Oil back above $107, a market hit outside Kyiv, and five geopolitical signals for September 28, 2026

Middle East: Talks still expected this week as oil climbs back above $107

• President Donald Trump told Axios in a phone interview on Sunday that he expects talks with Iran to resume this week, after rejecting Tehran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz; he said the deal Iran wants is one Washington might have agreed to about a year ago, and that Iran had "overplayed its hand" 1. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday that Tehran had not been formally notified of the rejection and was waiting for the US position to be conveyed through the mediators, that only a negotiated solution could end the deadlock, and that Iran's conditions for reopening the strait were unchanged, with "no backing down from them"; he told NBC that Iran was "fully prepared for the war to be resumed" 23.
• An Iranian army spokesperson, Mohammad Akraminia, said on Sunday that the armed forces were prepared for any renewed US attack and warned that Washington would suffer greater damage; the army commander-in-chief, Amir Hatami, said the war had reached a "critical and decisive" stage and that Tehran would not accept a situation in which it was unable to trade while foreign powers used the region's strategic waterways, describing the Strait of Hormuz as "the strait of our dignity and honour" 4.
• Brent crude rose $3.43, or 3.29%, to $107.75 a barrel at 0540 GMT on Monday, and West Texas Intermediate was at $94.55, up $2.14 or 2.32%, after Brent edged up 0.4% last week while WTI lost 7.9% on the diesel-export debate 5. Preliminary Kpler data showed crude exports from the Gulf producers rebounding to 12.8 million barrels a day in September, the highest since the war began in February, with flows through the Strait of Hormuz set to reach about 7.4 million bpd this month after Saudi Arabia diverted exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu to Ras Tanura following the attack on its East-West pipeline 6.

Europe: Gas storage at 71% and a diesel bill of €203mn a day

• Europe's gas storage sites were about 71% full, against a five-year seasonal average of 87%, and facilities in Germany, which holds the continent's largest storage capacity, were just over 57% full; Dutch front-month futures, the European benchmark, traded 0.8% higher at €72.66 a megawatt-hour in Amsterdam on Monday morning after falling more than 9% the previous week 7.
• LNG deliveries to the European Union and the United Kingdom were about 4% lower than a year earlier on a 30-day moving average, but have risen since early August, when they were 30% below last year's levels, while flows to Northeast Asia fell over the same period, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg; the Strait of Hormuz used to carry around a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas 78.
• Diesel, not gas, is where the war's cost reaches households and freight. Analysis of European Commission data by the non-governmental organisation Transport & Environment put the extra diesel spending since the conflict began at €203 million a day, with motorists paying about 40% more than at the start of the year — a premium of about €30 on a 50-litre tank — against a 28% rise in petrol prices in 2026; diesel accounts for more than 40% of petroleum consumption in the European economy, twice the share of the United States 9.

US-China: The tariff lists are published, and Chinese equities slide

• The US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, published the two tariff lists on Sunday under the US-China Board of Trade: each side recommended $30 billion of non-sensitive goods for more favourable tariff treatment, $60 billion of trade in total. China will trim duties on US corn, wheat, sorghum, meat, dairy, vegetable oils and meals — soybeans are not on the list — as well as fish and seafood, logs and wood products, cosmetics and medical devices, while Washington's cuts cover Chinese small appliances such as coffee makers and toasters, tableware, blankets and bed linens, toys, fireworks, artificial flowers, Christmas tree lamps and other holiday decorations, and children's car seats. Greer said the US list unlocked improved market access for about 30% of US exports to China 10.
• China's commerce ministry said on Monday that the two-month extension of the trade truce to January 10 gave both sides room to evaluate the arrangement and provided a "relatively stable and predictable policy environment" for companies; the two countries will set up an agriculture working group under the trade council, with a first meeting before the end of the year, and the White House release showed China agreed to import 10 million metric tons of coal a year from the United States in 2027 and 2028, roughly 2% of its annual coal imports. Liquefied natural gas and oil were not on either list 10.
• Chinese equities fell, with the blue-chip CSI 300 index sliding more than 2% to a one-year low as investors found few concrete details to cheer in the summit, and technology stocks dropped on a bipartisan US push to ban Chinese components from data centres. Separately, The Information reported that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy Nvidia's RTX PRO 5500 chip and told some of them that the government intends to approve the purchases, with some industry executives expecting the chip to avoid US export restrictions; Nvidia said US firms remain restricted by outdated export controls and by China's own limits on US imports 1011.

Russia-Ukraine: A market hit outside Kyiv, and strikes on data centres and telecoms

• Russian drones set a market in Sofiiska Borshchahivka, on Kyiv's western outskirts, on fire on Sunday, killing two people and injuring about 10, Ukrainian prosecutors said; in the capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said nine people were injured, including a child, six of them taken to hospital, after drones struck a high-rise apartment block in an eastern suburb and another high-rise in a central district, and hit areas near a kindergarten and a playground 12.
• Three glide bombs struck near a family support centre in the northern city of Sumy, killing two people, the regional governor said, and a drone hit a car in Kharkiv, killing the driver. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had deployed 277 attack drones of various types since Saturday, 155 of them jet-powered, and said the targets in Kyiv had included a building used as a residence by the Saudi ambassador 12.
• Russia's defence ministry said its forces struck two data centres in Kyiv, a logistics hub in Odesa and two cargo vessels heading for Odesa, while Ukraine's largest mobile operator said its headquarters was hit in continued strikes on data centres and communications infrastructure, with no casualties reported 12.

Taiwan: A drone-industry park opens as PLA sorties stay at three

• President Lai Ching-te said on Monday that Taiwan must deepen cooperation with its democratic partners on drones, "crucial to fighting modern warfare", and jointly build a "safer and more resilient unmanned aircraft supply chain", speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Minxiong Aerospace and UAV Industrial Park in Chiayi County, in southern Taiwan 13.
• Taiwan's cabinet earlier this month proposed an additional T$145.7 billion ($4.59 billion) in defence spending for this year for systems including drones and anti-ballistic missiles; those plans incorporate more than 600 coastal surveillance and reconnaissance drones, more than 40,000 coastal attack drones and the first batch of more than 100 small suicide drone boats. Lai said unmanned systems had become "important combat strength in modern defence", from the Ukrainian battlefield to Indo-Pacific regional security 13.
• Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense counted 3 PLA aircraft sorties, one of them crossing the median line into northern airspace, plus 5 PLA Navy ships and 4 official Chinese ships in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on September 28 (UTC+8) 14.