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Three Chinese astronauts safely returned to Earth on Sunday after six months aboard the Tiangong space station, state media quoted the country’s space agency as saying, with their mission deemed a “complete success.”

The team, which had been aboard the station since early June, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia at 8:09 pm Beijing time (1209 GMT), Xinhua news agency said, citing the China Manned Space Agency.

Medical personnel said they were in good health, the report said.

The Tiangong space station is the crown jewel of Beijing’s ambitious space programme — which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the country the third to put humans in orbit — as it looks to catch up with the United States and Russia.

The three Shenzhou-14 astronauts — mission commander Chen Dong, China’s first woman astronaut Liu Yang and teammate Cai Xuzhe — had been tasked with overseeing the final stages of construction of the space station. 

The last module successfully docked with Tiangong’s core structure last month, state media said — a key step in its completion by year’s end.

“I am honored to witness the formation of our space station’s basic configuration,” said Chen, an air force pilot who became the first Chinese astronaut to stay in orbit for more than 200 days, according to Xinhua.

The team has handed the baton to the Shenzhou-15 crew — China’s first crew handover in orbit.

China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country.

Once completed, the Tiangong space station is expected to have a mass of 90 tonnes — around a quarter of the ISS — or similar in size to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.

Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, will operate for around a decade and host a variety of experiments in near-zero gravity.

Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed Sunday to maintain their current output levels in a climate of uncertainty and ahead of fresh sanctions against Moscow coming into force next week.

The representatives of the thirteen members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) led by Riyadh, and their 10 allies headed by Moscow, decided to stick to their course agreed in October of a production cut of two million barrels per day until the end of 2023.

Sunday’s widely anticipated move was no “big surprise” given that the economy has been “slowing somewhat, pushing oil prices below $90, despite the lower production levels,” analyst Hans van Cleef with ABN AMRO said.  

Collectively known as OPEC+, the alliance said Sunday that its October decision to cut output was “purely driven by market considerations”, adding that it had been the “necessary and right course of action towards stabilizing global oil markets”. 

The OPEC+ output reduction in October represented the biggest cut since the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020, a move denounced by the United States as a concession to Moscow.

The next OPEC+ ministerial meeting is scheduled for June 4, 2023.

But the alliance said it was ready to “meet at any time and take immediate additional measures” to address market developments and support the oil market if necessary.

– Spotlight on Russia –

On Friday, the EU, G7 and Australia agreed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, which will come into effect on Monday or soon after, alongside an EU embargo on maritime deliveries of Russian crude oil.

It will prevent seaborne shipments of Russian crude to the European Union, which account for two thirds of the bloc’s oil imports from Russia, an attempt to deprive Moscow’s war chest of billions of euros.

“We will sell oil and oil products to countries that will work with us on market terms, even if we have to reduce production somewhat,” Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said after Sunday’s quick meeting via videoconference.

Even though “inflation, the tightening of monetary policies and China’s Covid-19 epidemic” were posing risks to the market, it was still “in a better state than two months ago”, Novak said, according to Russian news agencies. 

“We are currently working on mechanisms to prohibit the use of the price cap tool at any level”, Novak added, stating that “such interference” could only cause “further market destabilization and scarcity of energy resources”.

Moscow had repeatedly denounced the incoming oil price cap, threatening to suspend deliveries to any country that adopted the measure. 

But Ukraine suggested on Saturday that the cap should have been set even lower.

For OPEC+, the big unknown in the oil equation is how heavily sanctions will hit Russian supply.

“Uncertainty on the impact on Russian oil production coming from the EU ban… and the G7 price cap and some easing of mobility restrictions in China likely supported the decision for a rollover,” UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said. 

“The upside risks for oil prices from this point on will increase” due to the announced EU and G7 measures in combination with supply and demand expected to remain unchanged, Van Cleef said.

– An ‘uncomfortable position’ –

Moscow’s threat to suspend deliveries to countries abiding by the price cap will put “some in a very uncomfortable position”, said OANDA analyst Craig Erlam, “choosing between losing access to cheap Russian crude or facing G7 sanctions”.

Amid economic gloom fuelled by soaring inflation and fears of China’s weaker energy demand due to its Covid-related restrictions, the two global crude benchmarks remained close to their lowest level of the year, far from their March peaks.

Since the group’s last meeting in early October, Brent North Sea oil and its US equivalent WTI have lost more than six percent of their value.

Moving forward, OPEC+ might still feel compelled to adopt “a more aggressive stance” by cutting or threatening to cut production, UniCredit analyst Edoardo Campanella said. 

“Russia might also retaliate by leveraging its influence within OPEC+ to push for more production cuts down the road, thus exacerbating the global energy crisis,” he added.

More than 500 Ukrainian localities remained without power Sunday following weeks of Russian airstrikes on the electric grid, an interior ministry official said.

“The enemy continues to attack the country’s essential infrastructure. Currently, 507 localities in eight regions of our country are cut off from electricity supplies,” deputy interior minister Yevgueny Yenin told Ukrainian television.

“The Kharkiv region is the worst hit with 112 isolated villages,” Yenin added.

Another 90 villages were cut off in the Donetsk and Kherson regions, he said, with others in the regions of Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia and Lugansk.

On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities — including Mykolaiv region governor Vitali Kim — had once again urged civilians to bear up in the face of continually deteriorating early winter conditions and regular power outages. 

Repeated daily power cuts have left millions of people without heat or lighting while outside temperatures have dropped below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) in recent days.

With further strikes on the network widely expected, Ukrainians fear a difficult prolonged winter as well as a flood of departures by refugees from a war now into a tenth month.

Private Ukrainian energy operator DTEK said Thursday that nearly half of Ukraine’s electricity grid remains damaged after Russia began targeting Ukrainian energy facilities in October following a series of humiliating military defeats on the ground.

Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia look set to maintain their current output levels at a meeting Sunday, ahead of fresh sanctions against Moscow coming into force.

The alliance’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) kicked off their gathering Sunday, a source close to OPEC told AFP, ahead of the full ministerial conference afterwards which was expected to be brief.

The 13-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will consult with 10 other oil-producing nations including Russia — known collectively as OPEC+ — to review their decision in October to cut production by two million barrels per day.

On Friday, the EU, G7 and Australia agreed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, which will come into effect on Monday or soon after, alongside an EU embargo on maritime deliveries of Russian crude oil.

It will prevent seaborne shipments of Russian crude to the European Union, which account for two thirds of the bloc’s oil imports from Russia, an attempt to deprive Moscow’s war chest of billions of euros.

While Russia denounced the incoming price cap on Saturday, threatening to suspend deliveries to any country that adopted the measure, Ukraine suggested the cap should have been set even lower.

For OPEC+, the big unknown in the oil equation is how heavily sanctions will hit Russian supply.

“The uncertainty for Russian supply is significant”, DNB analysts said. OPEC would therefore “aim for a low-profile meeting that leaves existing production quotas unchanged”.

– An ‘uncomfortable position’ –

Moscow’s threat to suspend deliveries to countries abiding by the price cap would put “some in a very uncomfortable position”, said OANDA analyst Craig Erlam: “Choosing between losing access to cheap Russian crude or facing G7 sanctions”.

The choice of a virtual OPEC+ meeting instead of an in-person conference at the Vienna headquarters, suggested a policy rollover, UniCredit analyst Edward Moya said.

But “deeper oil output cuts” could still not be ruled out at this stage.

Amid economic gloom fuelled by soaring inflation and fears of China’s weaker energy demand due to its Covid-related restrictions, the two global crude benchmarks remained close to their lowest level of the year, far from their March peaks.

Since the group’s last meeting in early October, Brent North Sea oil and its US equivalent, WTI, have lost more than six percent of their value.

But speculation that a further OPEC+ production cut might still be on the table boosted prices throughout the week.

“OPEC+ might feel compelled to adopt a more aggressive stance” by cutting or threatening to cut production even further, UniCredit analyst Edoardo Campanella said. 

“Russia might also retaliate by leveraging its influence within OPEC+ to push for more production cuts down the road, thus exacerbating the global energy crisis,” he added.

A war in his backyard, galloping economic crisis, and unhappy partners at home and abroad — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has weathered unprecedented shocks in his first year, while struggling to make a mark on the global stage.

The ex-finance minister took office promising continuity with the era of Angela Merkel, who ended her 16 years as chancellor a widely respected figure.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced him to rip up Germany’s post-war axioms and chart out new economic, defence and geopolitical directions for the country that prizes — and is valued for — its stability and predictability.

“We never before had a government faced with such a dramatically worsening situation, when it came to foreign and security policy, but also of course energy policy,” political scientist Ursula Muench told AFP.

Scholz’s coalition of his Social Democrats and partners Greens and liberals FDP had taken office planning ambitious climate policies and budget restraint. 

But as Moscow dwindled its energy supplies in the wake of the war, Germany has had to halt its planned nuclear exit, restart mothballed coal power stations while burning through a budgetary hole in a scrum for oil and gas to replace Russian supplies.

And in a turning point for a country whose role on the world stage was still affected by memories of World War II, Scholz announced a historic shift on defence, vowing to re-arm Germany with a massive boost in military spending.

“Going by the dramatic events this year, he did pretty well,” said Nils Diederich, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University. 

– Turning point –

But Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at US think tank the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, warned that losing momentum was a danger, even if the initial response was “impressive”.

“I think not being able to follow through with defence and security commitments is a concern,” she told AFP.

Not only is Germany trying to replenish its own military stocks, it is facing intense pressure from Ukraine to deliver what it has to help in the fightback against Russia.

The defence spending is high at a time when the treasury is also being pressed to help cushion a price shock fuelled by the energy crisis.

Huge investments are also required for the export giant to manage an economic transformation of reliance on cheap Russian energy or Chinese components to a diversified approach.

And governing in a three-way coalition means resolving each challenge inevitably involves squabbles that could unravel the fragile partnership.

Scholz’s government has managed to implement part of its programme, including raising the minimum wage and reforming unemployment benefits.

But with myriad crises not going away, the chancellor’s popularity ratings have suffered. 

A survey by the Insa institute published Sunday in tabloid Bild showed 58 percent of Germans are dissatisfied with Scholz — compared with just 22 percent a year ago — and 64 percent are dissatisfied with his government, up from 36 percent. 

– ‘Going it alone’ –

As well as disagreements at home, there have been tensions with partners abroad.

European Union allies were upset that Scholz announced a massive 200-billion-euro ($207-billion) energy fund without first consulting them, complaining he should have focused on coming up with EU-wide measures.

Tensions have also arisen in the key relationship between Berlin and Paris over issues ranging from the energy fund to German plans for defence procurement.

Unlike Merkel, who, in her time, was widely respected as the voice to reckon with in Europe, Scholz has so far failed to step into the role on the international stage.

Merkel’s departure “has left a void”, said Eric Maurice, from the Brussels office of the Robert Schuman Foundation.

Scholz is “struggling to make his mark at the European level… He is still trying to find his bearings, he does not have Merkel’s experience.”

The view Scholz was seeking to “go it alone” was reinforced when he made the first visit to China by a G7 leader since the start of the pandemic in November, accompanied by a delegation of German business leaders.

The chancellor faced accusations he was pursuing the same mercantilist, trade-focused foreign policy of previous German governments, which led to economic ties flourishing with authoritarian Russia, but ultimately left Berlin vulnerable.

As Scholz heads into his second year in the job, many of the open challenges will continue to entangle him.

High energy prices will remain a major problem, particularly for electricity-hungry German manufacturers, said Sudha David-Wilp, Berlin office director of US think tank the German Marshall Fund.

“Ensuring German competitiveness because of the increase in energy costs, particularly for industries like chemicals and steel manufacturing, is the big challenge for Scholz,” she said.

The energy fund “is just a short-term fix. No one knows when energy prices are going to come down to pre-war levels”.

Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia look set to maintain their current output levels at a meeting Sunday, ahead of fresh sanctions against Moscow coming into force.

The 13-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is due to consult with 10 other oil-producing nations, including Russia, to review their decision in October to cut production by two million barrels per day.

The OPEC+ videoconference will take place from 1100 GMT Sunday.

On Friday, the EU, G7 and Australia agreed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, which will come into effect on Monday or soon after, alongside an EU embargo on maritime deliveries of Russian crude oil.

It will prevent seaborne shipments of Russian crude to the European Union, which account for two thirds of the bloc’s oil imports from Russia, an attempt to deprive Moscow’s war chest of billions of euros.

While Russia denounced the incoming price cap on Saturday, threatening to suspend deliveries to any country that adopted the measure, Ukraine suggested the cap should have been set even lower.

For OPEC+, the big unknown in the oil equation is how heavily sanctions will hit Russian supply.

“The uncertainty for Russian supply is significant”, DNB analysts said. OPEC would therefore “aim for a low-profile meeting that leaves existing production quotas unchanged”.

– An ‘uncomfortable position’ –

Moscow’s threat to suspend deliveries to countries abiding by the price cap would put “some in a very uncomfortable position”, said OANDA analyst Craig Erlam: “Choosing between losing access to cheap Russian crude or facing G7 sanctions”.

The choice of a virtual OPEC+ meeting instead of an in-person conference at the Vienna headquarters, suggested a policy rollover, UniCredit analyst Edward Moya said.

But “deeper oil output cuts” could still not be ruled out at this stage.

Amid economic gloom fuelled by soaring inflation and fears of China’s weaker energy demand due to its Covid-related restrictions, the two global crude benchmarks remained close to their lowest level of the year, far from their March peaks.

Since the group’s last meeting in early October, Brent North Sea oil and its US equivalent, WTI, have lost more than six percent of their value.

But speculation that a further OPEC+ production cut might still be on the table boosted prices throughout the week.

“OPEC+ might feel compelled to adopt a more aggressive stance” by cutting or threatening to cut production even further, UniCredit analyst Edoardo Campanella said. 

“Russia might also retaliate by leveraging its influence within OPEC+ to push for more production cuts down the road, thus exacerbating the global energy crisis,” he added.