June 18, 2022 6:39 p.m
Borrell: “Russia uses wheat as a tool of blackmail”
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borrell, in an article on his blog, condemned Russia’s maneuvers aimed at “militarizing” wheat exports and “using them as a tool of blackmail against anyone who resists their aggression” in Ukraine . The number one in European diplomacy then recalled that “Putin’s troops are bombing, exploiting and occupying Ukraine, attacking agricultural equipment” but also “blocking warehouses, markets, roads, bridges in Ukraine and ports, causing the export of millions of tons.” Wheat is prevented from entering world markets”.
According to Borrell, Moscow has “turned the Black Sea into a war zone, blocked grain and fertilizer shipments from Ukraine, but also disrupted Russian merchant shipping.” Russia’s “war on Ukraine threatens to unleash global famine. We must allow “Kyiv” to export its grain across the Black Sea – he later stressed -. We stand ready to work with the United Nations and our partners to prevent undesirable impacts on global food security.”
June 18, 2022 6:10 p.m
Russian raid on a gas plant in Izyum: A fire breaks out
“Russian occupiers fired on a gas processing plant in Izyum district,” a city in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast. Ukrainska Pravda reports on this, adding that “a large-scale fire has broken out” and that “work is being done to extinguish the flames”.
June 18, 2022 5:56 PM
German police investigate hundreds of war crimes
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has announced that it will investigate several hundred possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine and look for military and political backers of these crimes. “So far we have received more than a hundred tips,” said Bka President Holger Münch of the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”. Investigations focus not only on the perpetrators of war crimes, but also on the military and political leaders of those crimes. “This is the most difficult part of our investigation, a complex puzzle,” said Münch. “Our clear goal is to identify those responsible for atrocities, to prove their actions through our investigations, and to bring them to justice,” ;; also in Germany, which applies universal justice by allowing certain crimes to be tried regardless of where they were committed. But “that can take a while” because the investigation into the war in Ukraine is “only at the beginning”, admitted Münch.
June 18, 2022 5:55 p.m
New exchange of civilian prisoners between Ukraine and Russia
Five Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russian “invaders” have been released from captivity in a prisoner exchange with Russia. This was reported on Facebook by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, reports an Ukrinform correspondent. “Today the Central Coordinating Office for the Treatment of Prisoners of War carried out another prisoner exchange based on the ‘5 for 5’ formula. Five Ukrainian citizens have returned home,” the report said. According to intelligence, four civilians were captured in the fighting in the Kyiv region, three of them during the Battle of Hostomel.
June 18, 2022 4:34 p.m
Biden: “I will speak to Xi soon. Assessments on lifting some tariffs in Beijing “
Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware he would speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping “soon” and decide on lifting some tariffs in Beijing.
June 18, 2022 2:35 p.m
Zelenskyy: “Let’s not stop working for victory”
“Let’s not stop working for victory”. So said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today in Mykolayiv. The visit comes a day after a Russian attack in the city killed two and wounded 20 others, and is the president’s first to the south, near the Russian-held Kherson region.
June 18, 2022 1:34 p.m
Filorussi: “77 miners trapped in Donetsk due to bombing of Kyiv”
According to Russian media reports, Ukrainian bombings have trapped 77 miners at a coal mine in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region after the mine was shut down.
June 18, 2022 1:32 p.m
Rosneft: “Europe is committing energy suicide”
“The energy suicide that Europe is committing will have long-term repercussions. We are already seeing a decline in its economic potential, a loss of competitiveness and direct losses for investors. For example, in France the CAC 40 stock index fell by 18%, in Germany the DAX index fell by 19% and in Italy by 22%. The total losses of investors from three European countries have already reached around $1.6 trillion.” This was said by the CEO of Rosneft Igor Sechin at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, as reported by Tass.
June 18, 2022 1:31 p.m
Zakharova: “Relations with the USA? Only on a technical level “
Responding to a question from Sky News Arabia on Russia’s relations with the United States, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “now we only have official technical contacts between embassies. Of course, diplomatic relations still exist, because breaking them off would be a very serious problem. But what’s left isn’t really much.” “For years, Washington has damaged the fabric of our bilateral relations,” the spokesman added, as reported by the website of the Arabic news and current affairs channel, which broadcasts in the Middle East and North Africa. “Moscow alone has not reached a critical level in relations with anyone and has always tried to emphasize the need for dialogue and the use of diplomatic tools to resolve open issues, but it is the West that has chosen to use diplomacy and the resolve disputes to deal with violence, ”argued Zakharova.