Ukraine-russia War Briefs RUSSIA HALTS GAS SUPPLIES TO POLAND, BULGARIA

WARSAW, POLAND » Officials in Poland and Bulgaria said Tuesday that Russia is suspending their countries’ natural gas deliveries after they refused to pay for their supplies in Russian rubles rather than dollars or euros.

The governments of the two European Union and NATO members said Russian energy giant Gazprom informed them it was halting the gas supplies starting Wednesday.

No country, except Hungary, has agreed to pay in rubles.

Poland has been a strong supporter of neighboring Ukraine during the Russian invasion. It is a transit point for weapons the United States and other Western nations have provided Ukraine.

Bulgaria, once one of Moscow’s closest allies, has cut many of its old ties with Russia after a new liberal government took the reigns last fall and after Putin’s military invaded Ukraine. It has supported sanctions against Russia and provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

U.N. says Putin has agreed to Mariupol evacuation of civilians.

UNITED NATIONS » The U.N. says Secretary-general

António Guterres and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed in principle that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross should be involved in the evacuation of civilians from a besieged steel plant in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Mariupol.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that during their one-on-one meeting Tuesday, Guterres and Putin “discussed the proposals for humanitarian assistance and evacuation of civilians from conflict zones, namely in relation to the situation in Mariupol.”

The sprawling Azovstal steel plant has been almost completely destroyed by Russian attacks but it is the last pocket of organized Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol. An estimated 2,000 troops and 1,000 civilians are said to be holed up in bunkers underneath the structure.

West transforming Ukraine’s army.

WASHINGTON » The longer Ukraine’s army fends off the invading Russians, the more it absorbs the advantages of Western weaponry and training — exactly the transformation President Vladimir Putin wanted to prevent by invading in the first place.

The list of arms flowing to Ukraine includes new American battlefield aerial drones and the most modern U.S. and Canadian artillery, anti-tank weapons from Norway and others, armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles from Britain and Stinger counter-air missiles from the U.S., Denmark and other countries.

If Ukraine can hold off the Russians, its accumulating arsenal of Western weapons could have a transformative effect in a country that has relied mainly on arms and equipment from the Soviet era.

City of Kreminna has fallen.

LVIV, UKRAINE » The British Defense Ministry says Russian forces have taken the Ukrainian city of Kreminna.

Street-to-street fighting had been going on for days in the city in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, with civilian evacuations there made impossible by the war. There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian government.

Odesa bridge with Romania hit.

KYIV, UKRAINE » Ukrainian officials say the Russian military has hit a strategic bridge linking the southern Odesa region with neighboring Romania.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the state-run Ukrainian Railways, said the bridge across the Dniester Estuary where the Dniester River flows into the Black Sea was damaged in Tuesday’s missile attack by Russian forces.

American diplomats return.

WASHINGTON » The State Department says

U.S. diplomats have begun returning to Ukraine by making day trips to temporary offices in the western city of Lviv from neighboring Poland.

Slovakian leader addresses Russians.

BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA » Slovakia’s President Zuzana Caputova released a video addressing the invading Russian soldiers, their commanders and all whom it may concern, urging them to stop the war in Ukraine.

Caputova also condemned war crimes against women, children and civilians.

Germany shrinks Russian oil dependence.

BERLIN » Economy Minister Robert Habeck says his country has come “very, very close” to independence from Russian oil and an embargo on deliveries would now be “manageable.”

Russian gas imports, however, are a bigger issue for Germany. Berlin has said that it will need longer to do without gas supplies from Russia.