LIVE – Ukraine: Russian gas group Gazprom further reduces deliveries to European customers

One of Moscow’s most luxurious hotels, the Ritz-Carlton, with its stunning view of Red Square, was renamed Carlton Moscow on Monday as its parent company, Marriott International, suspended operations in Russia due to the offensive against Ukraine.

Located on Moscow’s central avenue, Tverskaya, and boasting a bird’s eye view of the Kremlin, its gardens and Red Square, the hotel has a new logo and website, but no announcement has been made regarding a financial transaction.

It will operate “as an independent hotel”, according to a press release quoted by the Russian agencies, while it was previously operated by Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, a subsidiary of the Marriott group.

• Gazprom maintains its pressure on its European customers. Advancing maintenance work on two gas pipelines, the Russian gas company reduced its gas deliveries to Italian Eni and Austrian OMV on Monday.

• Relief services still mobilized to try to find survivors in Chassiv Yar. The city in eastern Ukraine was targeted by Russian fire on Sunday. According to the last count of the local emergency services, 19 people died in this attack.

• Russia and Belarus threaten Lithuania. The two countries are scalded by the measures taken by Vilnius to block the arrival of goods in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

• Ukraine builds a million-strong army to recapture southern territories. The order comes directly from Volodymyr Zelensky, who wants to see back into his fold territories on the edge of the Black Sea, vital for the economy of the country.

In an interview with the British daily The TimesUkrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said the country was building up a million-strong army, equipped with Western weapons, to recapture the occupied southern territories.

It is Volodymyr Zelensky who is behind this initiative, the Ukrainian territories located on the shores of the Black Sea being vital for the country’s economy.

“It is necessary for the country. The president gave the order to the military command to set up strategies. Then, the staff did its homework and listed the needs necessary to achieve this objective” , stressed Oleksiy Reznikov.

The Kremlin said on Monday that the Russian and Belarusian presidents were working on “joint measures” to respond to Lithuania’s ban on the transit of certain goods to the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.

Landlocked between Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad is largely supplied by rail from mainland Russia. In application of the European sanctions decided in response to the Russian offensive against Ukraine, Vilnius no longer authorizes the transit through its territory of certain goods since the second half of June.

During a telephone conversation, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko “emphasized the situation due to the illegal sanctions introduced by Lithuania (…) and in this context discussed possible joint measures”, indicated the Kremlin in a statement.

The Russian giant Gazprom, which has started maintenance work on the two Nord Stream 1 gas pipelines, has again sharply reduced its gas deliveries to the Austrian group OMV, announced on Monday.

“OMV has been informed by Gazprom of the decrease in gas supply, which translates for today into a 70% drop in volumes arriving at the Baumgarten terminal”, one of the main distribution centers in Europe central, the company said in a statement sent to AFP.

Serguiï Gaïdaï, governor of the Lugansk region, indicated that a small part of this territory located in eastern Ukraine was still resisting the Russian invader, who nevertheless announced that he had conquered it in its entirety after the capture of Severodonetsk.

He accused the Russians of using new recruits as “cannon fodder”, and castigated the Russians’ inability to meet the needs of occupied populations.

The European Union strengthened its cooperation with Moldova on Monday to help it control its border with Ukraine and prevent the risk of arms trafficking from this country at war, worrying about seeing military equipment diverted provided by Westerners.

European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson announced the creation of a “support hub for internal security and border management in Moldova”, an EU candidate country, during a meeting in Prague of European Ministers of Interior with their Moldavian and Ukrainian counterparts.

“We have some indications” on a traffic, declared Ylva Johansson. “We know how many weapons there are in Ukraine and of course not all of them are always in good hands,” she added, without further details.

Ukrainian emergency services said on Monday that the number of victims in Chassiv Yar, a city in eastern Ukraine targeted on Sunday by deadly Russian strikes, had risen to 19.

Eight people were rescued from the rubble.

On his Telegram accountKyrylo Tymoshenko, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, said a new salvo of Russian rockets hit the city of Kharkiv on Monday.

At least 28 people were reportedly injured, including a 16-year-old boy. Three people died.

Based on data from the Ukrainian Ministry of the Armed Forces, the Kyiv Independent media revealed on Monday a new update on Russian losses in Ukraine.

According to this new count, 37,400 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine since the start of the “special operation” launched by Vladimir Putin.

From a logistical point of view, 1645 tanks would have been destroyed, 838 artillery systems or even 155 Russian cruise missiles would have been put out of action.

However, these data should be taken with great caution, as they could not be independently verified. According to several international experts, the Russian death toll is high, but below Ukrainian estimates.

Gazprom has further reduced its gas deliveries to Eni by an additional third, supplying a quantity of around 21 million m3 on Monday, the Italian hydrocarbons group announced in a press release.

The average for the last few days has been around 32 million m3, specifies Eni. Part of the gas delivered by the Russian giant to Italy is transported by Nord Stream 1, which has been undergoing maintenance since Monday morning.

As reported by the Russian agency RIA Novosti, relayed by the GuardianRussia accused the Ukrainians of carrying out an assassination attempt against Andriy Siguta, the leader of the occupied Melitopol region, located on Ukrainian territory.

“There was an assassination attempt against the head of the administration of Melitopol, Andriy Siguta. Fortunately, he was not injured and continues to work, despite threats from the Ukrainian side. The details of this terrorist attack will be revealed later,” an occupation official said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of deliberately targeting civilians after a Russian strike on Chassiv Yar killed at least 15 people on Sunday.

“The people who give the orders for such strikes, who carry them out on ordinary towns, on residential areas, are killing deliberately,” he said.

Before threatening the principals with sentences as severe as those applied to the Nazis at the end of the Second World War.

“Punishment is inevitable for all Russian murders. For everyone. The same as for the Nazis. And don’t let them imagine that their state will protect them,” he added.

The Ukrainian emergency services are still mobilized to try to find survivors, after the Russian strike on Sunday on the locality of Chassiv Yar, in eastern Ukraine, which left at least 15 dead.

Donetsk Region Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said at least 24 people could still be trapped under the rubble. Six people have already been rescued.

Chassiv Yar is located not far from Kramatorsk, a city considered to be the next target for the Russians.

France news said this morning that the Wagner militia, a Russian paramilitary group accused of numerous abuses on the various sites where it was deployed, would recruit Russian prisoners into its ranks in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Interviewed by France info, Nadeja, whose boyfriend is serving an eight and a half year prison sentence for drug trafficking, confirms these accusations.

“My friend called me and confirmed the thing. He said that indeed in the penal colony, we only talk about that: we recruit for the war! He tells me that a lot of prisoners are still thinking about it. ” We detainees from this prison have already gone to war,” she said.

Prisoners who agree to fight would be sent to Donbass, an eastern Ukrainian territory where fighting is raging.

This Monday, the intelligence services of the British Ministry of Defense shared their daily update on Twitter regarding the conflict in Ukraine. They indicate that “Russian bombardments continue in the Donbass”, “but probably without major territorial gain”.

Same observation on the Ukrainian side. Although the soldiers of kyiv continue to put pressure on the Russian line of defense, they also fail to break through the enemy positions.

But the British press on a point. That of the immense fatigue that the soldiers of Moscow would face. London mentions the case of several wives of Russian soldiers who allegedly assured that their husbands had been at the front since the launch of the Russian operation in Ukraine.

“The lack of permission granted to soldiers in the context of intense combat is one of the most intense problems facing the Russian Ministry of Defense from the point of view of its human resources,” the press release concluded. this Monday.

Germany and with it Europe are entering a period of great uncertainty on Monday about the continuation of their imports of Russian gas, already greatly reduced in recent weeks and which could soon dry up completely.

The Russian giant Gazprom began maintenance work on the two Nord Stream 1 gas pipelines in the morning, which carry a large quantity of its gas, which is still delivered to Germany and several other countries in Western Europe. This stoppage for ten days of the two pipes, announced for a long time, was in theory only to be a technical formality.

Welcome to this direct dedicated to the follow-up of the war in Ukraine