominated defence setup. “The point is to build a powerful Europe,” he said. DM