On Tuesday evening, Polish and Bulgarian authorities said they had been warned by Russian gas company Gazprom about its intention to halt its gas supplies to those two countries the next day, despite the contracts binding them.
However, these two members of NATO and the European Union (EU) agree to get the missing gas from other sources.
The announcement comes as many law firms are concerned about the risk that the current conflict could spread outside of Ukraine, following a series of blasts in the separatist Moldova region of Transnistria that Kyiv blamed on Moscow.
“This is an attempt to increase tensions. We condemn such actions in the strongest possible terms. The Moldovan authorities will ensure that the republic is not drawn into a conflict,” said Moldovan President Maïa Sandu. She announced measures to strengthen the security of this small Eastern European neighboring country Ukraine.
“Russia wants to destabilize the Transnistria region, which suggests that Moldova should expect + guests +,” Advisor to the Ukrainian Presidency Mikhaïlo Podoliak explained on Twitter, referring to the Russian soldiers who have been invading Ukraine since February 24 are.
“If Ukraine falls, tomorrow Russian troops will be at the gates of Moldova’s capital, Chisinau,” continued Mr. Podoliak.
“We remain concerned about any possible attempt to escalate tensions,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday.
– “Setting heaven and earth in motion” –
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday reiterated his support for Moldova, a neighbor of Ukraine, amid “risks of destabilization”.
For its part, the United States agreed to “move heaven and earth” to see Ukraine win against Russia.
“Ukraine clearly believes it can win, and so does everyone here,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at the start of a meeting with some 40 countries at the US Air Force Base in Ramstein, Germany, organized to speed up supplies military equipment needed by Ukraine to repel Russian invasion.
Ukrainians surprised the world in March by repelling a Russian offensive on Kyiv, but face relentless shelling and a slow advance of the Russian army in the Donbass (east), which pro-Russian separatists have partly controlled since 2014, and in the south .
After initially hesitating to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons, the United States has made the leap, as has Britain, France and the Czech Republic. Even Germany, particularly reluctant, announced on Tuesday that it intends to authorize the delivery of Guepard-type tanks.
– Slow Weapons Shipments –
According to Mike Jacobson, a civilian artillery specialist, the West wants to allow Ukrainians to respond to Russia’s long-range bombardments aimed at pushing back most of Ukraine’s forces and then sending tanks and soldiers to occupy the ground.
While waiting for the delivery of these weapons on the Donbass front, the situation is complicated and “not at all rosy in terms of morale,” Iryna Rybakova, press secretary of Ukraine’s 93rd brigade, told AFP.
According to an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, Russian forces are bombing bridges and railways to slow western arms shipments.
The Russian army said Tuesday it had conducted high-precision missile strikes against 32 Ukrainian military targets, including 20 areas of troop and equipment concentrations and four ammunition depots near the cities of Sloviansk and Druzhkovka in the Donetsk region.
In the Donbass regions, as in the south, “the enemy is attacking our troops’ positions along the entire front line with mortars, artillery and multiple rocket launchers,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
In the south, two Russian rockets hit the city of Zaporijjia in particular on Tuesday morning, killing at least one person and injuring one, according to the regional administration.
Zaporizhia, a major industrial center on the Dnieper River, has in recent weeks been the staging point for Ukrainian civilians fleeing besieged Mariupol and other bombed Donbass cities. But the city is now preparing for a Russian attack from the coast, according to Kyiv.
For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on Ukraine and Russia to work together, in coordination with the United Nations, to allow the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine.
The United Nations announced on Twitter on Wednesday that after the meeting in Moscow between Guterres and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian side had “in principle” accepted UN involvement in the evacuation of civilians from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Mr. Putin also told him that he still believed in a positive outcome of the negotiations with Ukraine.
The latter on Tuesday accused Russia of bringing the world “to the brink of disaster” by occupying the Chernobyl power plant at the start of its invasion of Ukraine.
But Rafael Gossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who visited Chernobyl on Tuesday to mark the 36th anniversary of the 1986 nuclear disaster, stressed that radioactivity was “in the normal range” after rising at times while the Russians measured it between ends February and late March occupied.
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