Ukraine’s general staff said shelling across the country amounted to preparation for an escalation of hostilities as Russia seeks to seize Donetsk province and control Ukraine’s entire industrial heartland. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had carried out 34 airstrikes since Saturday, one of which hit a five-story apartment building, killing 31 people and trapping dozens more. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Moscow denies targeting civilians, but many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left in ruins. And the human cost of Russia’s invasion, Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II and now in its fifth month, is mounting. Russian state news agency TASS reported that a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed six people and left many wounded. “There are six confirmed people [dead]. And many dozens wounded, (with) shrapnel wounds, cuts,” the report quoted Vladimir Leontiev, head of the military-civil administration of the Russian-imposed Kakhovka district in the Kherson region, as saying. “There are still many people under the rubble. The injured are being taken to the hospital, but many people are trapped in their apartments and houses,” Leontiev added. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts. Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what he claimed was a “special military operation” to demilitarize its neighbor and rid it of dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West say it was an imperialist land grab by Putin. After Putin failed to quickly capture the capital Kyiv, his forces turned to Donbass, where the two provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk have been partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Putin intends to hand over control of the Donbass to the separatists and on Monday relaxed rules for Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship. Read more .
EXCAVATING ENERGY CRISIS
Ukraine’s allies have supplied it with weapons and imposed harsh sanctions on Moscow. Moscow in turn used its vast oil and natural gas reserves to finance its war. But rifts are beginning to appear among Kiev’s allies as the nations struggle with rising energy and food prices and rising inflation. Europe’s dependence on Russian energy preoccupied policymakers and businesses as the largest pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany began 10 days of annual maintenance. Governments, markets and companies are concerned that the shutdown could be extended due to the war. read more Ukraine’s energy and foreign ministries said Canada’s decision to return to Germany a repaired turbine needed for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline that supplies Russian oil amounted to an adjustment to sanctions imposed on Moscow. Zelensky warned that the Kremlin would perceive exemptions from sanctions as a sign of weakness. He said Moscow would now try to “completely stop gas supplies to Europe at the most urgent moment. This is what we have to prepare for now. This is being caused now.” The world oil price could jump 40% to around $140 a barrel if a proposed price cap on Russian oil is not adopted, a senior US Treasury official said on Tuesday. The goal is to set the price at a level that covered Russia’s marginal cost of production, so that Moscow would have an incentive to continue exporting oil, but not high enough to allow it to finance the war against Ukraine, he said. official. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will discuss the implementation of the US price cap proposal and global economic developments with Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki when they meet later on Tuesday, the official said. As the European Union prepares to impose a phased embargo on Russian oil and ban marine insurance for any tanker carrying Russian oil, a move Britain is expected to follow, Yellen sees the cap as a way to keep oil flowing oil and prevent further price spikes that could lead to recession. While Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, in a newspaper interview published on Monday, strongly endorsed a proposal by gas producer Gazprom ( GAZP.MM ) to extend the ruble-to-gas scheme for pipeline natural gas to include liquefied natural gas (LNG). However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that no decisions had been made or orders prepared for such a move. In March, Putin said that “unfriendly countries” would have to pay for Russian gas in rubles after cutting Russia out of the financial system. Some of Gazprom’s biggest customers in Europe were cut off after refusing to cooperate with the ruble payment system for natural gas. In a bid to ease global food prices, the West is aiming to reopen Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which it says are closed due to a Russian blockade, halting exports from one of the world’s main sources of grain and threatening to worsen world hunger. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered to mediate on the grain issue, discussed it by phone with Putin. The Kremlin said the talks were held ahead of a Russian-Turkish summit scheduled for the near future. read more A summit with Erdogan would be Putin’s first face-to-face meeting with a NATO leader since the invasion, and if held in Turkey, it would also be his first trip outside the territory of the former Soviet Union. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report from Reuters offices. Written by Michael Perry. Edited by Stephen Coates Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
