Strict limits on public borrowing and spending will be suspended for another year, the European Union said on Monday, in order to help member nations deal with the economic fallout of the war in Ukraine, the New York Times reported. The stringent fiscal rules were temporarily relaxed in March 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing for generous state aid to struggling businesses and citizens. They were due to be reinstated at the start of next year.

Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia and Estonia will call on Tuesday for the confiscation of Russian assets frozen by the European Union to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine after Russia's invasion, a joint letter by the four showed on Monday, Reuters reported. On May 3, Ukraine estimated the amount of money needed to rebuild the country from the destruction wrought by Russia at around $600 billion. But with the war still in full swing, the sum is likely to have risen sharply, the letter said.

Seizing Russian state assets to help finance the rebuilding of war-torn Ukraine remains a possibility, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Friday, but he added that no decision on the matter was taken at a meeting with his G7 counterparts, Reuters reported. "We talked about the continuation of sanctions in connection with Ukraine and discussed the issue of the confiscation of Russian assets," Lindner said, wrapping up day two of the talks.

Russia rushed forward two payments on its international debt on Friday in its latest attempt to stave off a default that has looked on cards since its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. A week before the interest payments are due and just five days before a key U.S. waiver allowing such transfers expires, Russia's finance ministry said it had wired $71.25 million for a dollar-denominated bond and 26.5 million euros ($28 million) for euro-denominated notes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday he had discussed the need for financial support for Ukraine's economy during a video conference with International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, Reuters reported. "The IMF is our important partner. We look forward to further fruitful joint work in maintaining financial stability of Ukraine," Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter. Zelenskiy's office said in a statement after the video conference that he had asked for financial support to be sped up for the country, which is trying to fend off Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.

The World Bank said in a brief released on Wednesday that remittances to Ukraine are anticipated to increase more than 20 percent in 2022 against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country, The Hill reported. “Just as the [low- and middle-income countries] were starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the war on Ukraine erupted, altering the global landscape for migration and remittances. Remittances to Ukraine are expected to rise by over 20 percent in 2022,” the World Bank said in its Migration and Development Brief.

Ukraine shut down a pipeline Wednesday that carries Russian natural gas to homes and industries in Western Europe, while a Kremlin-installed official in a southern region seized by Russian troops said the area will ask Moscow to annex it, the Associated Press reported. The immediate effect of the energy cutoff is likely to be limited, in part because Russia can divert the gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on a variety of suppliers. But it marked the first time since the start of the war that Ukraine disrupted the flow westward of one of Moscow’s most lucrative exports.

Ukraine's leading agricultural group, Ukrlandfarming, said on Tuesday Russia's invasion had caused it losses totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly because of the loss of access to land and the destruction of farms, Reuters reported. Ukrlandfarming, which produces grain, meat, eggs and sugar, said in a statement that it had lost control of 40% of its land portfolio. The territory had either been occupied by Russian forces or was located in areas where sowing was impossible because of fighting, it said.

Foreign financial aid will ensure the stability of Ukraine's central bank reserves as the country deals with the economic shock from the Russian invasion, central bank governor Kyrylo Shevchenko said late on Monday, Reuters reported. The central bank's international reserves fell to $26.8 billion as of beginning of May from $28.1 billion a month earlier. "We have an adequate stock of international reserves, despite the ... government's fulfilments of all its foreign debt obligations," Shevchenko wrote on the NV Business media portal.

Ukraine’s central bank warned that its financial lifeline to the government has its limits and urged the finance ministry in Kyiv to lean on outside help in efforts to shore up the economy as Russia presses forward with the invasion, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary authority, which began direct purchases of Ukrainian government bonds after the war began in late February, added 50 billion hryvnia ($1.65 billion) to its debt portfolio in April, bringing the tally to 70 billion hryvnia.