Latest Ukraine updates: Gazprom to shut gas pipeline for 3 days

A top Treasury Department official is set to make his first official trip to India since the start of the war in Ukraine, amid tensions over India’s neutral stance on the Russian invasion.

Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo will travel to Mumbai and New Delhi next week for meetings with officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, the finance ministry, the Reserve Bank of India, and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

The visit will aim to deepen ties with the South Asian nation, which will lead the Group of Twenty intergovernmental forum in 2023.

India has maintained its business ties with Russia, depending on the Kremlin for energy and other exports.

Finland has said it will host a meeting with Sweden and Turkey later this month after Ankara voiced its opposition to the Nordic countries’ NATO bids.

“Representatives of Finland, Sweden and Turkey will meet in Finland in August,” Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters.

He did not provide a date, but Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu previously said the three would meet on August 26.

Finland and Sweden dropped their longstanding policies of military non-alliance earlier this year when they announced plans to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Turkey has opposed their applications, demanding concessions from Helsinki and Stockholm first.

Ukrainian rights group Truth Hounds has asked Switzerland to investigate an alleged attack on a Swiss photojournalist by Russian troops in Ukraine earlier this year.

Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General was asked to probe an attack on Swiss freelance journalist Guillaume Briquet in southern Ukraine in March as a possible war crime, according to the Swiss-based Civitas Maxima, a legal group that helped it file the complaint.

“This is the first criminal complaint received in this context,” the Office of the Attorney General told AFP in a statement, stressing that receiving a complaint did not automatically mean it would launch an investigation.

The complaint would “now be examined according to usual procedure”, it added.

European gas prices have soared to a new record high at the close of trading, after Russia’s Gazprom announced that the Nord Stream pipeline would be closed for maintenance at the end of the month.

The Dutch TTF Gas Futures contract jumped to a closing high of 257.40 euros ($258.30) amid fears of winter energy shortages after Gazprom said deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline would be halted from August 31 to September 2 due to maintenance work.

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Nord Stream gas deliveries to Europe will be halted from August 31 to September 2 for “maintenance”, Russian energy giant Gazprom has said, raising the spectre of winter energy shortages in Europe.

“It is necessary to carry out maintenance every 1,000 hours” of operation, Gazprom said in a statement.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline under the Baltic Sea was shut for 10 days on July 11 to undergo annual maintenance. Gazprom also cut flows to Germany via the vital pipeline by some 40 percent in June, blaming the absence of a Siemens gas turbine that was undergoing repairs in Canada.

The US has announced a new $775m package of defence equipment and ammunition for Ukraine, including HIMARS missiles, artillery, and mine-clearing systems.

“We want to make sure that Ukraine has a steady stream of ammunition to meet its needs, and that’s what we’re doing with this package,” a senior US defence official told reporters.

Washington sent billions of dollars in security assistance to Kyiv, with weaponry including HIMARS, mortar and artillery ammunition, Javelin anti-tank missile systems, explosives and demolition equipment.

Explosions were reported overnight near military bases deep within Russian-held areas of Ukraine and inside Russia’s territory.

Maximilian Hess, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Al Jazeera Ukraine’s ability to ratchet up its attacks in Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was seized by Moscow in 2014, is “symbolically very important”.

Militarily, the analyst said, Ukrainian forces are aiming to weaken Russia by hitting ammunition depots and taking out a number of planes before launching a counteroffensive north of the Dnieper River.

“Whether the Ukrainians can do that after these attacks remains to be seen,” Hess added. “They may lack the forces to push those advantages on the ground.”

The call between France’s president and his Russian counterpart was justified in view of the serious safety risk affecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, an Elysee official told journalists in a briefing.

Macron, who last called Putin in May, had been criticised in the past for keeping up diplomatic talks with Putin despite actions that international observers qualified as war crimes.

The Elysee official added that Putin expressed his readiness to re-consider a previous demand by which the International Atomic Energy Agency’s mission should travel to the site via Russian soil. Ukraine and its Western partners want the mission to reach the site from Ukraine.

Putin and Macron have called for independent inspections at the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant “as soon as possible” to “assess the real situation on the ground”, the Kremlin has said in a statement.

“The Russian side confirmed its readiness to provide the Agency inspectors with the necessary assistance,” the statement said.

Putin “stressed that the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe that could lead to radiation contamination of vast territories”.

Russia has agreed to send a mission of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the Elysee has said.

President Macron expressed his concern over the safety of the site during a phone call with Putin, according to a readout sent to journalists by Macron’s office.

The two presidents agreed to continue their talks in the coming days.

A further 10 cargo ships are being loaded with grain in Ukrainian Black Sea ports and being prepared for shipment under a food export agreement brokered last month, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov has said.

“Ten vessels are currently being loaded and are preparing to leave the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi. We also have more than 40 applications for shipping to Ukrainian ports,” Kubrakov said on Facebook.

He said 25 ships had already been dispatched from the three Ukrainian ports with 630,000 tonnes of agricultural products on board.

Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said on Friday the country’s grain exports were down by 51.6 percent year-on-year, at 2.99 million tonnes so far in the 2022-23 season.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron have discussed the situation in Ukraine in a phone call, Moscow says.

According to a Kremlin readout of the call, Putin said shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which he blamed on Kyiv, created the risk of “large-scale catastrophe”.

Both leaders agreed on the need to send a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the plant.

Putin spoke to Macron about continuing obstacles to supplying Russian food and fertiliser products to world markets.

Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor says it is taking punitive measures against a string of foreign IT companies, including TikTok, Telegram, Zoom, Discord and Pinterest.

In a statement, Roskomnadzor said the measures were in response to the companies’ failure to remove content flagged as illegal and would remain in place until they complied.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to fine sites that violate harsh new laws criminalising the spreading of “false information” about the Russian army.

Guterres has said the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant should not be cut off from Ukraine’s grid.

“Obviously the electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity … This principle must be fully respected,” he said during a visit to Odesa.

Ukrainian energy operator Energoatom said earlier on Friday Moscow was planning to cut electricity produced at the nuclear site.

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Guterres says there is still much more to do to ensure full global access to Ukrainian food products and Russian food and fertilisers after a UN-brokered food export deal.

At a briefing in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa, Guterres said developing countries needed help to buy such grain and called for unimpeded access to global markets for Russian food and fertilisers which are not subject to sanctions.

“This is an agreement between two parties locked in bitter conflict. It is unprecedented in scope and scale. But there is still a long way to go on many fronts,” he said.

“It is time for massive and generous support so developing countries can purchase the food from this and other ports – and people can buy it,” he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is visiting the Black Sea port of Odesa during his visit to Ukraine, focusing on a deal to allow Ukrainian grain to be shipped to world markets.

Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a high-level meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the UN and Turkey brokered an agreement clearing the way for Ukraine to export 22 million tonnes of corn and other grain stuck in its Black Sea ports since the Russian invasion.

The blockage has worsened world food shortages, driven up prices, and heightened fears of famine, especially in Africa.

The residents of two villages in Russia’s Belgorod region on Ukraine’s northeastern border have been evacuated after a fire at a munitions depot near the village of Timonovo.

The fire is the latest in a series of destructive incidents on Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine or inside Russia itself.

Roughly 1,100 people live in the villages of Timonovo and Soloti, about 25km (15 miles) from the Ukrainian border. There were no casualties in the late Thursday blaze, the Belgorod region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has said that Russia’s military presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is a guarantee against what he called a “Chernobyl scenario”, referring to the 1986 nuclear catastrophe.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechaev said on Thursday that a UN proposal to demilitarise the area around the nuclear plant was “unacceptable”.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, was occupied by Russia in March. It remains near the front line and has repeatedly come under fire in recent weeks, raising fears of a nuclear disaster. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling the facility.

Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected a proposal by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to demilitarise the area around the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, saying it would make the facility “more vulnerable”.

The plant, Europe’s largest of its kind, was captured by Russia in March, shortly after President Vladimir Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what he called a “special military operation”.

Fears have grown in recent weeks over its safety and the risks of a possible Fukushima-style nuclear accident after Ukraine and Russia accused each other of shelling it.

Ukraine’s Energoatom state nuclear company has said Russian forces planned to switch off the functioning power blocks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and to disconnect them from the Ukrainian power grid.

In a statement, Energoatom said it believed that Russia, which controls the power plant in southern Ukraine, was preparing to conduct a “large-scale provocation” there.

Moscow itself accused Kyiv of preparing a “provocation” at the site on Thursday.