Russia’ suspends gas to Latvia over Ukraine tensions
MOSCOW/KYIV: Russian energy giant Gazprom on Saturday suspended gas supplies to Latvia following tensions between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Ukraine and sweeping European and US sanctions against Russia.
The declaration came a day after Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of bombing a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held territory, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying more than 50 were killed and calling the attack a war crime.
“Today, Gazprom suspended its gas supplies to Latvia... due to violations of the conditions” of purchase, the company said on Telegram.
Gazprom drastically cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20% of its capacity.
The Russian state-run company had earlier announced it would choke supply to 33 million cubic metres a day - half the amount it has been delivering since service resumed last week after 10 days of maintenance work. EU states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine.
Russian strikes pummel Ukrainian cities
Fresh Russian strikes hit towns and cities across Ukraine’s sprawling front line, killing at least one person in the south and hitting a school in Kharkiv, officials said Saturday.
The mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv - close to where Ukrainian troops are seeking to stage a counteroffensive - said one person was killed when rockets pounded two residential districts overnight.
Six others were wounded in the strikes, which left “windows and doors broken, and balconies destroyed”, mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych wrote on Telegram.
In recent weeks Mykolaiv has been hit almost daily as Ukrainian troops seek to push into the neighbouring Kherson region. Seven people were killed Friday in an attack near a bus stop.
The Ukrainian presidency said its forces had carried out strikes on Russian military warehouses and positions behind the lines in Kherson region.
In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, rockets from an S-300 surface-to-air system destroyed part of an educational facility in a strike in the early hours of Saturday, local authorities said.
Kharkiv, close to the Russian border in northeast Ukraine, has also been subjected to frequent bombardment by Moscow’s forces stationed nearby.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, where Moscow is focusing the brunt of its offensive, said that six civilians were killed and 15 wounded by strikes on Friday. A bus station in the city of Sloviansk, a key target for the Kremlin’s forces, was damaged in an attack on Saturday.