Russia’s Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of ‘extraordinary’ circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has removed the country’s head of the security service and the prosecutor general, claiming more than 60 of their employees have been “working against” Ukraine in Russian-occupied territory. He added that 651 criminal proceedings had been registered relating to high treason and collaboration by employees of prosecutors’ offices, pretrial investigation bodies and other law enforcement agencies.
Zelenskiy has appointed experienced security official and corruption fighter Vasyl Maliuk as the acting head of the domestic security agency.
Foreign ministers from European Union countries have agreed another €500m (£425m) of EU funding to supply arms to Ukraine, taking the bloc’s security support to €2.5bn since February. “Today at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting, a political agreement was reached on the fifth tranche of military assistance to Ukraine,” Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, Ann Linde, said in a statement, as reported by Reuters.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will discuss the export of Ukrainian grain at their meeting in Tehran on Tuesday, a Kremlin aide has told reporters. Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar said officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations will most likely meet this week to discuss resuming Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports.
Putin said on Monday that it was impossible to cut Russia off from the rest of the world. He added that sanctions imposed by western countries would not turn the clock back on Russia’s development.
A gas pipeline has been damaged as a result of a strike by the Ukrainian armed forces near the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in Kherson, a region currently controlled by Russian forces, Tass has reported, citing the regional administration.
Russia is preparing for the next stage of its offensive in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian military officials, after Moscow said its forces would step up military operations in “all operational areas”. The Ukrainian military said Russia appeared to be regrouping units for an offensive towards Sloviansk, a symbolically important city held by Ukraine in the eastern region of Donetsk. The British defence ministry added that Russia was also reinforcing its defensive positions across the occupied areas in southern Ukraine.
Six people were killed in Russian shelling of the town of Toretsk in the Donetsk region of east Ukraine on Monday, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service said.
