The measure comes as fertilizer prices have surged worldwide after the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime corridor along Iran’s coast that handles roughly one-third of global fertilizer trade. The disruption has intensified competition for alternative supplies and raised concerns over food production and agricultural costs.

The Council said the temporary tariff suspension would apply to major nitrogen-based fertilizer products but would exclude imports originating from Russia and Belarus.

Although the EU has limited direct dependence on Middle Eastern fertilizer supplies, officials said market-wide price increases have affected fertilizer availability and affordability across the bloc. The move is intended to ease pressure on farmers facing higher production costs during a period of heightened volatility in global agricultural markets.

The Council noted that a significant share of EU fertilizer imports already enters duty-free under preferential trade arrangements. However, substantial volumes continue to face customs duties ranging between 5.5% and 6.5%.

To protect European producers while expanding supply, the tariff waiver will be capped through a quota mechanism. Eligible imports will be limited to the volume of most-favored-nation imports recorded in 2024, plus an additional amount equivalent to 20% of fertilizer volumes imported from Russia and Belarus during the same year, the Council said.

The measures are expected to take effect within days after publication in the EU’s Official Journal.

The decision follows warnings from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that a prolonged disruption of shipping through Hormuz could trigger severe consequences for global food systems by constraining access to fertilizers and raising production costs for farmers.

Early signs of strain are already emerging in agricultural markets. Australia, the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, is planting fewer crops this season amid elevated fertilizer costs, raising the risk of a substantially smaller harvest.

Across parts of Asia, rice production is also expected to decline this year as the conflict compounds weather-related challenges associated with an emerging El Niño pattern.

According to the Council, the EU imported 2 million metric tons of ammonia and 5.9 million metric tons of urea in 2024, alongside 6.7 million metric tons of nitrogen-based fertilizers and nitrogen-containing mixtures.

The European Commission estimates the bloc’s direct reliance on Middle Eastern supplies remains relatively limited, accounting for about 3% of ammonia imports and between 1% and 2% of nitrogen fertilizer imports.

The measure comes as fertilizer prices have surged worldwide after the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime corridor along Iran’s coast that handles roughly one-third of global fertilizer trade. The disruption has intensified competition for alternative supplies and raised concerns over food production and agricultural costs.

The Council said the temporary tariff suspension would apply to major nitrogen-based fertilizer products but would exclude imports originating from Russia and Belarus.

Although the EU has limited direct dependence on Middle Eastern fertilizer supplies, officials said market-wide price increases have affected fertilizer availability and affordability across the bloc. The move is intended to ease pressure on farmers facing higher production costs during a period of heightened volatility in global agricultural markets.

The Council noted that a significant share of EU fertilizer imports already enters duty-free under preferential trade arrangements. However, substantial volumes continue to face customs duties ranging between 5.5% and 6.5%.

To protect European producers while expanding supply, the tariff waiver will be capped through a quota mechanism. Eligible imports will be limited to the volume of most-favored-nation imports recorded in 2024, plus an additional amount equivalent to 20% of fertilizer volumes imported from Russia and Belarus during the same year, the Council said.

The measures are expected to take effect within days after publication in the EU’s Official Journal.
The decision follows warnings from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that a prolonged disruption of shipping through Hormuz could trigger severe consequences for global food systems by constraining access to fertilizers and raising production costs for farmers.

Early signs of strain are already emerging in agricultural markets. Australia, the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, is planting fewer crops this season amid elevated fertilizer costs, raising the risk of a substantially smaller harvest. Across parts of Asia, rice production is also expected to decline this year as the conflict compounds weather-related challenges associated with an emerging El Niño pattern.

According to the Council, the EU imported 2 million metric tons of ammonia and 5.9 million metric tons of urea in 2024, alongside 6.7 million metric tons of nitrogen-based fertilizers and nitrogen-containing mixtures.

The European Commission estimates the bloc’s direct reliance on Middle Eastern supplies remains relatively limited, accounting for about 3% of ammonia imports and between 1% and 2% of nitrogen fertilizer imports.

Foreigners posing as scientists, executives, chefs and international consultants have for years formed part of an informal economy in China known colloquially as “white monkey” work, a practice in which overseas nationals are hired to project foreign prestige or international credibility at business events, trade fairs and marketing campaigns.

The work, often loosely organised through recruiters on WeChat and personal networks, has historically appealed to foreign students, migrants and temporary residents seeking quick income with minimal responsibilities.

Interviews with people who participated in such assignments illustrate how the market evolved alongside China’s economic rise, shifting consumer perceptions and tightening immigration enforcement.Piers, a foreign marketing professional who worked in China during the 2000s and 2010s, said one of his early assignments involved pretending to be a laboratory scientist at a manufacturing exhibition in Shanghai.

He and several other foreigners were hired to stand behind a transparent partition dressed in white lab coats while demonstrating a pavement-coating chemical product.

“It wasn’t the whole day, and we just had to pour water back and forth between containers for a few hundred Chinese yuan,” he said. The foreign participants were intentionally separated from visitors and were not expected to answer technical questions. Piers said none of the participants expressed concerns about the deception at the time because the work was viewed as harmless and financially convenient.

In another instance, Piers said he accompanied a neighbour employed by a Chinese legal consultancy to a client meeting in Shanghai’s Pudong district, where he posed as a junior associate at an international law firm. His role involved sitting silently in meetings and appearing to take notes while his neighbour presented herself as part of a global legal operation.

“She just wanted to present herself as an international lawyer,” he said.Recruitment advertisements for such assignments continue to circulate widely on Chinese social media platforms, particularly WeChat groups catering to expatriates and foreign students.

Listings reviewed by participants advertised opportunities for “foreign models and actors” at exhibitions, product launches and commercial shoots across cities including Shenzhen and Fuzhou.One recruitment notice sought American-looking models aged between 35 and 45 for an advertising campaign in Fujian province, specifying candidates with what it described as an “affluent American aesthetic.”

The advertisement excluded applicants with “red hair, freckles, extremely pale skin, or a thin, sullen look,” reflecting how appearance standards are closely linked to commercial branding strategies.

Analysts and participants say demand for foreign faces accelerated during a period when Chinese consumers increasingly associated overseas brands with safety and reliability. That perception was reinforced by several high-profile domestic product scandals, including the 2008 contaminated milk crisis involving Sanlu Group and other dairy producers.

Chinese authorities later determined that melamine, an industrial chemical, had been added to infant formula to falsify protein readings, leading to illnesses among hundreds of thousands of infants and at least six deaths. 2008 Chinese milk scandal.

Piers, who now works between London and Shanghai in marketing, said foreign branding carried commercial value because many Chinese consumers viewed imported products as more trustworthy during that period.

“It was an opportune moment when branding something as foreign could meet an emotional and functional need for Chinese customers,” he said.

More recently, demographic shifts among expatriate communities have altered the market. Participants said the arrival of migrants from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus following regional conflicts increased competition for temporary foreign-facing work, particularly in southern Chinese manufacturing hubs.

Enzo, a Russian videographer based in Shenzhen, said language barriers initially prevented him from securing professional employment after arriving in China, leading him to accept short-term white monkey assignments. One job required him to pose as an Italian chef at a cookware exhibition in Guangzhou despite having no Italian background.

“The Chinese clients wanted to tell me about their holidays in Italy and what they thought of Italian culture,” he said. “I think they just wanted to talk to a foreigner and be listened to.”Enzo said he earned about 2,000 yuan for the assignment.

He later accepted recurring work portraying the chief executive of an automobile company at promotional events around China, where he travelled between cities, stayed in hotels and posed for photographs with visitors while avoiding detailed conversations.

Participants said nationality and appearance frequently influence compensation levels. Piers said western Europeans and North Americans generally command higher fees than eastern Europeans in China’s foreign-promotion industry.

“Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are seen as groups of people that can be paid less money, equal to Chinese workers, while Germans are quite expensive and prestigious,” he said.

Foreign students have also become a significant labour source for the industry, despite legal risks surrounding unauthorised employment. Maria Kanaeva, a Russian student from Kamchatka who studied at Xi’an Jiaotong University, said she was invited through a student WeChat group in 2022 to participate in a manufacturing exhibition in Xi’an.

Organisers reportedly offered foreign students 100 yuan to pose as overseas buyers while speaking with Chinese exhibitors for about half an hour.The invitation instructed participants to present themselves as potential importers evaluating products from Chinese companies, according to Kanaeva.

Under China’s exit and entry administration law, foreigners are prohibited from working outside the authorised scope of their visas. Violations can result in fines ranging from 5,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan, detention and possible deportation. Kanaeva said concerns about immigration inspections discouraged her from accepting the assignment.

“The worst-case scenario would be that there are police on site and if you are caught with a student visa that doesn’t match the occasion it’s not worth the risk,” she said.

Kanaeva said she later learned of a Ugandan student allegedly detained after working illegally at a language training centre. According to her account, the student was fined before eventually being deported over visa irregularities.

She now works in Shanghai helping foreign students better understand legal pathways for internships and sponsored employment arrangements in China.

The market for foreign appearances has also shifted toward digital media and influencer culture. Paul Mike Ashton, an American content creator known on Chinese social media as BaoBaoXiong, recalled being asked during an internship in 2013 to sit inside a recording booth and pretend to host video productions while executives toured a media facility.

“At the time, my Chinese was not good enough to speak at length, but I realised early on how much of an impact a foreign face could have in Chinese workplaces,” Ashton said.

He believes the commercial novelty attached to foreigners has declined significantly in China’s largest cities as younger consumers become more globally connected through social media and domestic brands expand internationally.

“With so many internationally prominent and dominant Chinese brands now, it feels like the need for this has expired,” he said.

“We asked the Turks about it, we asked some other capitals,” Sybiha told reporters on Tuesday in comments cleared for release on Wednesday, indicating that Ukraine is seeking a neutral venue outside Russia and its close ally Belarus.

Sybiha said Kyiv would consider any location except Belarus or Russia for such a meeting, underscoring longstanding Ukrainian objections to holding talks in countries aligned with Moscow.

Belarus facilitated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by allowing its territory to be used as a staging ground, a factor that has made it unacceptable to Kyiv as a diplomatic venue.

The Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly called for direct talks between Zelensky and Putin as a potential means to accelerate efforts toward a resolution of the conflict.

However, the Kremlin has previously stated that it is willing to host Zelensky in Moscow, a proposal the Ukrainian president has rejected.

Sybiha did not disclose Ankara’s response to the request but emphasized that Ukraine remains open to alternatives. “If another capital, besides Moscow and Belarus, organizes such a meeting, we will go,” he said.

Turkiye has previously positioned itself as a mediator in the conflict, maintaining diplomatic ties with both Kyiv and Moscow while hosting earlier rounds of negotiations.

Separately, Sybiha said he had exchanged written messages with Anita Orban, who is set to become Hungary’s foreign minister following the recent election victory of a new government in Budapest.

Last year, the foundation left out the ambassadors of Russia and its ally Belarus because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The foundation said on Thursday it would invite them, and Iran’s ambassador, to this year’s prize award ceremonies in December, commenting that it sought to include even those who did not share the values of the Nobel Prize.

That announcement prompted the leaders of several Swedish political parties to say they would boycott the ceremonies.

“We recognise the strong reactions in Sweden,” the foundation said in a statement on Saturday.

“We, therefore, choose to repeat last year’s exception to regular practice – that is, to not invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran to the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm.”

The prize-winners are announced in early October and five of the six Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm every year after a nomination process that is kept secret for the next 50 years. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo where separate festivities are held.

Speaking at Russia’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg, Putin said Russian tactical nuclear warheads had already been delivered to close ally Belarus, but stressed he saw no need for Russia to resort to nuclear weapons for now.

“As you know we were negotiating with our ally, (Belarusian President (Alexander) Lukashenko, that we would move a part of these tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of Belarus – this has happened,” said Putin.

“The first nuclear warheads were delivered to the territory of Belarus. But only the first ones, the first part. But we will do this job completely by the end of the summer or by the end of the year.”

The move, Moscow’s first deployment of such warheads – shorter-range nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union was intended as a warning to the West about arming and supporting Ukraine, the Russian leader said.

“…It is precisely as an element of deterrence so that all those who are thinking about inflicting a strategic defeat on us are not oblivious to this circumstance,” said Putin, using a diplomatic term for a defeat so severe that Russian power would be diminished on the world stage for decades.

Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Putin, said late on Tuesday his country had started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons that included some three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in 1945.

The Russian leader announced in March he had agreed to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, pointing to the U.S deployment of such weapons in a host of European countries over many decades.

Putin Says West Wants Strategic Defeat

The United States has criticised Putin’s decision but has said it has no intention of altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons and has not seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

The Russian step is nonetheless being watched closely by Washington and its allies as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Putin said the West was doing everything it could to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine where Moscow is locked in the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two after invading its neighbour last year in what it called “a special military operation.”

But Russia had no need to resort to nuclear weapons for now, said Putin, signalling no change in Moscow’s nuclear posture which only envisages such a move if the existence of the Russian state is threatened.

“Nuclear weapons have been made to ensure our security in the broadest sense of the word and the existence of the Russian state, but we…have no such need (to use them),” Putin said.

But he said talks with the West to reduce Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, the world’s largest, were a non-starter.

“Just talking about this (the potential use of nuclear weapons) lowers the nuclear threshold. We have more than NATO countries and they want to reduce our numbers. Screw them,” said Putin.

Sounding defiant as he addressed his country’s political and business elite, he said a Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in Ukraine had so far not had any meaningful success. Kyiv’s forces were suffering heavy losses and had “no chance” against Russia’s military, he said.

Ukraine would soon run out of its own military equipment, making it totally reliant on hardware supplied by the West, undermining its ability to fight for long, he suggested.

Recalling his stated objectives at the start of the war to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine, Putin said:

“As for demilitarisation, soon Ukraine will stop using its own equipment altogether. There’s nothing left. Everything on which they fight and everything that they use is brought in from the outside. Well, you can’t fight like that for long.”

Putin Gives Warning On F-16S

Independent military analysts say Ukraine has outperformed Russia’s much larger army in nearly 16 months of war, forcing it into major retreats around the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson.

Ukraine’s military chiefs said on Friday that advancing Ukrainian troops were facing “desperate resistance” from Russian forces around the city of Bakhmut, which Russia captured last month after the longest battle of the war.

Ukraine says it has recaptured seven villages and 100 square km (38 square miles) in the early stages of its counteroffensive.

But Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday its forces had repelled numerous attempted counterattacks by the Ukrainian army at different frontline locations in the last 24 hours, inflicting severe losses on Kyiv’s forces.

Putin said Western-supplied hardware such as German-made Leopard tanks was regularly destroyed and if Kyiv got U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets from its allies, they would go up in flames too.

“F-16s will also be burning, there is no doubt. But if they will be stationed outside Ukraine and used in combat operations we will have to look at how to engage and where to engage those assets being used in combat operations against us.”

That, he said, represented “a serious danger” of dragging NATO further into the conflict.

Algeria, Guyana, Sierra Leone and South Korea ran unopposed for a spot on the 15-member body, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security. In the only competitive race, Slovenia beat out Belarus. The five elected nations will replace Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates.

The Security Council is the only U.N. body that can make legally binding decisions such as imposing sanctions and authorizing use of force. It has five permanent veto-wielding members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

To ensure geographical representation, seats are allocated to regional groups. But even if candidates are running unopposed in their group, they still need to win the support of more than two-thirds of the General Assembly.

Guyana received 191 votes, Sierra Leone 188, Algeria received 184 votes, South Korea 180.

Slovenia won 153 votes to beat Belarus, which received 38 votes.

Belarus had been a candidate unopposed since 2007 for the 2024/25 Eastern European seat. Slovenia entered the race in December 2021 after a brutal crackdown by the authorities in Belarus on protests following a 2020 presidential election.

Russia has since used the territory of Belarus as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The Russians have always argued that a lot of states support Ukraine in public at the U.N., but sympathize with Russia in private. But this secret ballot does not support that claim at all,” International Crisis Group U.N. Director Richard Gowan said.

Russia moved ahead last month with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is the Kremlin’s first deployment of such weapons outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Foreign Minister Sergey Aleinik spoke with Abdulrahman Suleiman Al-Ahmad, who is also the Kingdom’s ambassador to Russia, about a variety of topics.

Al-Ahmad was informed by Aleinik that his nation supports Saudi Arabia’s proposal to host Expo 2030. According to a statement from the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, he also stressed that Riyadh will prepare the event to a “high standard” and that Minsk would provide all assistance needed to make it successful.

The expansion of political communication, the potential for increased trade and economic cooperation, and the interaction of investment between the Kingdom and Belarus were also on the agenda.

The host nation for Expo 2030 is anticipated to be chosen in November. Riyadh is up against Rome, Busan, South Korea, and Odessa, Ukraine.