Press review: President Putin begins India state-visit while EU mulls Military Schengen
Top stories from the Russian press on Thursday, December 4th
MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin sets off for a state visit to India, and the European Commission proposes two solutions to use frozen Russian funds. Meanwhile, the EU is mulling the Military Schengen project. These stories topped Thursday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Izvestia: Putin to begin India state-visit
Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay his first state visit to India in four years on December 4-5. The two sides will sign 10 intergovernmental agreements and more than 15 commercial contracts. Moscow and New Delhi will outline strategic spheres of economic cooperation until 2030 as the Kremlin expects to reach $100 billion worth of bilateral trade. Roscosmos and Rosatom are bringing specific proposals to India. Despite Western pressure, defense cooperation, too, can be boosted with potential contracts for the delivery of Su-57 fighters, S-400 and even S-500 missile systems. As global players, Russia and India largely determine global security. The Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia that the two countries are also discussing a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st century.
Among other issues, payment solutions, a visa-free regime, and the expansion of direct flights between the two countries will help develop bilateral tourism, Vice President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Dmitry Gorin told the newspaper.
In a joint statement, Russia and India will spell out further large-scale plans in security, economy, finance, transport, energy, education and culture. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also take part in the 23rd Russian-Indian summit in New Delhi that will bring together 150 business leaders from the two countries.
Russian oil supplies are a key issue on the agenda: since the Ukraine conflict, India has been one of the largest buyers of Russian crude with a discount, something that Washington which views New Delhi as a reliable partner has opposed. "India continues to buy oil from Russian oil majors that have not been sanctioned yet. In the future, it will undoubtedly increase purchases, after [US President Donald] Trump lifts sanctions, mostly because Russia has been a reliable partner and supplier to India," political analyst Rakesh Bhadauria told Izvestia.
Despite external pressure, Putin’s visit will give a boost to defense cooperation between Russia and India, especially given the latest turbulence. Tensions in the Asia-Pacific, too, add risks.
"Ahead of Russian-Indian talks, potential contracts to supply Su-57s and S-400s and technology transfer for the S-500 Prometei (Prometheus ) air shield have been discussed. Talks have long been held, and the market anticipates them to yield fruit," Gleb Makarevich, junior researcher at the Center for Indo-Pacific Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Izvestia.
Vedomosti: European Commission moves ahead with solutions to expropriate frozen Russian assets
On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) presented solutions to provide 90 billion euros in aid to Ukraine in 2026-2027. According to EC President Ursula von der Leyen, providing funding is an instrument of support that will allow Kiev to negotiate with Russia which has intensified its military pressure on its neighbor from the position of force as she pointed to recent peace talks between the United States and Ukraine.
The EU’s executive arm offered two solutions to procure 90 billion euro, the first being a loan that the EU would borrow from financial markets. Von der Leyen argued that this would involve raising capital on the capital markets and using the EU budget as a guarantee, as well as providing this capital as a loan to Ukraine. The other solution is a reparations loan via the seizure of sovereign Russian assets, with Moscow eventually being held responsible for paying back reparations to Kiev. Valdis Dombrovsks, the Latvian Commissioner responsible for economy, noted that even as 210 billion euros worth of Russian assets has been immobilized, or "the maximum loan amount that we could propose", for the time being the EC is considering using just 90 billion euros.
This is not the first time that the EC has considered sanctions not as an instrument of common foreign policy through a unanimous vote but as a trade policy that would require reaching a qualified majority, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International Studies at MGIMO Yegor Sergeyev noted. According to him, not a single country or international institution has ever funded another nation using a third country’s frozen assets.
Sergey Glandin, a partner at BGP Litigations, doubts the idea of a reparations loan for Ukraine would break the resistance of skeptics even if a qualified majority is reached. According to the lawyer, skeptics like Belgium and Hungary could block the process as early as at the stage of voting for the allocation of funds, which would require a unanimous vote from EU member states.
Izvestia: EU mulling establishing a `Military Schengen’
Under the slogan of a fictitious threat from the East, the EU has been rapidly transforming from an economic union into a militaristic bloc, Russia’s Permanent Mission to the European Union told Izvestia. The EU’s latest Military Schengen project has been a key step in this direction. The European Commission has presented a 115-page roadmap for military mobility to make it easier for troops and equipment to move across the EU and speed up the development of dual-use transport infrastructure, with billions of euros worth of budget allocations. Brussels has estimated that the EU will need about €100 billion for that. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the initiative as malevolent.
According to the EC’s documents, there are about 500 projects bloc-wide that need to be implemented in the near future. The Military Schengen project will need €100 billion in total allocations. "While no one has opposed this project as such, there is a problem concerning funding and sustainability of the projects," Vadim Koroshchupov, a junior research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Izvestia.
Officially, the Europeans argue that "you cannot protect the continent if you cannot cross it." Brussels believes that the EU relies on the ability to move troops and military supplies both inside and outside Europe for its security, the expert explained.
Pavel Feldman, professor at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, dismissed the Military Schengen project being mulled by European leaders as a big bluff. They need to discuss establishing transport infrastructure for the quick movement of troops to confuse US President Donald Trump, who has been persuading them to increase their defense spending to 5% of their national GDP.
While European leaders have been mulling large-scale projects to develop transport infrastructure as they argue that there is military expedience for that, these actually involve a big scam for corrupt officials and developers to profit from, for the Military Schengen will have a minimal impact on NATO’s combat capabilities, the expert concluded.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Trump takes his time launching invasion of Venezuela
US President Donald Trump has announced plans by Washington to start delivering strikes on ground-based targets associated with drug trafficking soon. The US leader did not specify either the schedule or the location of a potential operation. According to Trump, the United States is going to target not only sites linked to the production or transportation of narcotics, but also facilities where people who the United States has accused of involvement in drug trafficking may be located.
The deadline that Trump seemed to announce during a 15-minute phone call with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro expired last Friday, Miami Herald reported, citing sources. The US leader allegedly told his Venezuelan counterpart he had a week to leave the country with his family. And on Saturday, Trump declared the airspace above Venezuela closed.
On Monday, the US leader convened a meeting of high-ranking officials, including War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior US military commanders. The meeting, the details of which have not been disclosed yet, discussed issues related to the continued pressure campaign on Venezuela.
Chief research fellow at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Vasilyev explained to Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Trump’s intense involvement in trying to resolve the Ukraine conflict has helped prevent the US leader from invading Venezuela. "Washington understands perfectly well that a US military intervention in Venezuela could significantly complicate the push to resolve the Ukraine problem," the expert noted.
Media: Russia moves to shut down Roblox
On December 3, Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor announced restrictions on access to the US gaming platform Roblox. According to a Roskomnadzor official, the move comes after widespread and repeated instances of content promoting or justifying extremist and terrorist activities, with calls for violence and LGBT (the movement is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia — TASS) propaganda, were repeatedly found on Roblox.
Actually, Roblox is a key gaming platform for children around the world, that has been very popular in Russia, mostly among users aged between 10 and 14, the founder of Vengeance Games Studio, Konstantin Sakhnov, explained to Vedomosti. Roblox has around 380 million active users a month, including some 18 million Russians, project manager at EvApps Danila Sereda noted. In Russia, Roblox had some 2 million users a day, Sakhnov added.
So far, China, Algeria, Qatar, Iraq and partially the UAE have banned Roblox. Indonesia and Brazil, too, are considering imposing restrictions on it. General prosecutors in Kentucky, Texas and Louisiana have sued the platform for insufficient protection of children.
"Russia is Roblox’s third-largest user base, with an estimated 15 million to 19 million active users a month," Yaroslav Kravtsov, the head of a Roblox game development studio and a member of a lobby association, told Kommersant. There are no quality analogues offering free access, a diversity of genres, and options for shared gaming in Russia, and children seeking similar online games could encounter scammers on a larger scale, he warned.
