Russia cuts gas to Poland and Bulgaria in the escalation of the war against Ukraine

Russia opened a new front in its war over Ukraine on Wednesday, deciding to cut off gas supplies to two European Union nations that staunchly back kyiv, a dramatic escalation in a conflict that is increasingly becoming one more battle. broad with the West.

A day after the United States and other Western allies promised to accelerate more and better military supplies to Ukraine, the Kremlin upped the ante and used its most essential export as leverage. Gasoline prices in Europe soared with the news, which the president of the European Union Commission called an attempt at “blackmail”.

The escalation came in a memo from Russian state-controlled giant Gazprom, which said it had cut natural gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria because they refused to pay in Russian rubles, as President Vladimir Putin had demanded. The company said it had not received any payments since the beginning of the month.

Also on the ground there were fears that the war would spill over Ukraine’s borders. For a second day, explosions rocked the breakaway region of Transnistria on Tuesday in neighboring Moldova, destroying two powerful radio antennas. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Ukraine almost blamed Russia.

And a Russian missile hit a strategic rail bridge linking Ukraine’s Odessa port region with neighboring NATO member Romania, Ukrainian officials said.

Just across the border in Russia, an ammunition depot in the Belgorod region was on fire early Wednesday after several explosions were heard, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.

Gazprom’s decision to cut off gas to two European countries was another dark twist in the war, reviving the geopolitical divisions of the Cold War and having an immediate impact. Gas prices in Europe soared up to 24%.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, called the move a “weaponization of energy supplies” in a tweet.

“Gazprom’s decision to completely cut off gas supplies to Poland is yet another sign of Russia’s politicization of existing agreements and will only accelerate European efforts to move away from Russian energy supplies,” he wrote.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the move “yet another attempt by Russia to use gas as an instrument of blackmail. This is unjustified and unacceptable.”

On Tuesday, the US defense chief urged Ukraine’s allies to “move forward at the speed of war” to bring more and heavier weapons to kyiv as Russian forces fired into eastern and southern Ukraine. .

Poland, a historic rival of Russia, has been a major gateway for arms deliveries to Ukraine and confirmed this week that it is sending tanks to the country. He said he was well prepared for Wednesday’s gas outage.

Poland also has ample natural gas storage and will soon benefit from the commissioning of two pipelines, said Rystad Energy analyst Emily McClain.

Bulgaria gets more than 90% of its gas from Russia, and officials said they were working to find other sources, such as Azerbaijan.

Both countries had rejected Russia’s demands to pay in rubles, as had almost all of Russia’s gas customers in Europe.

Two months into the fighting, Western weapons have helped Ukraine stave off Russia’s invasion, but the country’s leaders have said they need more support quickly.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called a meeting Tuesday of officials from some 40 countries at the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, saying more help is on the way.

“We have to move at the speed of war,” Austin said.

After unexpectedly fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces thwarted Russia’s attempt to take Ukraine’s capital, Moscow now says its focus is capturing Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial zone in eastern Ukraine.

In the devastated southern port city of Mariupol, authorities said Russian forces hit the Azovstal steel plant with 35 airstrikes in 24 hours. The plant is the last known stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the city. Some 1,000 civilians were said to be sheltering there with some 2,000 Ukrainian defenders.

Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said Russia was using heavy bunker bombs. He also accused Russian forces of bombing a route they had offered as an escape corridor from the steel mill.

Ukraine also said Russian forces shelled Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, which lies outside Donbas but is seen as key to Russia’s apparent attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in that region.

Ukrainian forces counterattacked in the Kherson region in the south.

Tuesday’s attack on the bridge near Odessa, along with a series of strikes at key railway stations the day before, seemed to signal a major change in Russia’s approach. So far Moscow has saved strategic bridges, perhaps hoping to preserve them for its own use in seizing Ukraine. But now it appears to be trying to thwart Ukraine’s efforts to move troops and supplies.

The southern coast of Ukraine and Moldova have been tense since a senior Russian military official said last week that the Kremlin’s goal is to secure not only eastern Ukraine but the entire south, to open the way to Transnistria, a long and a narrow strip of land with some 470,000 people along the border with Ukraine, where some 1,500 Russian troops are based.

It was not clear who was behind the explosions in Transnistria, but the attacks raised fears that Russia is stirring up trouble to create a pretext to invade Transnistria or use the region as another staging point to attack Ukraine. .

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