Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed yesterday that Russia’s military objectives in Ukraine are no longer limited to the country’s east, but also include “a number of other territories.”
“The geographical area is different now,” Lavrov said in an interview with RIA Novosti and RT. It now includes not only the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (separatist regions in eastern Ukraine), but also Kherson and Zaporizhia regions (in the south) and a number of other lands, and the process is strongly continuing.
Mystery still surrounds the fate of Ukrainian crops after Turkish mediation aimed at facilitating their export, while the Russian army continues to bombard eastern and southern Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Russian strikes hit cities in eastern Ukraine, and rocket fire killed one person in the Kyiv-controlled city of Kramatorsk in the Donbas, which Russian forces are seeking to take full control of.
In the south of Ukraine in the Odessa region, at least six people were injured, one of them a child, according to the Ukrainian president.
In Tehran, where he was invited to hold talks with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts, Ibrahim Raisi, on the Syrian and Ukrainian dossier, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Tuesday evening that progress had been made in negotiations to export millions of tons of oil. Ukrainian grain, which the world needs to achieve a food balance.
Orissa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday accused Russia of using gas as a “weapon” against the European Union, cutting supplies drastically, urging 27 member states to prepare for a total shutdown.
The European Commission yesterday asked the 27 EU member states to voluntarily cut gas demand by 15 percent over the next eight months to bypass cuts in supplies from Russia, and wants to approve mandatory cuts if necessary.
Brussels is also proposing a mechanism that would set “mandatory demand reduction targets” in the 27 EU member states in the event of a “high risk of an acute crisis”.
