Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator on Wednesday halted Russian shipments through a key hub in the country’s east, while its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said kyiv’s military had made little progress, driving out Russian forces from four villages near Kharkiv.
The pipeline operator said Russian shipments through its Novopskov hub, in an area controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, would be cut off from Wednesday. He said the hub handles about a third of the Russian gas that passes through Ukraine to Western Europe. Gazprom, Russia’s state natural gas giant, put the figure at around a quarter.
The move marks the first time natural gas supply has been affected by the war that began in February. It can force Russia to switch the flows of its gas through Ukrainian-controlled territory to reach its customers in Europe. Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom initially said it could not, though preliminary flow data suggested higher rates moving through a second station in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The operator said it was stopping the flow due to interference from “occupying forces”, including the apparent siphoning of gas. Russia could divert the shipments through Sudzha, a main hub in the Ukrainian-controlled northern part of the country, he said. But Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said that would be “technologically impossible” and questioned the reason given for the interruption.
Russia has enough buyers for its energy resources outside Western countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, as European Union countries seek to slash their dependence on Russian oil and gas.
“Let the West pay more than it used to pay to the Russian Federation and explain to its population why it should get poorer,” Lavrov told a news conference in Muscat after talks with his Omani counterpart.
Ukraine pulls Russia away from Kharkiv: Zelensky
Zelensky said on Tuesday that the military was gradually moving Russian troops away from Kharkiv, while Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba expressed what appeared to be greater confidence and expanded goals, suggesting Ukraine could move beyond forcing Russia to return to the areas it controlled before the invasion began. weeks ago.
Kuleba told the Financial Times that Ukraine initially believed that victory would be the withdrawal of Russian troops to the positions they held before the February 24 invasion. But attention shifted to the eastern industrial heartland of Donbas after Russian forces failed to take kyiv earlier in the war.
“Now if we are strong enough on the military front and win the Donbas battle, which will be crucial for the next dynamic of the war, of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories.” Kuleba said.
Kuleba’s statement seemed to reflect political ambitions rather than battlefield realities: Russian forces have made gains in Donbas and control more than before the war began. But he highlights how Ukraine has stood in the way of a larger and better-armed Russian army, surprising many who had anticipated a much quicker end to the conflict.
Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russian forces fired seven missiles at Odessa a day earlier, hitting a shopping mall and a warehouse in the country’s largest port. One person was killed and five were injured, the army said.
Images showed a burning building and debris, including a tennis shoe, in a pile of destruction in the city on the Black Sea.
Ukraine targets Russian forces on Snake Island
One general has suggested that Moscow’s goals include cutting off Ukraine’s maritime access to the Black and Azov seas. That would also give Russia a corridor connecting it to both the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and Transnistria, a pro-Moscow region of Moldova.
Ukraine’s attack on Russian forces on Snake Island in the Black Sea was helping disrupt Moscow’s attempts to expand its influence, the British military said.
Russia has sought to reinforce its garrison on Snake Island, while “Ukraine has successfully attacked Russian air defenses and resupply ships with Bayraktar drones,” the British Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update on Twitter. . He said Russian resupply ships had minimal protection after the Russian Navy withdrew to Crimea after losing the Moskva.
That corresponds to satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showing the fighting there.
But the British Army warned: “If Russia consolidates its position in [Snake] Island with strategic air defense and coastal defense cruise missiles, could dominate the northwestern Black Sea.”
Even if Russia fails to cut Ukraine off its coast, and appears to lack the forces to do so, the continued missile attacks on Odessa reflect its strategic importance. The Russian military has repeatedly attacked its airport, claiming it destroyed several batches of Western weapons.
Odessa has a symbolic meaning
Odessa is a major gateway for grain shipments, and the Russian blockade threatens the world’s food supply. It is also a cultural gem, appreciated by both Ukrainians and Russians. Writing it down has a symbolic meaning.
To protect Odessa, kyiv may need to shift forces to the southwest, away from the eastern front in Donbas, where they are fighting near Kharkiv to push the Russians back across the border.
Kharkiv and its environs have been under sustained Russian attack since the beginning of the war. In recent weeks, lurid images bear witness to the horrors of those battles, with charred and mutilated bodies strewn across a street.
CLOCK | Ukraine’s health system hit by 200 direct attacks, says WHO:
The World Health Organization is urging an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to stop the suffering from Russia’s widespread attack on Ukraine’s health systems, their workers, and sick and injured people. 1:15
The bodies of 44 civilians were found in the rubble of a five-story building that collapsed in March in Izyum, some 120 kilometers from Kharkiv, Oleh Synehubov, head of the regional administration, said on Tuesday.
Russian aircraft fired unguided missiles twice on Tuesday in the Sumy area northeast of Kharkiv, according to Ukraine’s border guard service. The region’s governor said the missiles hit several residential buildings, but no one was killed. Russian mortars hit the Chernihiv region, along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, but no casualties were reported.
Zelensky used his late-night speech to pay tribute to Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of an independent Ukraine, who died Tuesday at the age of 88.
Kravchuk showed courage and knew how to make the country listen to him, he said.
That was particularly important at “times of crisis, when the future of the entire country may depend on the courage of one man,” said Zelensky, whose own communication skills and decision to stay in kyiv when it was attacked by Russia helped him become a strong leader in times of war.
Reference-www.cbc.ca