live blog
Status: 04/23/2023 10:36 a.m
G7 agriculture ministers are calling for the extension and expansion of the grain deal for export through the Black Sea. For the first time, Lithuania has successfully decoupled itself from the Russian power grid for a period of ten hours. The developments in the live blog.
10:36 a.m
Test: Lithuania decoupled from Russian power grid
For the first time, Lithuania operated its power grid alone and completely independently of Russia. For the isolated operation of the grid, the Baltic EU and NATO country interrupted all connections to the Russian power grid for ten hours on Saturday. The test was successful, said the Lithuanian network operator Litgrid.
The test decoupling went unnoticed by the electricity consumer and served to prepare for the planned synchronization of the grid with Western Europe.
According to its own statements, Lithuania had already completely stopped its energy imports from Russia last year as a consequence of its war of aggression against Ukraine. However, like Estonia and Latvia, it is still part of a common, synchronously switched power grid with Russia and Belarus – the so-called BRELL ring system, which dates back to Soviet times.
06:06 a.m
G7 ministers call for extension of grain agreements
The agriculture ministers of the seven leading industrialized nations (G7) call for the extension, full implementation and expansion of an agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea. “We condemn Russia’s attempts to use food as a means of destabilization and geopolitical coercion, and reiterate our commitment to act in solidarity and support those most affected by Russia’s use of food as a weapon,” the statement said , which was written after a two-day meeting of ministers in Miyazaki, Japan.
Russia had emphatically signaled that it would not allow the agreement to continue beyond May 18. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York next week to discuss Ukraine’s grain export business in the Black Sea.
2:27 a.m
Athlete spokesman: At the moment only collective exclusion
Athletes spokesman Maximilian Klein has reiterated the demand that Russian athletes continue to be excluded from competitions because of the aggressive war in Ukraine. The recommendation of the International Olympic Committee for the re-admission of athletes from Russia and Belarus on the international sports stage is wrong, above all because they and the sport are still “instrumentalized by Putin’s war propaganda”, said the spokesman for the association Athletes Germany in ZDF’s “Aktuelles Sportstudio”.
“That’s why only collective exclusion is possible at the moment,” said Klein. Otherwise you have the situation “that you accompany the Russians back into world sport, court them, open the doors for them – and as a result the doors are closed to the Ukrainians”.