Category Archives: Russia

How worried should Europe be as Russia starts cutting off gas supplies?

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Analysis: Putin is determined to use resource as a weapon, as shown in move to cut off Poland and Bulgaria

The unavoidable truth looming over Europe’s response to the invasion of Ukraine is that Russian gas heats the continent’s homes and powers its industries.

While European leaders have vowed to wean themselves off Kremlin-controlled supplies, both of gas and oil, the reality is that this is very hard to do in short order. There will be at least one more cold winter to come before major energy-hungry economies that rely heavily on Russia, such as Germany and Italy, can tap other sources.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Putin warns of ‘lightning fast’ retaliation if west intervenes; Mariupol commander makes urgent plea – live

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Russian president says he has ‘all the tools’ to respond and will use them ‘if needed’; Mariupol commander says 600 injured in Azovstal steel works

On the issue of gas supplies to Poland, government figures yesterday were anxious to reassure the public in Poland that the country could cope if Russia cut off supplies.

The Polish Press Agency last night was carrying the following quotes. Anna Moscow, head of the ministry of climate and environment, said:

Poland has the necessary gas reserves and sources of supply that protect our security – we have been effectively independent of Russia for years. Our warehouses are 76% full. There will be gas in Polish homes.

The Baltic Pipe gas pipeline will also be commissioned in a few months. The decision to build it was made by the PiS government and has been consistently implemented in recent years. This is another element of Poland’s energy security.

The men detained on 21 and 22 April are suspected of espionage activities for the Russian secret services. The material collected by the military counterintelligence service (SKW) indicates that a Russian and a Belarusian, acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence against Poland, carried out activities aimed at identifying the functioning of the Polish Armed Forces, including the presence of the army in the Polish-Belarusian border zone.

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Tesla shares fall 12% after Musk’s Twitter deal; Moscow threatens to halt gas flows to Poland, Bulgaria – live

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Investors worry Elon Musk may have to sell Tesla shares to fund Twitter deal, as global stocks slide and US dollar rises to pandemic high

Lloyds Banking Group has raised concerns over the “uncertain” outlook for the UK economy amid soaring inflation, warning that the cost of living crisis could result in higher defaults on its loans, reports our banking correspondent Kalyeena Makortoff.

It came as the bank reported a 14% drop in first quarter pre-tax profit to £1.6bn from £1.9bn a year earlier, although that was better than the £1.4bn that analysts had expected.

The Nasdaq led the equity market wipe-out overnight, with its near 4% retreat led by Tesla, which fell by 12.2%. You could look at it two ways.

Either Elon Musk sold his latest stock awards to generate the $21bn in cash for his part of the Twitter buyout, or the street is starting to wonder how he could possibly effectively run Tesla, Starlink, Space-X and Twitter simultaneously. I do as well.

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Russia’s war in Ukraine threatens to spill over in dangerous new phase

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Analysis: Mysterious explosions in Moldova raise possibility of new Putin gambit after early failures

A series of mysterious explosions in Moldova have raised the threat of Russia’s war in Ukraine spilling over into new territory, with unpredictable consequences.

The blasts destroyed radio antennas in a Russian-garrisoned sliver of eastern Moldova along the Ukrainian border, Transnistria, which had been peaceful since a brief conflict in 1992 waged by Kremlin-backed separatists against the Moldovan army.

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Russia accused of shelling Mariupol humanitarian corridor

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Safe passage deal for civilians was a trap, say Ukrainians, as Putin’s forces step up eastern offensive

Russia has stepped up attempts to encircle defending forces in the east of Ukraine and stood accused of shelling a humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol, as the US vowed to move “heaven and earth” to help Ukraine win the war.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in Moscow and Germany, a fresh wave of civilian deaths were reported across eastern Ukraine as Vladimir Putin’s forces escalated their barrage of key targets on Tuesday and appeared to renege once again on giving safe passage to women and children.

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Russia warns of an immediate ‘proportional response’ if Britain continues its ‘direct provocation’ of Ukraine – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war in our new live blog

Details are scant, but there are reports that the ministry of internal affairs in Transnistria says that two radio antenna that relayed Russian radio have been destroyed in Transnistria, the breakaway eastern region of Moldova.

Reuters quotes the ministry saying: “In the early morning of 26 April, two explosions occurred in the village of Maiac, Grigoriopol district: the first at 6.40 and the second at 7.05”

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‘We weren’t prepared for this’: Kyiv area morgues at breaking point

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Morgue staff are struggling to keep up with the number of casualties, with bodies piled in refrigerated trucks

The first body arrived in late February, a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. The next day, two more. By the beginning of March, the morgue, on the outskirts of Kyiv, had no more space for the dead who, every day, arrived by the dozen from the cities of Bucha and Borodyanka – at the time occupied by the Russian forces.

When Moscow’s withdrawal from the areas north of the capital early in April unveiled the brutality of mass graves, with hundreds of civilian corpses buried in residential districts, every morgue in the Kyiv region was already at breaking point.

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Moldova holds security meeting as tensions rise over breakaway region

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President calls meeting amid fears Transnistria – controlled by pro-Russia separatists – could be drawn into Ukraine war

Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, is convening a meeting of her security council on Tuesday after a series of incidents in the breakaway Moldovan republic of Transnistria and a warning from Moscow that the Russian-backed region could be drawn into the war in Ukraine.

Transnistria, which borders western Ukraine, is controlled by pro-Russia separatists and permanently hosts 1,500 Russian troops as well as a large arms depot.

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Trump to be fined $10,000 a day after New York judge finds him in contempt – as it happened

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A New York judge on Monday held former president Donald Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents in the state attorney general’s civil probe into his business practices, Reuters reports.

The decision relates to Trump’s non-compliance in a case brought by New York state attorney general Letitia James.

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Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in Ukraine

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Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said he ‘wants to see Russia weakened’ – a sign Washington now defines its goals differently

The US defense secretary’s declaration that Washington wanted to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly, marks a shift in Washington’s declared aims underlying its military support for Ukraine.

At a press conference in Poland after a surprise visit to Kyiv, Lloyd Austin was asked if he would now define US goals differently from those set out soon after the Russian invasion. In response, he started out with the established administration line about helping Ukraine retain its sovereignty and defend its territory.

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Russia bombs five railway stations in central and western Ukraine

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Casualties unknown after morning airstrikes fell within an hour of each other, say officials

Five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were hit by Russian airstrikes in the space of an hour on Monday, as the war ground on relentlessly in the south and east of the country.

Oleksander Kamyshin, the head of Ukrainian Railways, said five train stations came under fire, causing an unspecified number of casualties, as most of Ukraine was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.

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Mali jihadists claim capture of fighter from Russia’s Wagner group

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Islamist group says it captured mercenary from Kremlin-linked private security firm

A jihadist group in Mali claims to have captured a fighter from the Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group reportedly fighting Islamist militants in the west African country.

“In the first week of April, [we] captured a soldier of the Russian Wagner forces in the Segou region in central Mali,” the GSIM (the Group to Support Islam and Muslims) said in a statement sent to AFP overnight.

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Russia-Ukraine war: about 15,000 Russian troops killed since start of invasion, says UK; Nato is ‘in essence engaged in war with Russia’, says Lavrov – live

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UK defence secretary says, alongside death toll, Russians have lost over 2,000 armoured vehicles; Russian foreign minister says western weapons are a ‘legitimate target’

The visit of US secretary of state Antony Blinken and US defence secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv had been kept tightly under wraps in advance for security reasons. Some images from the meeting have been sent to us via the newswires.

The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has just been speaking to the media at the Poland-Ukraine border. He has been meeting officials from Ukraine. He told reporters:

Our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us to win the current battle and also build for tomorrow. We talked about security force assistance. And we talked about training.

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Large fires break out at Russian oil depots near Ukraine border

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Russian state media reports fires at civilian and military depots in Bryansk, which are potentially an act of sabotage by Kyiv

Large fires broke out early on Monday at two oil depots in the Russian city of Bryansk near the border with Ukraine, in a potential act of sabotage by Kyiv.

Russian state media said the first fire occurred at a civilian facility in Bryansk holding 10,000 tons of fuel, followed by a second fire at a military fuel depot holding 5,000 tons.

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Germany’s SPD calls on Gerhard Schröder to quit party over Russia links

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Former chancellor says he has no intention of resigning his seats on boards of Russian energy firms

The co-leader of Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) has urged the former chancellor Gerhard Schröder to hand in his party membership after he made clear in an interview that he had no intention to resign from his seats on the boards of Russian energy companies over the war in Ukraine.

Schröder, who was Germany’s head of government from 1998 to 2005, presides over the board of the Russian oil company Rosneft and is chairman of the shareholder committee of pipeline company Nord Stream.

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Evidence some Ukrainian women raped before being killed, say doctors

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Forensic specialists carrying out autopsies north of Kyiv say they ‘still have hundreds of bodies to examine’

Forensic doctors carrying out postmortem examinations on bodies in mass graves north of Kyiv say they have found evidence some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces.

“We already have a few cases which suggest that these women had been raped before being shot to death,” said Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor who with a team of coroners has carried out dozens of autopsies on residents from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka who died during Russia’s month-long occupation of the area.

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US pledges extra $713m for Ukraine war effort and to weaken Russia

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Moscow complains about US military aid as Washington promises more support, including advanced weapons

Russia should be “weakened to the point where it can’t invade Ukraine”, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said after he and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, visited Kyiv and pledged a further $713m to help Ukraine in its war effort.

The direct comment came a few hours after the two senior US figures met with with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – and was followed by Russia making an official diplomatic complaint about American arms supplies.

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Ukrainian cities take heavy shelling as top US officials meet Zelenskiy in Kyiv

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As Russia and Ukraine mark Orthodox Easter, Russia continues assault with Zelenskiy set to request more weapons from US

Russian forces continued heavy shelling of Ukrainian cities on Sunday as people in both countries observed Orthodox Easter and the US secretaries of state and defence made their first visit to Kyiv since the invasion.

Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin arrived in Kyiv and were holding talks with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said on Sunday in a social media video.

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