Russian Defence Ministry said Russian armed forces had "liberated" Novopavlivka and Chervonakrynytsia in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.

Hangzhou's draft 15th Five-Year Plan for financial development, published for comment, calls for leveraging capital-market reform to expand high-quality financial service clusters and develop securities, futures, fund management, valuation and accounting, fund-rating, money-broking and advisory/info-service firms while attracting accounting, legal and asset-appraisal intermediaries and allowing credit rating agencies to set up locally. The plan explicitly supports mergers and restructurings of securities firms to build first-class investment banks and institutions, urges securities firms in Hangzhou to strengthen internal controls and professional standards, and directs large state-owned commercial banks to bolster service to the real economy while pushing insurers to specialize and insurance intermediaries toward quality-over-scale consolidation.

U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) crude inventories fell about 3.1 mln barrels last week to 286.6 mln barrels.