WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kremlin, asked about US sanctions bill, suggests it would impact Ukraine peace efforts if implemented

The Kremlin said on Monday that it had taken note of comments made by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham who is sponsoring a tough new sanctions bill on Russia and that its backers should consider its impact on efforts to reach a peace deal on Ukraine.

Graham said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that President Donald Trump had told him that the sanctions bill - which would impose 500% tariffs on countries like China and India that buy Russian oil - should be brought forward for a vote.

Graham called Trump's decision "a big breakthrough" which he said was part of efforts to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table on Ukraine and give Trump "a tool" to bring that about.

He stressed however that Trump had a waiver and could decide whether or not to sign it into law if and when it passes Congress.

Asked about Graham's comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia was aware of the U.S. senator's stance and had taken note of his statement.

"The senator's views are well known to us, they are well known to the whole world. He belongs to a group of inveterate Russophobes. If it were up to him, these sanctions would have been imposed long ago," said Peskov.

"Would that have helped the (Ukraine) settlement (process)? That is a question that those who initiate such events should ask themselves."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Civilian killed in Ukrainian attack on Donetsk – governor

Ukrainian forces launched a series of missile and drone attacks on the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Monday evening, resulting in the death of one civilian and injuries to at least three others, including a teenager, according to DPR head Denis Pushilin.

In a Telegram post, Pushilin reported that long-range air-launched missiles struck the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk, killing a woman and injuring a male teenager and an adult man. The attack caused fires and significant damage to civilian infrastructure, including the Sokol market, the central department store, and a bank.

“Air defenses here in the Republic have been working nonstop for the last hour. I’ve seen several rockets intercepted in the air, but apparently some of them have made it here to this center,” RT correspondent Roman Kosarev reported from the scene of the strike in Donetsk. “A small shopping center is destroyed. I saw one body of a woman while I was on my way over here.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has yet to confirm the exact type of missiles used in the attack, but early reports suggest Kiev might have fired British-supplied Storm Shadows. “Specialists will try to determine what exactly these fragments are a little bit later on,” Kosarev added, showing suspected fragments of the missile discovered on the scene.

In a separate incident, a kamikaze drone attack targeted Gorlovka, injuring a 19-year-old male in one of the biggest cities in the DPR. Gorlovka, located 50 kilometers north of Donetsk, was home to some 250,000 people before the conflict and has been frequently targeted by Kiev’s forces since 2014. The latest strike destroyed one residential building and damaged 12 others, along with seven civilian infrastructure facilities, including a clinic, a dormitory, three boiler houses, a pharmacy, and a bank branch, according to Pushilin.

Emergency services were engaged in extinguishing the fires and assessing the full extent of the damage. Pushilin stated that all injured individuals were receiving qualified medical assistance.

Last week, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Kiev of deliberately committing atrocities against civilians in Donbass, including mass killings of the elderly and drone strikes on residential homes.

“This is not an accident, but an inherent flaw – the hallmark of the Kiev authorities. It is a deliberate policy that has already been elevated to the level of state doctrine,” the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said while speaking at a conference on the “atrocities and war crimes by the Kiev regime in Dzerzhynsk,”another DPR city some 30 km north of Donetsk that was liberated by Russian troops in February.

Donetsk and its sister republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, declared independence following the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. After years of Ukraine’s refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements and Kiev’s continued shelling of civilian areas in the breakaway regions, Russia launched its special military operation on February 24, 2022. In late September 2022, the two republics, colloquially known as the Donbass, along with the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, conducted referendums on joining Russia.

On Monday, Governor Leonid Pasechnik announced that the Russian military had taken control of the entirety of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Meanwhile, Russian forces continue operations to liberate the parts of the DPR that remain under Kiev’s control.

Reuters/RT

I enjoin everyone, every institution or organization to appraise, apply and spread this gospel as it is the solution to the problems besetting the country and it is of utmost urgency because the problems are increasing by leaps and bounds and gaining strength of an ever-growing giant which is continually pinning us to the wall. But don’t be dismayed. It is darkest before dawn, for with our back to the wall, we have been able to discover that there is a chink in the giant’s armour and the weapon to apply is appropriate cost of governance. Please read on:

When I wrote about the need to address the gargantuan and ever spiraling cost of governance

as a means of solving the myriads of problems confronting the country, little did I know that

there would be an outpour, openly, as we had during the End Bad Governance Protests.

Unfortunately, however, neither the protests nor the response by Mr. President touched on the

root of the problems. The holy book says “My people perish for lack of knowledge”. If Nigerians are aware that excess cost of governance is where the various challenges confronting

the nation are sourced and nurtured until they become the behemoth, the gigantic araba tree standing in the way of their progress and well-being, they could have drawn attention to the tap root which cost of governance represents with a view to felling the araba tree. It is not all problems that can be resolved with force. In fact, force does not solve problems it merely

sweeps them under. Our situation calls for sober reflection and introspection on the dilemma

facing the country with a view to finding a workable solution. An analogy may explain the

situation more clearly: When politicians are elected to manage the affairs of the country, it is

like giving them an open signed cheque to use the resources of the nation judiciously for the

collective. But because most of our political elite are bereft of integrity and sense of social

justice, they use the largest chunk of our resources for the smallest number, majorly

themselves. Politicking in Nigeria therefore is, in the main, a race for a big bite of the cake

rather than service to the nation as it should be. It is the insatiable appetite of our leaders for

wealth and power that has brought us to this dire straits.

The system of cost without constraint, that paints a picture of bottomless pit of money available for public spending, is the attraction of most politicians; and the ease with which they

appropriate the resources of the nation, mostly to themselves with reckless abandon, is why

everything goes awry with the country. We sure need a change. A change that will take us out

of the rot and ensure our desired steady progress. A system that will consciously limit the cost

of governance to appropriate portion of the nation’s resources; a standard cost of governance

appropriate to the level of the country’s development. But we continue to ignore this model as

solution to our problems at our own peril. “Odo ki i lojupon ka tun ma wogbe pon”. You don’t

need to enter the bush to fetch water from a brook when the seepage is in the open. Therefore,

if we have not addressed ourselves to the solution of our problems it is because the gospel has not been spread widely enough or because those concerned are feigning ignorance just because

implementation of the system of appropriate cost of governance will stem their greed, take the

feeding bottle out of the mouths of the over grown adults as it were. This piece explains the

imperative of (designing and) applying appropriate (or standard) cost of governance if Nigeria must get out of the rot and march on the path of development. The situation now is like a ship without compass but lost in a tumultuous sea. No matter the expertise of the crew, the compass must be found and applied for the ship to berth safely. Appropriate cost of governance is the missing compass.It is not enough to set up committees or appoint experts to address specific problems facing the country. The appointer must provide a roadmap and benchmark which will be the focus in making a cost/benefit analysis of the problems to enable provide solution. Even the best

economic expert will precede his opinion with: ‘all things being equal’. But all things are not

equal when costs and benefits are incongruously perched with cost of governance going

through the roof and benefits sinking to the nadir. Things don’t change by denial of the fact

but by taking concrete action in applying solution.

Tax and Revenue Generation.

The new law being proposed for tax and revenue generation is comprehensive and will, without

doubt, expand the tax net and increase the revenue of the nation. It is also comforting that the Committee is saddled with fiscal policy in its entirety. We hope that the committee will look

holistically at the cost structure vis a vis the resources of the country at the present level of

development in which case this paper will be a useful corollary to your recommendation. Laws

enacted or policies formulated with the backdrop of appropriate cost of governance will be far

more transparent and equitable and will engender trust, obedience and the needed compliance.

The National Peace Committee

The nation appreciates the steps taken by the National Peace Committee in the past, as elder

statesmen, to prevent war-like acrimony during political campaigns and elections. It is noted however that political parties and their candidates either shun the wise counsel of the elders or apply them in the breach in most cases. For a change, if political parties and their candidates

give their commitment to appropriate cost of governance theory, this will enable them realize that occupying a political office is neither a tea party nor an opportunity for unrestrained access to the treasury. This will be a better way of ensuring politics without bitterness and election without acrimony.

SERAP and Other N.G.Os

Without prejudice to your present system of monitoring and measuring government

performance which is historic, application of this theory is preventive and transparent. For

example, it is better and easier to critique a budget plan for its cost of governance content than

to cry foul after budget implementation and when corruption must have gained strength to fight back.

The Patriots and Elder Statesmen

Applying the system of appropriate cost of governance as a first step before any government action or decision will ensure that costs are incurred dispassionately without bias or selfish interest.

Therefore, well-meaning elders, who variously suggest return to parliamentary system,

restructuring, constitution review, separation, among others, may have to note that meaningful

and dispassionate decisions can only be taken (for or against issues) by those whose motives

are altruistic and not by those who engage in transactional politics in order to maintain the

status quo in their own interests. We have gone through that route before, spending about

twelve billion Naira, but the report of the conference is gathering dust somewhere in the villa.

Seek ye first appropriate cost of governance to ensure that all things will fall in place.

The President

Of a truth, the incumbent is not the sole ‘manufacturer’ of our self-inflicted problems. As

such, we cannot blame him for the effect of cumulative fiscal indiscretion of our past leaders;

but the buck stops on the President’s table as the numero uno. Sir, the nation bought into your “change” manifesto, hence you became President. A workable change however should not bebusiness as usual but rather transformative. Nigeria needs your magical change, Sir, not in the manner of the legendary Alimi yopayopa or Professor Peller, but in form of total turn around, a paradigm shift that will bring us out of the rot and map a way forward. If Mr. President can apply this appropriate cost of governance with half the zeal with which he announced the removal of oil subsidy and the revaluation of the Naira, the nation will witness a turn-around in the manner of biblical Samaria after the siege of Syria. It is only then that you will be the needed transformative leader that will bring Nigeria back from the brinks and leave an enduring legacy.

The Ruling class

Granting that Nigerians have been suffering from collective amnesia all the while, now that

the truth is out in the open, it should be a wake-up call for introspection and self-reassessment.

Everybody should add commensurate value and earn their keep in service to the nation. It will also be a preemptive step that will forestall obstructive revolution. There must be a complete turnaround, a political suicide as a writer aptly described it, meaning that the ruling class must be dead to the old system of politics of self-interest, what-isin-it-for-me, you- chop- I- chop.

When a hefty chunk of the resources at any tier of government is allocated to those in government, you are planting corruption ab initio. True democracy requires fiscal discipline, integrity and sense of social justice.

Political Parties & election candidates

The truth is that our democracy in Nigeria since the military interregnum has been merely on

paper , it has always been pseudo-democracy, democratic feudalism or feudalistic democracy whereby the ruling elite use the resources of the nation to feather their own nests as much as they can, leaving the rest (if any) to the collective like benevolent feudalists. You can deceive all the people some of the time or some of the people all the time, but you cannot deceive all the people all of the time. Your usual campaign rhetoric and promises of heaven on earth will

take us nowhere if a system of appropriate cost of governance is not in place.

You must be fair before you are kind and the way to display fairness is your approach to

adopting the appropriate cost of governance system: a workable platform and the minimum

expectation from any party desiring to rule. The system should be the foundation of your

manifesto and the bench mark for measuring your performance.

INEC

As the agency responsible for recruitment of the ruling class, your success can only be

measured by the quality of those elected to manage the affairs of the country. Democritus, in

his wise crack, said: the man enslaved to wealth can never be honest. This system of

appropriate cost of governance will separate the wheat from the chaff and provide a useful tool

for selecting honest and diligent candidates rather than those whose actions and values are

driven by greed and personal aggrandizement.

As Nigerians, we have collective responsibility to make Nigeria great again, but we cannot be

operating pseudo democracy and expect the dividends of true democracy. Let us apply

appropriate cost of governance as a tool and fiscal discipline to break away from the “sins” of

the past. Lack of integrity, corruption and absence of social justice must not be allowed to kill

Nigeria.

Aje Olukoya, a Corporate Governance Consultant writes from Lagos via: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Nigeria’s sovereign debt market maintained its upward trajectory last week, with continued investor interest driving down average bond yields by 19 basis points to 18.38% from the previous week’s 18.57%.

The positive momentum was primarily fueled by robust buying activity in longer-term securities. The JAN-35, MAR-27, and APR-32 bonds experienced significant yield declines of 64, 39, and 36 basis points respectively, as investors capitalized on improved market conditions and moderating inflation concerns.

The rally wasn’t universal, however. Some profit-taking emerged in select instruments, with the APR-32 and JUN-33 bonds seeing their yields rise by 36 and 13 basis points. Financial analysts view this mixed performance as evidence of strategic positioning by large investors awaiting clearer policy direction.

Primary Market Activity Shows Strong Appetite

The Debt Management Office’s June bond auction revealed compelling investor demand despite a scaled-back offering. The agency presented N100 billion in Federal Government bonds—a substantial reduction from the typical N300 billion monthly allocation.

Investor response was overwhelming, with subscription levels reaching N602.86 billion, though final allotments totaled just N99.99 billion. The seven-year tenor attracted particular attention, accounting for over 93% of all submitted bids.

Final clearing rates were set at 17.75% for the APR-29 maturity and 17.95% for the JUN-32 bond, levels that closely matched secondary market pricing at the time.

Treasury Bills Join the Rally

Short-term government securities also participated in the positive trend, with Treasury Bill yields dropping 29 basis points to average 20.23%. The most significant declines occurred in the APR-26 (-136 bps), MAY-26 (-97 bps), and JAN-26 (-86 bps) instruments, demonstrating broad-based demand across the yield curve.

Some consolidation was evident in the NOV-25 and MAR-26 bills, where yields edged up by 8 and 5 basis points respectively due to limited selling pressure.

International Bonds Benefit from Global Flows

Nigeria’s dollar-denominated Eurobonds also attracted increased investment, with average yields falling to 8.61% from 8.97% in the prior week. The SEP-33, FEB-32, and SEP-28 issues led the compression with yield declines of 45, 44, and 39 basis points respectively.

This performance reflects growing international investor confidence in emerging market debt as global risk sentiment improves and investors search for yield opportunities in developing economies.

Israel orders evacuations in northern Gaza as Trump calls for war to end

The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against Hamas, as U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to the war amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire.

"Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel's offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages.

But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. officials say nowhere in Gaza is safe.

"The (Israeli) Defense Forces is operating with extreme force in these areas, and these military operations will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city center to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations," the military said.

The evacuation order covered the Jabalia area and most Gaza City districts. Medics and residents said the Israeli army's bombardments escalated in the early hours in Jabalia, destroying several houses and killing at least six people.

In Khan Younis in the south, five people were killed in an airstrike on a tent encampment near Mawasi, medics said. At least 12 other people were killed in separate Israeli military strikes and gunfire across the enclave, taking Sunday's death toll to at least 23, medics said.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives arrived to pay their respects to white-shrouded bodies before they are buried.

"A month ago, they (Israel) told us to go to Al-Mawasi (in Khan Younis) and we stayed there for a month, it is a safe zone," said Zeyad Abu Marouf. He said three of his children were killed and a fourth was wounded in the Israeli airstrike.

"We ask God and the Arabs to move and end this occupation and the injustice taking place against us,” Abu Marouf told Reuters.

NEW CEASEFIRE PUSH

The military escalation comes as Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, begin a new ceasefire effort to halt the 20-month-old conflict and secure the release of Israeli and foreign hostages still being held by Hamas.

Interest in resolving the Gaza conflict has heightened following U.S. and Israeli bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities.

There has also been rising concern over how aid is being distributed to Gazans in the ruined enclave. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.

A Hamas official told Reuters the group had informed the mediators it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, but reaffirmed the group's outstanding demands that any deal must end the war and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the coastal territory.

Hamas has said it is willing to free remaining hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive, only in a deal that will end the war. Israel says it can only end the war if Hamas is disarmed and dismantled. Hamas refuses to lay down its arms.

The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis.

Reuters