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Good morning. Russia’s first default since the Bolsheviks, G-7’s commitment to Ukraine, Johnson’s campaign to alter Brexit deal, and EU emissions fund fight. Here’s what people are talking about.
Russia defaulted on its foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time in a century, the culmination of ever-tougher Western sanctions that shut down payment routes to overseas creditors. For months, the country found paths around the penalties imposed after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. But at the end of the day on Sunday, the grace period on about $100 million of snared interest payments due May 27 expired, a deadline considered an event of default if missed. Focus shifts to what investors do next. The last time Russia fell into default vis-a-vis its foreign creditors was when the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin repudiated the nation’s staggering Czarist-era debt load in 1918.