June 18, 2022 20:11
Gentiloni: “Threats of net cuts in petrol do not scare us”
“We hope that there will be no drastic supply bottlenecks in the coming months, but at the same time we will not let ourselves be intimidated.” Said Paolo Gentiloni, EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, in Bologna from the stage of the Repubblica delle Idea on the risks of the gas freeze from Russia . “We’re working to ensure that doesn’t happen, but if it does, we have the level of collaboration, storage and diversification at the European level to withstand even threats of this nature.”
June 18, 2022 20:06
Gentiloni: “Between Russia and the EU it is the end of a great hope”
Between the EU and Russia, “in a way, the end is also a great hope.” So Paolo Gentiloni, EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, in Bologna from the stage of the Repubblica delle Idea. At the beginning of the century there were “great illusions”, such as “Russia’s entry into the G8. This hope, which has been great for a number of years – perhaps we underestimated the annexation of Crimea – has faded. Putin is a person with a clear design. He regards the dissolution of the USSR as a historic defeat and considers it necessary to rebuild a geopolitical sphere around Russia and therefore extend to the various EU countries”.
June 18, 2022 7:35 p.m
Gentiloni: “All the conditions are in place to avoid a recession”
“There are the conditions to avoid a recession, there are the conditions to prevent the European economy from falling back into a crisis similar to that of ten years ago. The steps are narrow and one is to ensure a transition to renewable energies, which will allow us to diversify supplies and not have too severe economic consequences in terms of energy. This is how Paolo Gentiloni, EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, speaks from the stage of the Repubblica delle Idea in Bologna. “We have to do it,” he adds, “with our backs to what the war in Ukraine means.”
June 18, 2022 7:09 p.m
Kyiv: “Mariupol needs 14 days to get a coffin”
Residents of Mariupol under Russian occupation wait up to two weeks to secure a coffin for burial. The Kiev Independent, citing city mayor’s assistant Petro Andriushchenko, writes that Kremlin delegates are offering a waiting period of about two weeks for free coffins made of plain wood and without padding. Andriushchenko added that the bodies of the victims of the clashes often disappear while others continue to lie on the streets in the heat.
June 18, 2022 7:05 p.m
Kadyrov: “Captured Metelkino”. It is at the gates of Severodonetsk
Russian forces have taken the Ukrainian village of Metelkino, a southeastern suburb of Severodonetsk, and demining of the area is already underway, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said, quoted by Interfax. “Akhmat’s special forces, together with the second corps of people’s militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic, liberated the settlement of Metelkino near the city of Severodonetsk,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram. “The Ukrainian side has lost between 600 and 700 dead and wounded combatants in the battle for this center over the past week,” he said, adding that Russian forces are clearing mines and booby traps.
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.