Izvestia: Ukrainian President’s party wins control over parliament A new coalition based on the "Servant of the People" party that won the parliamentary elections will allow President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky to move towards the promised changes both within the country and in the foreign policy, according to experts interviewed by Izvestia. After the elections, the transit of power from the old political elite to the team of the new head of state will be completed. Regardless of the Ukrainian leader’s desire to transform the country, many more obstacles will stand in his way, the newspaper wrote. Meanwhile, according to preliminary data from the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, voter turnout was around 50%. According to exit polls, five parties have made it to the new Verkhovna Rada: "Servant of the people" (43%), "Opposition platform - For life" (12%), "European solidarity" (8.5%), "Batkivshchyna" (7.5%), and "Voice" (6%).

"The results are quite expected, close to the pre-election sociological surveys. Joining together with ‘Voice’ and adding independent majoritarian parties, they will form a coalition," member of the previous convocation of the Verkhovna Rada Evgeny Balitsky told Izvestia. "They can, of course, take Tymoshenko, but she will ask a lot, starting with the Prime Minister’s post. In any case, within the new Verkhovna Rada small parties - ‘Batkivshchyna’ and ‘Voice’ - will pull Western Ukraine’s views into the parliament," he added. In any case, the majority will be created based on the "Servant of the People", Director of the Kiev Center for Political Studies and Conflictology Mikhail Pogrebinsky told the newspaper. In his opinion, the pro-presidential party may not need the help to form the ruling coalition. However, according to the newspaper, on the downside, after gaining control over the parliament and the government, the president would not be able to justify any failure to fulfill election promises. According to the Director of the Institute for Peacemaking Initiatives and Conflict Resolution Denis Denisov, although the new government clearly needs to focus on the population’s welfare, at the moment it has no real chance at quality reforms. "They cannot do it quickly, as it requires huge resources and investments. The most important thing that can be done is appointing an effective Prime Minister," he told Izvestia. The second important issue, largely connected with the economic well-being of Ukraine, is the war in the south-east of the country. At the moment there is no consensus in Kiev on the ways to solve the problem of Donbass. After the announcement of exit polls, Zelensky once again said that the main priorities for him and his team include ending the war in Donbass and defeating corruption. Kommersant: Gazprom resumes South Stream construction Gazprom unexpectedly unfroze a project to expand its infrastructure in southern Russia under the South Stream export gas pipeline that was canceled for the needs of the domestic market. However, sources on the market told Kommersant they doubt this reason: the capacity of the new pipeline is clearly overabundant for gasification. According to the newspaper’s sources, export justification of the project is more likely, for example, to further increase productivity of the TurkStream pipeline, which virtually replaced South Stream. Gazprom told Kommersant that construction of the linear part of the pipeline in full "would increase the productivity of the gas transportation system in the direction of the Krasnodar Region to meet the growing gas demand in the region and ensure reliable gas injections into the underground gas storages of the North Caucasus."

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Gas demand is stagnating, there is no need for such infrastructure expansion in the domestic market, a source told Kommersant. "It’s strange that at first Gazprom wanted to eliminate the already completed section, and then suddenly saw such growth in demand in the Russian south that could justify constructing over 1,000 km of pipe," another source told the newspaper. Sources told Kommersant that the only rational reason for resuming the project would be preparing to increase capacity of the TurkStream pipeline, since this is why the section was originally created. At the moment, TurkStream is in its final stages and should be launched at the end of the year. The capacity of the Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream bypass gas pipelines does not allow Gazprom to completely abandon gas transit through Ukraine with current demand from European consumers. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: West is drawing Russia into tanker war The situation in the Persian Gulf enters a new phase - last Friday, the US Central Command announced Operation Sentinel to enhance security on major shipping routes near the borders with Iran after Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz seized the Stena Impero oil tanker flying the British flag. Later on Saturday, Sunday Mirror, citing its sources, said that Russia might be involved in the detention, as allegedly the tanker could have ended up in Iranian waters due to false GPS coordinates sent by Iranian intelligence using Russian espionage technology. Experts interviewed by Nezavisimaya Gazeta interpret this version as "clearly biased".