Ukraine prepares for a new Russian attack, and the West prepares to exacerbate the energy crisis

  • Ukraine prepares for a new Russian ground offensive
  • The increasing number of civilian casualties
  • Ukraine’s allies fear a worsening energy crisis
  • Zelensky warns that amending sanctions is a sign of weakness
  • US Treasury warns of rising oil prices

Kyiv, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine expects a new offensive by Russian ground forces following widespread bombing that has killed more than 30 people, as Kyiv’s western allies prepare to worsen the global energy crisis if Russia cuts its oil supplies. and gas.

Ukraine’s General Staff said the bombing across the country amounted to preparations for an intensification of hostilities as Russia seeks control of Donetsk province and control of the entire Donbass industrial region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had carried out 34 airstrikes since Saturday, one of which hit a five-story apartment, killing 31 people and trapping dozens.

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Moscow denies targeting civilians, but many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been destroyed. The human cost of the Russian invasion, the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, is now in its fifth month, is mounting.

A Ukrainian attack on the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine has killed six people and injured many, the official Russian news agency TASS reported.

“There are six people who have confirmed,” he said [dead]. Dozens of people were injured by shrapnel and wounds.” The report saidCiting Vladimir Leontyev, Head of the Military and Civil Administration of Russia’s Kakhovka District, Kherson Region.

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“There are still many people under the rubble. The wounded are being taken to hospital, but many people are confined to their apartments and homes,” Leontyev added.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the battlefield accounts.

Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, claiming it was a “special military operation” to disarm 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 shifted to Donbass, where the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces have been partly controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.

Putin aims to hand control of the Donbas River to separatists, and on Monday he relaxed rules for Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship. Read more.

The worsening energy crisis

Ukraine’s allies supplied it with weapons and imposed tough sanctions on Moscow. Moscow, in turn, used its vast oil and gas reserves to finance its war fund.

However, fault lines are beginning to emerge among Kyiv’s allies as nations struggle with rising energy and food prices and rising inflation.

Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has been a concern for policy makers and companies as the largest pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany began 10 days of annual maintenance. Governments, markets and companies are concerned about the possibility of an extension of the lockdown due to the war. Read more

Ukraine’s energy and foreign ministries said Canada’s decision to return to Germany repaired turbines needed for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline that supplies oil to Russia amounts to an amendment to sanctions against Moscow.

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Zelensky warned that the Kremlin would see sanctions exceptions as a sign of weakness.

He said that Moscow would now try to “completely stop gas supplies to Europe at the most urgent moment. That is what we need to prepare now. And that is what is being provoked now.”

A senior US Treasury official said on Tuesday that the global price of oil could rise by 40% to around $140 a barrel if a proposed ceiling for Russian oil prices is not adopted.

The goal is to set the price at a level that covers Russia’s marginal cost of production, the official said, so that Moscow is incentivized to continue exporting oil, but not high enough to allow it to finance its war against Ukraine.

The official said US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will discuss implementation of the US price cap proposal and global economic developments with Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki when they meet later on Tuesday.

As the European Union prepares to gradually introduce a ban on Russian oil and ban marine insurance on any tanker carrying Russian oil, a move Britain is expected to meet, Yellen sees the cap as a way to keep oil flowing and avoid price hikes. It may lead to stagnation.

While Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, in a press interview published on Monday, strongly supported a proposal by gas-producing Gazprom (GAZP.MM) To expand the ruble-for-gas scheme for pipeline gas to include liquefied natural gas (LNG).

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that no decisions had been taken and no orders had been prepared on such a move.

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In March, Putin said that “unfriendly countries” would have to pay for Russian gas in rubles, after Russia dropped word of the financial system. A number of Gazprom’s largest customers in Europe were cut off after refusing to cooperate with the ruble payment scheme for gas.

In a bid to ease global food prices, the West aims to reopen Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which it says have been closed due to a Russian blockade, halting exports from one of the world’s main sources of grain and threatening to exacerbate world hunger.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered to mediate in the grain issue, discussed the matter with Putin over the phone. The Kremlin said that the talks took place in the run-up to the Russian-Turkish summit scheduled to be held in the near future. Read more

The summit with Erdogan will be the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and the leader of a NATO country since the invasion, and if it is to be held in Turkey, it will also be his first trip outside the territory of the former Soviet Union.

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Reporting by Reuters offices. writing by Michael Berry; Editing by Stephen Coates

Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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