Russia to cut Poland, Bulgaria gas supply over Ukraine war

WARSAW (Reuters)-Russia halted gas inventories to Poland under the Yamal contract on Wednesday, data from the European Union network of gas transmission drivers showed, in a deepening of the rift between the West and Russia over its irruption of Ukraine.

Bulgaria, like Poland a NATO and EU member, said before that Russia would also halt inventories of gas to it. There was no word beforehand on Wednesday if Bulgaria’s inventories were also cut.
Ukraine indicted Russia of blackmailing Europe over energy in an attempt to break its abettors, as fighting heads into a third month without Russia landing a major megacity.
Loyal Kremlin opponent Poland is among the European countries seeking the toughest warrants against Russia for overrunning its neighbour.
Poland’s gas force contract with energy mammoth Gazprom is for10.2 billion boxy measures (bcm) per time and covers about 50 of public consumption.
Poland’s state-possessed PGNiG had said inventories from Gazprom via Ukraine and Belarus would be cut at 8a.m. (0600 GMT) on Wednesday, but Poland said it didn’t need to draw on reserves and its gas storehouse was 76 full.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on” unfriendly” countries to pay for gas significance in roubles, demand only many buyers have enforced.
“The ultimate thing of Russia’s leadership isn’t just to seize the home of Ukraine, but to dismember the entire centre and east of Europe and deal a global blow to the republic,”Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said late on Tuesday.
His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Russia was” beginning the gas blackmail of Europe”.
“Russia is trying to shatter the concinnity of our abettors,”Yermak said.
Bulgaria, which is nearly fully reliant on Russian gas significance, said it had fulfilled all its contractual scores with Gazprom and that the proposed new payment scheme was in breach of the arrangement.
It has held original addresses to import thawed natural gas through neighbouring Turkey and Greece.
Gazprom said it hadn’t yet suspended inventories to Poland but that Warsaw had to pay for gas in line with its new” order of payments.”It declined to note regarding Bulgaria.
The irruption of Ukraine, launched onFeb. 24, has left thousands dead or injured, reduced municipalities and metropolises to debris, and forced further than 5 million people to flee abroad.
Moscow calls its conduct a” special operation”to disarm Ukraine and cover it from fascists.
Ukraine and the West say this is a false rationale for an unprovoked war to seize home in a move that has sparked fears of wider conflict in Europe unseen since World War Two.
Russia’s minister to the United States has advised Washington to stop transferring arms to Ukraine, saying that large Western deliveries of munitions were inflaming the situation.
Further than 40 countries met in Germany on Tuesday to bandy Ukraine’s defence.
Mark Milley, president of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told journalists while flying to Tuesday’s meeting that the coming many weeks in Ukraine would be” veritably, veritably critical”.
Germany blazoned on Tuesday its first delivery of heavy munitions to Ukraine, including Gepard tanks equipped with anti-aircraft ordnance.
Ukrainian pleas for heavy munitions have boosted since Moscow shifted its descent to the eastern region of Donbas, seen as better suited for tank battles than the areas around the capital Kyiv where much of the earlier fighting took place.
A series of blasts were heard in the early hours of Wednesday in the Russian megacity Belgorod near the Ukrainian border, indigenous governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said, and a security depot in the fiefdom was on fire.
Gladkov said no civilians had been hurt by the fire which broke out at an installation near Staraya Nelidovka vill. Russia this month indicted Ukraine of attacking an energy depot in Belgorod with copters and opening fire on several townlets in the fiefdom.
The Belgorod fiefdom borders Ukraine’s Luhansk, Sumy and Kharkiv regions, all of which have seen heavy fighting since Russia raided Ukraine two months agone.
Fighting continued in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian growers in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia which borders the frontal line are wearing body armour to plough their fields.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had” delivered” the entire Kherson region in southern Ukraine and the corridor of the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, Interfax news agency reported. However, that would represent a significant Russian advance, If verified.
Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday disassembled a huge Soviet-period monument in the centre of Kyiv meant to symbolise fellowship with Russia, according to the megacity’s mayor.
The eight-metre (27-ft) citation statue depicted a Ukrainian and Russian worker on a plinth, holding above together a Soviet order of fellowship. The statue was under the giant titanium”People’s Friendship Arch”, erected in 1982 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union.
“We now see what this’ fellowship is-the destruction of Ukrainian metropolises. killing knockouts of thousands of peaceful people. I’m convinced such a monument has an entirely different meaning now,” Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russia’s foreign minister on Tuesday that he was ready to completely mobilise the organisation’s coffers to save lives and void people from the besieged Ukrainian megacity of Mariupol.