Ukraine takes Russia to WTO over railway equipment:
Ukraine has launched a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) with a complaint about Russia's restrictions on Ukrainian-made railway equipment.
The WTO said in a statement on October 21 that Ukraine contended the Russian restrictions had been in place since late 2013.
Ukraine alleged that the restrictions broke several WTO rules and amounted to an effective ban on imports of the products into Russia, the WTO statement said.
An official at Russia's Ministry for Economic Development told TASS that "tactics" were being devised to deal with the Ukrainian complaint.
The action comes with relations between Kyiv and Moscow already tense due mainly to Russia's illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in March 2014 and the Kremlin's direct backing of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters, Interfax, TASS)
The international ratings agency Fitch has worsened its forecast of Ukraine's GDP. Reportedly, it would contract by 10 percent in 2015 as opposed to 9 percent as forecast before, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports.
Fitch noted that Ukraine's economic perspectives are very dependent on macroeconomic recovery.
"Restrictions on cash withdrawals and foreign currency control are important elements that support the banking sector's functioning. We do not expect that these measures will be fully abandoned in the future," the agency's statement says.
Earlier the World Bank had also changed its forecast of Ukraine's GDP, saying it would contract by 12 percent in 2015, but possibly grow 1 percent in 2016.
The OSCE is again worried about the use of drones blocking signals in separatist-held territories.