A few days before the 27-nation European Union (EU) discussed Kiev’s bid to join the bloc, Russia on Monday intensified its attacks on the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions of northeastern and eastern Ukraine.
EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell said at the start of a week of intense activity around Ukraine’s candidacy for the European bloc, Russia committed a “true war crime” by blocking Ukraine’s grain and grain exports.
At a time when fears are mounting about the consequences of the invasion on food prices, Germany is holding an international meeting on the subject Friday, which will be attended by the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna urged Russia to “stop playing with world hunger”.
In his daily speech on Sunday, Zelensky said this Monday “a truly historic week begins.”
The 27 EU countries meet on Thursday and Friday to decide whether to grant candidate status to the country, a decision that must be taken unanimously.
‘Our army is resisting’
“Obviously we expect Russia to step up its attacks this week,” the Ukrainian president warned. “Our army is resisting,” he said.
The Ukrainian presidency said in a report released this morning that there has been an increase in artillery shelling in the Kharkov region and an increase in attacks on the “front line” east of Donetsk, with one dead and seven wounded.
In the Donbass, the city of Severodonetsk focused the attack on capturing the entire eastern mining basin that has been partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
“The Russians control most of the residential areas of Severodonetsk,” said Oleksandr Striuk, head of the municipal administration, but “if you count the whole city, more than a third is still controlled by our armed forces.”
Serguii Gaidai, governor of Luhansk, one of the regions that make up Donbass, confirmed on television that Russian control of Metiolkiné on the outskirts of Severodonetsk had fallen.
turn to coal
On the southern front, the Ukrainian army claims that Russian forces “cannot advance on land” and continue to bombard.
Russia’s defense ministry said it used cruise missiles to attack a factory in Mykolaiv and destroyed “ten 155mm mortars and up to 20 armored vehicles supplied by the West to the Kyiv regime in the past ten days”.
Mykolaiv is a port and industrial city where half a million people lived before the war. Since the location is on the route of Odessa, the main port of Ukraine, it is the target of Russian attacks.
In response, Russia accused Ukrainian forces of attacking offshore oil drilling platforms on the Crimean peninsula.
Russia is using its hydrocarbons as weapons against the EU and cut off gas flow to many countries last week.
By contrast, Russia’s oil imports to China increased by 55% in May compared to last year.
Germany will turn to coal power plants to reduce dependency on Russia and reduce gas consumption.
“Painful but indispensable,” said Economy Minister Robert Habeck. But the government said on Monday that this measure is “limited” and that its promise to phase out coal before 2030 will be fulfilled.
Austria also announced over the weekend that a closed coal power plant is back in operation in 2020.
The sanctions adopted against Moscow included restrictions on transit through Lithuania to the Kaliningrad enclave, which Russian diplomacy has described as “openly hostile”.
source: Noticias
[author_name]
