Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - After widespread shelling that killed more than 30 people, Ukraine is expecting a new attack by Russian ...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - After widespread shelling that killed more than 30 people, Ukraine is expecting a new attack by Russian ground forces. At the same time, Kyiv's Western allies are getting ready for the global energy crisis to get worse if Russia cuts off its supply of oil and gas.
The general staff of Ukraine said that the shelling across the country was a sign that Russia was getting ready to step up the fighting. Russia wants to take over Donetsk province and control the whole industrial heartland of Ukraine's Donbas region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had launched 34 air strikes since Saturday. One of them hit a five-story apartment building, killing 31 people and trapping dozens more.
Moscow says it didn't aim for civilians, but many cities, towns, and villages in Ukraine are in ruins. And more people are dying because of Russia's invasion. This is Europe's biggest war since World War II, and it has been going on for five months.
Russian state news agency TASS said that a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-held town of Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine's southern Kherson region killed six people and hurt many others.
"We know for sure that six people are dead. And many dozens hurt, with cuts, wounds from shrapnel, "Vladimir Leontyev, the head of the Russian-installed military-civilian administration for the Kakhovka District in the Kherson region, was quoted in the report at https://tass.com/world/1478585.
"Many people are still under the rubble. People who are hurt are being taken to the hospital, but many people are stuck in their homes and apartments "Leontyev added.
Reuters could not independently check the reports from the battlefield.
Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24. He said it was a "special military operation" to get rid of dangerous nationalists and demilitarise its neighbour. Kyiv and the rest of the world say that Putin's move was an imperialist land grab.
Putin's forces moved to the Donbas after he failed to quickly take the capital, Kyiv. Since 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk, two provinces in the Donbas, have been partly controlled by separatists who are backed by Russia.
Putin wants the separatists to take control of the Donbas, so on Monday he made it easier for Ukrainians to become Russian citizens.
WORSENING ENERGY CRISIS
Allies of Ukraine have given it weapons and put tough sanctions on Moscow. Moscow, for its part, has filled up its war chest with money from its huge oil and gas reserves.
But cracks are starting to show up among Kyiv's allies as countries try to deal with rising energy and food prices and inflation.
As the biggest pipeline that brings Russian gas to Germany for 10 days of annual maintenance, policymakers and businesses were worried about how much Europe depends on Russian energy. Because of the war, governments, markets, and businesses are worried that the shutdown could last longer than planned.
Ukraine's energy and foreign ministries said that Canada's decision to send back to Germany a fixed turbine that is needed for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline that brings oil from Russia was the same as changing sanctions against Moscow.
Zelenskiy said that if sanctions were broken, the Kremlin would see that as a sign of weakness.
He said that now Moscow would try to "Stop giving gas to Europe completely as soon as possible. We need to get ready for this right now. This is what is making people angry right now."
A senior U.S. Treasury official said on Tuesday that if a proposed price cap on Russian oil is not put into place, the price of oil around the world could rise by 40% to around $140 per barrel.
The goal is to set the price high enough to cover Russia's marginal cost of production so that Moscow has a reason to keep exporting oil but not so high that it can pay for its war with Ukraine, an official said.
When they meet later on Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki will talk about how to implement the U.S. price cap proposal and how the global economy is doing.
As the European Union gets ready to put a phased embargo on Russian oil and ban maritime insurance for any tanker that carries Russian oil, a move that Britain is likely to follow, Yellen sees the cap as a way to keep oil flowing and avoid another price spike that could lead to a recession.
In an interview with a newspaper that came out on Monday, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov strongly backed a plan by gas producer Gazprom to add liquefied natural gas to its roubles-for-gas programme for pipeline gas (LNG).
But Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters that no decisions had been made or orders made for such a move.
After Russia was cut off from the world financial system, Putin said in March that "unfriendly countries" would have to pay for Russian gas in roubles. Several of Gazprom's biggest European clients were cut off because they didn't want to take part in the roubles-for-gas payment plan.
In order to lower food prices around the world, the West wants to reopen Ukraine's Black Sea ports, which it says are closed because of a Russian blockade. This has stopped exports from one of the world's main sources of grain and could make hunger worse around the world.
Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has offered to be a mediator in the grain dispute. He called Putin to talk about it. The Kremlin said that the talks were a step toward a Russian-Turkish summit that is coming up soon.
Putin's first face-to-face meeting with a leader of a NATO country since the invasion would be with Erdogan at a summit. If the summit took place in Turkey, it would also be Putin's first trip outside the area that used to be the Soviet Union.
