Russia cuts gas to Poland, Bulgaria as West mounts new arms push

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Moscow on Wednesday turned off the natural-gas spigot to the front-line Eastern European states of Poland and Bulgaria, signaling its willingness to take sharp economic aim at those who aid Ukraine.

Russian forces, meanwhile, rained shells in the east as they pressed ahead with their devastating 2-monthold invasion.

Addressing the first such supply disruption since the war’s start, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly hinted that other European economies may be next. He told reporters Wednesday that if some customers “decline to pay under the new system” Russia has instituted — meaning in rubles instead of dollars or euros — they “of course” could face the same treatment.

Along a 300-mile battlefront in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russian forces managed to capture a small town, Zarichne, the Ukrainian military said in an early morning operational report. The giant Azovstal steelworks in the battered southern port city of Mariupol, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, also came under new bombardment, the military said.

Russia has been trying since the start of the war to capture Mariupol, and the city’s last-ditch defenders and some civilians are holed up inside the sprawling Soviet-era steel complex laced with tunnels and bunkers. Even though fighting continues, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed victory in the siege of the city, which Ukraine refuses to acknowledge.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv, partially hemmed in by Russian troops and under heavy bombardment since the start of the war, was rocked by loud explosions shortly after midnight.

Later, the regional governor said on the messaging app Telegram that overnight strikes in outlying towns had killed three people and wounded 15 others.

Heavy pounding in advance of major ground movement, sometimes including strikes on civilian areas, is key to the Russian strategy in the east, British military intelligence said in an assessment Wednesday.

Amid fears of a widening war, officials in a prorussia breakaway region of Moldova — Ukraine’s small, impoverished western neighbor — accused

Ukraine on Wednesday of attacking it. Russia last week telegraphed its aim of seizing Ukraine’s southern seacoast to link up with that breakaway region, Transnistria, as well as with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In an overnight address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of attempting to cause a “global price crisis” and sow chaos in the food market.

“Ukrainian exports will help stabilize markets,” he said, “so it is beneficial not only for us, but also for all Europeans.”

Wednesday’s announcement by Russia’s state-run fuel company, Gazprom, of the cutoff of Poland and Bulgaria came a day after Western allies, at U.S. urging, vowed to redouble shipments of weaponry to help Ukraine fight off Russian forces for what could prove to be a protracted confrontation.

Germany, in a policy shift, said it would ship armored anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin

III, speaking at Tuesday’s gathering of NATO and other allies at a U.S. air base in western Germany, called on those who want to help Ukraine to “move at the speed of war” to rush in more heavy armaments.

As Russia readies more troops and armor for its expanded offensive in eastern Ukraine, its Defense Ministry in Moscow said 59 Ukrainian military targets were destroyed overnight in airstrikes. It said targets included hangars containing foreign-supplied weapons and ammunition, but did not provide specifics. The claims could not be independently verified.

Pentagon spokesman

John F. Kirby told reporters Wednesday that dozens of the U.S. howitzers promised last week by the Biden administration are now in Ukraine.

U.S. training of Ukrainian personnel to use the howitzers is also underway in neighboring countries, Kirby said.

“It’s an active, kinetic fight there in the Donbas,” he said.

The suspension of gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria came after both countries, along with most other European

Union nations, rejected Moscow’s demand that energy shipments be paid for in rubles, which would help prop up the Russian currency. Existing contracts almost uniformly specify dollar payments.

The EU promised Wednesday that it would forge a unified response to the cutoff, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called a Russian attempt to “blackmail” Europe.

“This is unjustified and unacceptable,” von der

Leyen said in a statement. “And it shows once again the unreliability of Russia as a gas supplier.”