KYIV | The Russian military is regrouping for new attacks in Ukraine, Kyiv and NATO said Thursday, as Moscow threatens to cut off gas supplies to “unfriendly” countries that refuse to pay in rubles.
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Russian forces “are not withdrawing but repositioning” in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, judging that Moscow intends to strengthen its offensive on the Donbass region in the east, while maintaining ” pressure on Kyiv and other cities”.
“We expect additional offensive actions which will result in even more suffering,” he concluded.
These words echo those of Ukrainian General Pavlo “Maestro” in Kharkiv. “(The enemy) is regrouping to attack and put the maximum forces” in southern and eastern Ukraine, he told AFP on Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin for his part has threatened buyers of Russian gas from “unfriendly” countries with stopping their supply if they do not comply with the demands of the Kremlin, a measure which would mainly affect the very dependent European Union.
“They need to open ruble accounts in Russian banks. And from these accounts they will have to pay for the gas delivered and that as of tomorrow,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz immediately replied that European countries will continue to pay for Russian gas in euros and dollars as it is “written in the contracts”. I made it clear to the Russian president that it will remain so” and “companies want to be able to pay in euros and will do so”, he added.
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, traveling to Berlin, said that France and Germany are preparing for such a scenario.
“There may be a situation in which tomorrow, in very specific circumstances, there will be no more Russian gas (…) it is up to us to prepare these scenarios, and we are preparing them”, has he declared.
Massive humanitarian crisis
After five weeks of war, 4 million refugees have fled Ukraine, to which must be added almost 6.5 million internally displaced people, according to the UN. Some 90% of those who fled Ukraine are women and children.
Europe has not seen such influxes of refugees since the Second World War. “We are faced with the realities of a massive humanitarian crisis which is only growing every second”, alarms the High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Ukrainian government is still trying to organize evacuations from Mariupol, a strategic port in southeastern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, which has been relentlessly besieged and shelled since late February by Russian forces and where 160,000 civilians would still be blocked.
An operation could be launched thanks to a local ceasefire announced late Wednesday by Moscow in order to open a humanitarian corridor “with the direct participation of representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
It was not known Thursday afternoon if this ceasefire, supposed to have started Thursday at 07:00 GMT, was effective. In Geneva, the ICRC stood ready to lead the evacuation provided that the guarantees were in place.
“It is vital that these operations can take place. The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it,” insisted the organization from Geneva, saying it hoped for a launch on Friday.
The Ukrainian government has for its part announced that it will send 45 buses to evacuate civilians towards the city of Zaporozhye, 220 km to the northwest, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. Seventeen buses have already left for Mariupol, she said.
People who managed to leave the city and NGOs described catastrophic conditions there, with civilians holed up in cellars, deprived of water, food and communication, and corpses littering the streets. The municipality also accuses Moscow of having evacuated “against their will” more than 20,000 inhabitants of Mariupol to Russia.
According to the British Ministry of Defence, “intense fighting continues in Mariupol” but the Ukrainians “retain control of the city center”.
The Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom for its part announced Thursday that Russian forces have begun to withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear site, which they had taken control from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. There are only a “small number” of Russian soldiers left, she said.
Possible Lavrov-Kuleba meeting
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu also announced Thursday morning that a new meeting between his Russian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian Dmytro Kouleba could take place “within one or two weeks”. Turkey could host this meeting, for which no date has been set.
Ukrainian chief negotiator David Arakhamia told him on Wednesday that online talks with the Russian delegation would resume on Friday.
The Ukrainian president addressed Thursday by video to the Australian, Dutch and Belgian parliaments, urging them to supply arms to his country and to stop buying Russian hydrocarbons or diamonds.
For their part, the pro-Russian separatists of the Ukrainian Donbass claimed Thursday to control almost all of the Lugansk region and more than half of that of Donetsk, which could not be verified by an independent source.
Putin climbs in the polls
In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s popularity jumped 12 points from February with 83% of respondents approving his action, according to a survey published Thursday by the independent Russian institute Levada, of which it is the first poll since the start of the offensive in Ukraine.
The American and British intelligence services had for their part described Wednesday and Thursday a Russian president “ill-informed” about the conflict, cold with his staff and surrounded by advisers afraid to tell him the truth.
But for the Kremlin, the United States “does not understand President Putin, it does not understand the decision-making mechanism”.
“It’s not just a shame, it’s concerning, because when there is such a degree of misunderstanding, it leads to faulty decision-making which then has serious consequences,” the spokesperson warned. the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov.