War in Ukraine, day 70 | The EU is preparing an oil embargo, Moscow strikes to the west

(Zaporijjia) The European Commission has proposed a phased EU embargo on oil and petroleum products purchased from Russia in retaliation for the war in Ukraine as the Russian army strikes sites in the Ukraine on Wednesday. extreme west of the country.

The European Union has also announced that it will “significantly increase” its military support for Moldova in the face of fears that the conflict will spread to this small former Soviet republic of 2.5 million inhabitants, landlocked between the Ukraine and Romania.

“We will gradually abandon Russian deliveries of crude oil within six months and those of refined products by the end of the year,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday in Strasbourg.

This ban will be carried out in such a way as to allow the establishment of other supply routes, she said, while Russian oil accounts for around a quarter of the EU’s black gold imports.

According to several European officials and diplomats, the project provides an exemption for Hungary and Slovakia, two landlocked countries totally dependent on deliveries through the “Druzhba” pipeline, which will be able to continue their purchases from Russia in 2023.

Brussels is also proposing to exclude three additional Russian banks, including Sberbank, by far the country’s largest institution, from the Swift international financial system.

The Commission also recommends sanctioning the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who has multiplied the sermons supporting the military intervention in Ukraine.

To Transcarpathia

For his part, the President of the European Council Charles Michel was visiting Chisinau, the Moldavian capital, a few days after attacks in the pro-Russian Moldavian separatist territory of Transdniestria and after comments made at the end of April by a Russian general, Rustam Minnekayev, according to which the capture of southern Ukraine would allow the Russians to have direct access to this region.

“We plan this year to significantly increase our support to Moldova by delivering additional military equipment to its armed forces,” said Charles Michel, who represents EU member states.

On the ground in Ukraine, Russian forces continued to shell the east, but also launched missiles at numerous targets across the country, as far away as Lviv near the Polish border and the mountainous region of Transcarpathia near Hungary. , hitherto preserved from the war.

The Russian army is continuing its offensive in eastern Ukraine with the aim of “securing full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and maintaining a land corridor in occupied Crimea”, the state said. major of the Ukrainian army on Wednesday morning on Facebook.

“In order to destroy Ukraine’s transport infrastructure, the enemy fired missiles at facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovograd, Lviv, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Transcarpathia, Odessa and Donetsk regions”, details the press release.

Two people have been killed in the Luhansk region in the past 24 hours, regional governor Sergey Gaidai said on Wednesday. “Every town in the region was under the fire of bombs,” he commented.

” Hell ”

On Tuesday, some 21 civilians died and 27 were injured in the Donetsk region, the heaviest daily toll since the strike on Kramatorsk station that left 57 dead, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Of those 21 killed, 10 were in the strike on a factory in Avdiivka and five in Lyman, one of the flashpoints on the front line.

Russian forces launched an assault on the Azovstal steelworks for the first time on Tuesday, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol (southeast). Until now the Russian forces pounded by plane and from the sea this huge factory, without entering it.

On Tuesday, the UN, for its part, announced that it had succeeded in evacuating more than a hundred civilians from the Azovstal site, where dozens of others are entrenched with Ukrainian fighters in underground galleries dating from the Second World War, without food or medicine.

In a statement online Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 156 civilians had been evacuated and arrived in Zaporizhia, a Ukrainian-held town 230 km northwest of Mariupol.

A new evacuation operation is scheduled for Wednesday, “if the security situation allows it”, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday. However, nothing says that the conditions will be met after the announcement Tuesday by the Russian forces of their attack, launched after weeks of intense bombardments.

Those who were finally able to be evacuated began to tell of the hell they had been in for weeks.

“We are so grateful to everyone who has helped us. There was a time when we lost hope, we thought everyone had forgotten about us,” said one of the evacuees, Anna Zaitseva, holding her six-month-old baby, Svyatoslav, in her arms.

“People I have traveled with have told me heartbreaking stories of the hell they have been through. I think of the people who remain trapped. We will do everything in our power to help them,” the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, who took part in the evacuation operation, said on Tuesday.

“Israeli Mercenaries”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, for his part, wished for “more humanitarian pauses” on the model of the one organized with Kyiv and Moscow and which allowed the evacuation of civilians from Azovstal, without specifying their possible places. .

And in a phone call of more than two hours Tuesday noon with President Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron asked him to “allow the continuation (of these) evacuations”.

The Russian leader for his part called on Ukraine’s Western allies to stop their arms deliveries to Kyiv. On the same day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced additional military aid of 355 million euros for Ukraine.

And on the diplomatic front, Russia will boycott on Wednesday – a rare gesture – a meeting of the UN Security Council with the European Union’s Political and Security Committee (PSC), illustrating a further deterioration in relations between Moscow and its partners at the United Nations, according to diplomats.

“Israeli mercenaries” are fighting in Ukraine alongside the Azov regiment, which Moscow describes as “Nazi”, Russian diplomacy said on Wednesday, whose release on Hitler’s alleged “Jewish blood” had sparked a virulent controversy.

Founded in 2014 by far-right activists before being integrated into the regular forces, the Ukrainian Azov regiment has established itself as one of the fiercest opponents of the Russian forces which have been waging a military offensive against Ukraine since the February 24.