Free Republic

China's President Xi Jinping will deliver a "peace speech" on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, Italy's foreign minister said on Friday, apparently continuing Beijing's line of urging peace while avoiding condemnation of its ally Russia. Antonio Tajani told RAI Radio 1 that he used a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Rome on Thursday to urge Beijing to use all its powers to persuade Russia to end the war while ensuring Ukraine's independence. "He told me that Xi will deliver a peace speech on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine," Tajani said.

The Russian economy contracted steeply in the second quarter as the economic consequences of its war in Ukraine took hold. The economy shrank 4 percent from April through June compared with a year ago, the Russian statistics agency said on Friday. It is the first quarterly gross domestic product report to fully capture the change in the economy since the invasion of Ukraine in February, when Western sanctions shut Russia off from much of the global financial system, and many countries severed trading relationships with Moscow. It was also a sharp reversal from the first quarter, when the economy rose...