EU leaders kept up pressure yesterday on Russia and Ukraine to resolve their gas dispute after an attempt to resume transit supply failed to deliver gas to European consumers.
As hundreds of thousands of Europeans begin a second week with little or no heat in their homes, offices or schools, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico were due in Moscow to meet their Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on the gas crisis.
Both countries are among those to have been badly hit by the gas crisis, which has continued despite EU efforts to broker a solution.
The Ukrainian government said in a statement that the two European prime ministers would also visit Kiev later yesterday for talks with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Russia resumed gas supplies on Tuesday after international experts were placed along the pipeline route through Ukraine under an agreement reached with the EU, only to shut off them off again several hours later.
Gazprom accused Ukraine of blocking the gas, while Ukraine countered that the Russian energy giant had deliberately routed the gas in a way that made it impossible for Ukraine to pump it on to European consumers.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU was disappointed in a phone conversation with Putin after the EU reported “little or no gas” reaching Europe from Russia.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko accused Russia of trying to destabilize his country as energy officials explained they would have to cut domestic gas supplies in order to get Russian gas to Europe.
“This attack against Ukraine has the goal of provoking a revolt in the eastern regions,” a heavily industrialized and pro-Russian part of the country that relies to a large degree on Russian gas supplies, Yushchenko said.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s state gas company, Naftogaz, said the transit route chosen by Gazprom “would have required us to stop supplying gas to [the] eastern part of Ukraine,” adding that Gazprom turned down an alternative route.
However Gazprom’s deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev told journalists shortly after Russia announced that supplies had resumed that “Ukraine has blocked all our actions in respect of renewal of the transit of natural gas, which is unbelievable.”
In Brussels, EU commission spokesman for energy issues Ferran Tarradellas said the international monitors had since been allowed into the control rooms where the gas flow monitoring screens are located.
“The Russians sent a small quantity of gas this morning at a single point, then the pressure fell and there was nothing after that,” he said.
“Not a single molecule of gas has arrived at other entry points, according to our inspectors,” he said.
Russia said it would initially pump only “test” amounts of gas on Tuesday, which would however have been enough to restore full supplies to Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania and Turkey.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS