Rusal

Known for shrewd diplomatic moves, China is exploiting the Russia-Ukraine situation and increasing its aluminium exports which outstrips its imports manifold and these new dynamics have spurred criticism by both the United States and Europe.

This situation is even more remarkable given even a cursory glance at global aluminum prices. While aluminum prices have not fully recovered from their peak just before the 2008 financial crisis, they have returned to their price point in the early 2000s - which is higher than what the metal was trading for during most of the 1980s and 1990s.

Ukraine has put Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, whose company Rusal owns a large alumina plant in the country, and other prominent Russians on an expanded sanctions list, a document on the president's website showed on May 24.

Mytilineos sees positive prospects for its alumina business in Greece despite surging alumina prices, the Greek industrial group said on Thursday.

Its vertically-integrated feed and lower production costs have shielded it and created "positive prospects" for its alumina business in the short and the medium term, the company said in a first-quarter trading update.

Atanas Djumaliev, the head of global commodities at VTB Capital - the investment banking arm of Russia's second-biggest bank VTB - explained in an interview his firm's cooperation with Greek industrial group Mytilineos's Aluminium of Greece.

American consultant Paul Manafort has said that he was hired by the Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, former owner of Montenegro's KAP aluminum plant and one of the largest investors in the country,  to support Montenegro's independence referendum in 2006 - but Deripaska declined to respond to BIRN's inquiry about the claim.