Italy's economic growth will be hit by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, including the surging energy costs, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "Growth will certainly be weakened," Draghi told parliament, adding that his government would do everything it could "to mitigate the effects" on households and companies. The government's official forecast for this year, made last autumn, envisages a rise in gross domestic product of 4.7%, but this is now widely considered unrealistic.

The European Commission has prepared a new package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine that will hit additional Russian oligarchs and politicians and three Belarusian banks, three sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The draft sanctions were adopted by the EU executive on Tuesday morning and will be discussed by EU ambassadors at a meeting starting at 1400 GMT, one source said. The draft package will ban three Belarusian banks from the SWIFT banking system and add several more oligarchs and Russian lawmakers to the EU blacklist, the sources told Reuters.

The European Commission published plans on Tuesday to cut the EU's dependency on Russian gas by two-thirds this year and end its reliance on Russian supplies of the fuel "well before 2030," Reuters reported. he European Union executive said it will do so by switching to alternative supplies and expanding clean energy more quickly under the plans, which will largely be the responsibility of national governments for implementing.

Russia's central bank announced on Tuesday a series of steps to help financial market players such as private pension funds and management companies cope with the current "crisis situation," including relaxing some regulations, Reuters reported. Russia's financial markets have been thrown into turmoil by severe economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

The European Union is discussing a plan to jointly issue bonds on a potentially massive scale to finance energy and defense spending as the bloc copes with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal may be presented after the EU’s leaders hold an informal summit in Versailles, France, that starts Thursday, according to officials familiar with the preparations. Officials are still working out the details on how the debt sales would work and how much money they intend to raise, depending on the guidance they receive from leaders in this week’s meeting.

A group of banks led by UniCredit SpA is considering options including a state-backed guarantee for a 850 million euros ($929 million) bridge-loan for troubled Italian engineering firm Saipem SpA, Bloomberg News reported. The team of banks, which includes Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, started discussing the option in a confidential meeting on Tuesday. The banks plan to ask Sace SpA, Italy’s trade-credit insurer, for the guarantee. No final decision has been taken and the plan could change, according to sources.

Ukraine has suffered about $10 billion in damage to infrastructure since Russia invaded the country, Infrastructure Minister Oleksander Kubrakov said on Monday, Reuters reported. He said in televised comments that the figure stood as of Sunday, and added: "The majority of (damaged) structures will be repaired in a year, and the most difficult ones – in two years." Kubrakov said 40,000 people had been evacuated from the eastern city of Kharkiv on Sunday.

Securities traders and hedge funds trying to trade Russian securities that aren’t subject to foreign sanctions over the country’s invasion of Ukraine have been running into the problem that some clearinghouses are still refusing to settle the trades, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s Pershing, one of the main clearinghouses that settle securities trades, told clients on Thursday that both U.S. and non-U.S. custodians, mutual-fund companies and liquidity providers have imposed restrictions “above and beyond” sanctioned Russian securities.

Foreign companies that want to leave Russia will receive fast-tracked bankruptcy protections or can hand their stakes over to local managers until they return to Russia, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov said on Friday, Reuters reported. Western sanctions imposed on Russia in punishment for its invasion of Ukraine have prompted dozens of global companies to pause operations in the country and some, including energy majors BP and Shell have said that they will exit the country entirely.

The cost of insuring Russia’s government debt rose to a record high after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing it to repay foreign creditors in rubles, raising concerns about the prospects of a default across the country’s $33 billion of dollar bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Credit-default swaps insuring $10 million of the country’s notes for five years were quoted at about $5.8 million upfront and $100,000 annually on Monday, signaling around 80% likelihood of default, according to ICE Data Services. ICE is the main clearing house for European CDS.