Ukraine calls for international peace forces in Zaporizhia
Moscow: Raed Gabr – Kyiv. London: «Middle East»
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned yesterday (Wednesday) of a famine in developing countries, and threatened to cut off all kinds of energy from the European Union, if the Union implemented its threats to cap Russian energy prices.
In his speech at the Russian Far East Economic Forum, Putin denied that his country was using energy as a “weapon” against Europe, days after Russian gas shipments through the Nord Stream pipeline stopped. “Western countries say that Russia is using energy as a weapon,” Putin said. Nonsense! What weapon do we use? We provide the necessary quantities according to the requests of the importing countries. “Give us a turbine and we will re-launch (Nord Stream) tomorrow,” the Russian president added.
He described Western sanctions as a source of threat to the entire world. He pointed out that this led to a decline in confidence in the dollar, the euro and the pound sterling, and said that “even the allies of the United States are reducing their reserves of the American currency.”
Putin stressed that rising prices on world markets “could be a real tragedy for most of the poorest countries. Therefore, according to the United Nations, if 135 million people in the world suffered from severe food shortages in 2019, their number is currently 345 million. “The poorest countries completely lose access to the most important food products, because purchases by developed countries lead to a sharp rise in prices,” he said.
In a related context, Ukraine demanded yesterday (Wednesday) to send international peacekeeping forces to the Zaporizhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine. This station had been bombed several times in recent weeks; This raised fears of a dangerous nuclear accident, at a time when Kyiv and Moscow exchanged accusations in this regard.
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