Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - Russia threatened Thursday to turn off its gas taps to Europe if the continent fails to pay in rubles, opening up a new front amid its war in Ukraine, where NATO and Kyiv warned that Russian troops were regrouping for new attacks.
Over a month into Russia's invasion of its neighbour, Vladimir Putin's troops have devastated cities like Mariupol with their incessant shelling, killing at least 5,000 people in the port city alone.But they have struggled to take control of any significant territory.
Underscoring Russia's underestimation of Ukraine's dogged defence, Western intelligence agents say Putin is being misled by advisers "afraid to tell him the truth" about battlefield losses or the calamitous damage that sanctions have wrought on the country's economy.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the assessments, saying Western officials "don't understand President Putin, they don't understand the mechanism for taking decisions and they don't understand the style of our work".
Moscow insisted things were going to plan as it said this week it would scale back attacks on capital Kyiv and concentrate on the east, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed the promises as a red herring.
NATO also shared Zelensky's reading that Moscow was just "trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive" in the eastern Donbas region, while at the same time maintaining "pressure on Kyiv and other cities."
"So, we can expect additional offensive actions, bringing even more suffering," said the alliance's chief Jens Stoltenberg.
On the ground, shells continued to rain down on Kyiv and the northern city of Chernigiv, where governor of the region, Vicheslav Chaus, poured scorn on Moscow's claim it was deescalating fighting.
"The enemy is taking losses.It is moving on the territory of Chernigiv region.Can we call that a withdrawal of troops?I am not sure.At the minimum, it is regrouping, but it is possible that it is withdrawing.We must not let down our guard," he wrote on Telegram.
'Desperately important'
Military experts believe that with thousands of Russian troops killed and many thousands more injured, Moscow has no choice but to ditch efforts to advance simultaneously along multiple axes in the north, east and south.
Its focus instead has turned towards the east, and capturing more towns and cities in the Donbas area including Mariupol, while continuing to fire long-range assaults on other cities.
In Mariupol, where tens of thousands have for weeks been under siege, with little water, food or electricity, Ukrainian authorities have sent 45 buses in for a new rescue mission.
The international Red Cross said it was "ready to lead the safe passage operation" on Friday if the terms including the route and duration are agreed upon by all the parties.
Previous repeated attempts to agree a safety corridor to get them out have collapsed but the ICRC said it was "desperately important" to make the latest attempt work.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, in a statement, said that around 75,000 Mariupol residents have been evacuated from the town over the past few weeks.
"About 45 thousand more people were forcibly deported by the occupiers" to Russia and to the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, he added.
Russia forces have encircled Mariupol, a strategic city for the Kremlin which needs to capture it to ensure an unbroken link between the breakaway regions in Donetsk and Lugansk which are under de facto Russian control.
At the eastern city of Kharkiv, which reported Thursday being pounded by 47 artillery strikes and 380 rocket bombardments, the Ukrainian commander leading the defence there said his troops' morale is "high".
'Go home while you're alive'
"We are here for our land, we are protecting our families and our victories are raising our spirits," general Pavlo "Maestro" told AFP, adding that his message to the Russian invading force is: "go home while you're still alive."
"We must never under-estimate the enemy," he said, noting that the Russian forces were huge.
Zelensky had warned his war-torn nation to brace in particular for a new Russian onslaught in the eastern Donbas region.
"We don't believe anyone, not a single beautiful phrase," Zelensky said in a video message late Wednesday."There is an accumulation of Russian troops for new strikes in Donbas and we are preparing for it."
"We will fight for every metre of our land," he said.
Around the capital Kyiv, villages like Lukianivka which have borne the brunt of Russia's assaults have a trail of destruction bearing testament to the fighting.
Surveying the wreckage of a church at the village, Ukrainian army chaplain Nazarii Hahaliuk said it is inexplicable given that Ukraine and Russia both share the Orthodox Christian faith.
He said he did "not believe as a person or a priest" in Russia's pledge to ease attacks on Kyiv.
"I feel pain, I feel tragedy, I feel spiritual decline like that of a person who has been killed," he said.
'Diamonds and gas'
Zelensky on Thursday further pushed Western allies to hit Russia harder on the economic front, telling Belgium's parliament that achieving lasting peace in Ukraine "is more valuable than diamonds, ...than oil and gas".
In a separate address to the Dutch, he reiterated his call for a boycott of Russia energy exports.
The EU has joined the United States in imposing unprecedented sanctions against Russia but with some members mindful of ensuring their own power needs, the bloc has stopped short of enforcing a full-on energy embargo.
But Putin himself on Thursday raised the stakes, warning that EU members will need to set up ruble accounts from Friday to pay for Russian gas.
"If such payments are not made, we will consider this a breach of obligations on the part of our buyers with all the ensuing consequences" -- meaning that existing contracts would be stopped, Putin said, as his government expanded a list of EU figures banned from entering the country to "the top leadership of the European Union".
Germany, which before Putin's offensive in Ukraine imported 55 percent of its gas supplies from Russia, insisted that it will pay in euros or dollars as stipulated in the contracts.
Berlin and Paris were also "preparing" for a scenario where Russian gas simply stops flowing, France's economy minister said.
With energy prices soaring, President Joe Biden was expected later Thursday to announce the release of a record million barrels of oil to ease the overheated crude market.
A six month release of a million barrels daily would be by far the largest and most sustained ever tapping of the stockpiles in US history.The release would amount to augmenting global supplies by about one percent.
Washington also ramped up the economic offensive, announcing on Thursday that it was imposing sanctions on a series of Russian tech firms including the country's biggest chip maker, which it described as "instrumental to the Russian Federation's war machine".
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Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk in a statement:
"About 75 thousand residents were evacuated from Mariupol" since the start of the evacuations a few weeks ago
"About 45 thousand more people were forcibly deported by the occupiers to the so-called DNR and Russia", she says.
