Russian governor accuses Ukraine of airstrike on fuel depots in Russia

Rome According to Russian information, the Ukrainian armed forces are said to have carried out an air strike on an oil storage facility in Russia from two helicopters on Friday. This is what Russian regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on the Telegram platform.

Two helicopters flew over the border with Russia at low altitude before the attack. Two workers were injured in the explosion at the tank farm, which belongs to the Rosneft oil company. Parts of the city had been evacuated. The information cannot be independently verified. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine reports that Russian units have not been able to gain ground anywhere. Several settlements in the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson were even recaptured. The information cannot be independently verified.

Ukraine and Russia have also resumed negotiations. The Ukrainian Presidential Office announced that the talks continued in online format, without giving details. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks of progress in the peace talks between the countries.

The government in Moscow is currently preparing its response to Ukrainian proposals, Lavrov said after talks with his Indian counterpart. The talks should continue, but the government in Kyiv better understands the situation in the Crimean Peninsula and Donbass and the need for a neutral status.

The military situation

According to the governor of the Kyiv region, Russia is continuing its withdrawal from the region north of the Ukrainian capital. The troops are on their way to Belarus, Governor Olexandr Pavlyuk announced via Telegram. This information cannot be independently verified.

According to the governor, the Russian troops are also withdrawing from the northern Ukrainian region of Chernihiv, the city of the same name is 150 kilometers north of Kyiv. However, some Russian soldiers are still there, and rocket attacks are still possible.

While the situation in the north has stabilized somewhat, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the situation in southern Ukraine and Donbass remains extremely difficult. There was still fighting ahead of Ukraine, he said in a late-night video message. The country still has to walk a very difficult path to get what it wants.

The eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv continued to be shelled, but a breakthrough attempt near the city of Izyum failed. However, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense blames the Russian armed forces for the destruction of 15 airports. According to the local governor, the death toll in the rocket attack on an administrative building in Mykolaiv rose to 28. The information cannot be independently verified.

According to the Russian army, it has destroyed five large ammunition depots and another fuel depot in Ukraine. A total of 52 military objects were destroyed by airstrikes in one day, said the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, in Moscow.
In addition, 40 Ukrainian “nationalists” were killed in fighting in the Luhansk region. This information was also not independently verifiable.

In the morning, Russia announced a ceasefire for the badly damaged port city of Mariupol, which came into effect at 09:00 (CEST). According to the Red Cross, the situation was initially too uncertain to begin the evacuation. The escape routes were still closed.

In addition, according to a spokesman, the teams of the International Committee of the Red Cross did not receive permission to bring relief supplies into the city with the convoy and therefore left without supplies. The city’s mayor said this week that 170,000 residents were trapped in Mariupol. They had no electricity and food supplies were running out.

According to the responsible Ukrainian authorities, there are still some Russian soldiers in the exclusion zone around the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The head of the authority confirmed on television that the Russian troops had left the facility themselves, but soldiers could still be seen in the area.

According to British findings, the Russian military leadership is now strengthening its troops in Ukraine with fresh troops from Georgia. Three tactical battalion groups would be formed from 1,200 to 2,000 Russian soldiers who were last stationed in the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Defense Ministry said in London on Friday night.

West could be barred from grain exports

Russian gas supplies through Ukraine are to be delivered to Europe as ordered today, the Russian company Gazprom announced. The delivery volume ordered by European customers amounts to 108.4 million cubic meters, which almost corresponds to the contractually possible maximum capacity.

Current reporting on the crisis:

A week ago, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin announced that he would only sell Russian gas to Western countries for rubles, which they reject. On Thursday, he signed a decree obliging Western customers to open and make payments in a ruble account with a Russian bank. The regulation came into effect today.

At the same time, on Friday Russia threatened to limit agricultural exports to “friendly” countries. Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, now Vice-President of the National Security Council, said on Friday that he wanted to outline “some simple but important points about food security in Russia” in view of the sanctions imposed by the West. “We will only supply our friends with food and agricultural products,” Medvedev said. “Fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they’re not in Europe or North America at all.”

Russia already supplies wheat mainly to Africa and the Middle East. The EU and Ukraine are the main competitors in the wheat trade. The priority in food supply is Russia’s domestic market and price control here, Medvedev said. Since 2021, Russia has been using grain export quotas and taxes to stabilize high domestic food inflation. Agricultural deliveries to “friends” will be made in rubles as well as in their national currency in the agreed ratio.

Russia banned most food imports from the West in 2014 when it annexed Crimea from Ukraine and the West responded with sanctions. Medvedev said this list could now be expanded further. Many foreign companies, such as chocolate makers, stopped selling their brands in Russia last month.

Almost 295,000 refugees in Germany

In Germany, almost 295,000 refugees from Ukraine have been registered by the federal police, as the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced on Twitter on Friday.