Russia storing weapons in European nuclear plant – Ukrainian officialRussia is using Europe’s largest nuclear power plant as a base to store weapons, including “missile systems”, and shell surrounding areas in Ukraine, an official with Kyiv’s nuclear agency said.
The president of the Ukrainian state nuclear agency, Energoatom, said on Friday that the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was “extremely tense”, with up to 500 Russian soldiers controlling the plant, Agence France-Presse reports.
“The occupiers bring their machinery there, including missile systems, from which they already shell the other side of the River Dnipro and the territory of Nikopol,” Pedro Kotin said in a televised interview.
The nuclear plant in south-western Ukraine has been under Russian control since the early weeks of Moscow’s invasion, though it is still being operated by Ukrainian staff.
The most recent attack in the Dnipro region left three dead and 15 wounded, regional governor Valentin Reznichenko said on Telegram.
The threat of air raids across most of Ukraine was also raised after strikes were reported in areas far from the frontlines. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian objective was to “cause maximum damage to Ukrainian cities”.
Russian forces driving through the gates of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Enerhodar, Ukraine, in May. Photograph: APKey events:
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Raisa Shapoval, 83, cries in front of the site of a military strike in Chuhuiv, about 6 km from the frontline, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv region. Photograph: Nacho Doce/ReutersA boy looks at communal service employees working around a crater after a Russian missile strike in the town of Kostiantynivka, in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty ImagesUS treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said she had productive meetings with a number of countries on the sidelines of the G20 finance leaders meeting about a proposed price cap on Russian oil.
Yellen said her bilateral meetings and the overall G20 sessions in Indonesia focused on the human and economic cost of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the US and other countries “unequivocal in condemning their [Russia’s] shameful actions”.
Russia says it is engaged in a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The US treasury department said Yellen met finance leaders from Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, and Singapore.
She also had dinner with Canadian finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, a treasury official said.
“On energy costs, I had productive bilateral meetings with over a half dozen of my counterparts where we discussed the merits of a price cap and how it can help us achieve our goals of denying Putin revenue for his war machine, while dampening energy costs,” Yellen told reporters outside the meeting venue.
She said a price cap was one of “our most powerful tools to address the high prices people are facing in America and around the world”.
Yellen said she also underscored the importance of taking action at the G20 to address the global food security crisis, Reuters reports.
Yellen met Saudi finance minister, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Australian treasurer, Jim Chalmers, South African finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, the deputy prime minister of Singapore, Lawrence Wong, and the Turkish finance minister, Nureddin Nebati, the treasury said.
US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, attends a meeting of G20 finance ministers and Central Bank governors in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, 15 July. Photograph: Made Nagi/APSpeaking at a summit of Arab leaders, US president Joe Biden has said the United States “will not walk away” from the Middle East and let “China, Russia or Iran” fill a power vacuum in the region.
President Biden delivered his remarks at the Gulf Cooperation Council on the final leg of a four-day tour of the Middle East.
Biden’s trip aimed to secure stability and a new axis of cooperation in light of growing concerns over Iran’s leadership and Russian president Vladimir Putin. It also aimed to boost the global flow of oil to bring down rising gas prices.
A senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters before the summit, said Moscow’s efforts to acquire drones from Tehran show that Russia is “effectively making a bet on Iran”.
Biden said:
We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.
We will seek to build on this moment with active, principled, American leadership.
Today, I’m proud to be able to say that the era of land wars in the region, wars that involved huge numbers of American forces, is not under way.
Biden announced a $1 bn US aid package to tackle a worsening hunger crisis in the region, and pressed his counterparts to ensure human rights are realised, and allow their citizens to speak openly.
“The future will be won by the countries that unleash the full potential of their populations,” he said, adding that people should be allowed to “question and criticise leaders without fear of reprisal”.
Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, convened the summit and hinted that the kingdom could put out more oil than it does currently, something Biden is hoping to see when an existing production deal among OPEC+ member countries expires in September, the Associated Press reports.
US president Joe Biden walks to board a plane following an Arab summit, at King Abdulaziz International Airprot, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 16 July, 2022. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersGerman chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has reiterated Germany’s climate protection goals despite growing concerns about the country’s energy supply as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a video published on Saturday, Scholz said:
Our goal is that we will be one of the first countries to be CO2-neutral and, at the same time, globally competitive and successful as an economic nation, as an industrial country.
We will make sure now that the development of renewable energies finally progresses – wind power at sea, on land solar energy, biomass … We need all this to produce electricity and hydrogen so that we will have an industrial future without CO2 emissions. We want to accomplish this by 2045.
The first cluster of corresponding laws, he added, had begun to be introduced. More laws would follow later this year so that plans could stay on schedule.
The federal government, the chancellor said, had initially failed on its plan for an overarching and immediate climate programme and had only presented a strategy for transport and construction at first.
He added:
It’s bitter that we now have to temporarily use some power plants that we have already shut down because of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine.
But it’s only for a very short time. Because we are really getting started now and want to do everything we can to fight the climate crisis.
Scholz did not comment on energy security for the winter.
Olaf Scholz says Germany’s decision to reactivate coal and oil-fired power plants is only temporary. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/APUkrainian service workers clean up debris around a 2.5m crater after an airstrike in front of the House of Culture and Technology in Myru square, Kramatorsk, 16 July. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty ImagesFirefighters remove rubble from a destroyed building after a missile strike in the city of Nikopol, Dnipro. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesIMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, has warned officials from the G20 to take urgent action to combat inflation, warning that the “exceptionally uncertain” global economic outlook could worsen if higher prices persist.
Speaking at a G20 meeting of finance officials in Indonesia, Georgieva said Russia’s intensifying war in Ukraine had increased pressure on commodity and energy prices, and that global financial conditions were tightening more than expected.
At the same time, pandemic-related disruptions and renewed supply-chain bottlenecks continued to weigh on economic activity.
Pressure was mounting on heavily indebted countries, and the debt situation was “deteriorating fast”, she said.
In its daily update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says Russia’s momentum has slowed in recent days, with Ukrainian forces “successful in repulsing Russian attacks since Lysychansk was ceded and the Ukrainian defensive line was shortened and straightened”.
Ukraine could sue top US and EU banks over oil and gas trade with Russia that has effectively financed “war crimes”, the Financial Times reports (£).
The Ukrainian government has told US and European bank bosses, including JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and HSBC’s Noel Quinn, to stop financing companies that trade Russian oil.
Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the lenders of “war crimes”. He wrote to them this week asking them to cut ties with groups that trade Russian oil and sell shares in the state-backed oil and gas groups Gazprom and Rosneft.
In the letters, also sent to Citigroup and Crédit Agricole, banks were accused of “prolonging” the war by providing credit to companies that ship Russian oil, and were told they would be blocked from participating in the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine.
Ustenko said Ukraine’s ministry for justice intends to sue the banks at the International Criminal Court once the war ends, and that Ukraine’s security services were collecting information on financial institutions supporting Russian fossil fuels.
“In my view, they are committing war crimes because they are helping the Putin regime in this specific way,” he said, arguing that Russian oil and gas revenues fund the purchase of rockets and missiles used against Ukrainians.
Although the ICC cannot investigate or prosecute governments or corporations, it can do so with individuals from those organisations.
The Ukrainian government is reportedly particularly angry with JP Morgan because the company published an analyst note warning that a price cap on Russian oil could drive global prices to a “stratospheric” $380 a barrel.
Finance ministers of the G20 agreed on most issues, including efforts to tackle food insecurity, despite failing to reconcile differences regarding members’ views about the war in Ukraine, Indonesia said on Saturday.
Hosting the meeting in Bali, Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, said finance leaders also agreed to maintain the spirit of collaboration and multi-lateralism.
Russian armed forces have destroyed a factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro that produced parts for Tochka-U ballistic missiles, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
Russian forces have also shot down three Ukrainian airplanes and two helicopters, the ministry said.
The number of people killed after a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday has risen to 24, after a woman died in hospital of her burn wounds, a Ukrainian official has told Agence France-Presse.
Russia claims the strikes – hundreds of kilometres from the front lines – had targeted a meeting of Ukrainian military officials and foreign arms suppliers. Kyiv has denied these claims.
UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said he was “appalled” by the attack, while the EU has condemned it as an “atrocity”.
Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Saturday that it had asked German group Siemens to return a turbine it has repaired in Canada to ensure the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Europe works.
Gazprom began 10 days of scheduled annual maintenance on the pipeline on Monday, with EU countries – particularly gas-reliant Germany – waiting nervously to see if the taps will be turned back on.
Moscow had already wound down supplies by 60% in recent weeks, blaming the absence of the turbine.
Despite western sanctions on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine, Canada has agreed to grant what it has described as a time-limited and revocable permit for Siemens Canada to allow the machine’s return, AFP reports.
But Gazprom claims it has received no guarantees of it being sent back.
It said in a statement:
On July 15, Gazprom submitted an official request to Siemens to obtain the documents … to allow the export of the gas turbine engine of the Portovaya station, a critical facility for the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Gazprom is counting on the Siemens group to unconditionally fulfil its obligations relating to the repair and maintenance of gas turbine engines on which the reliability of Nord Stream gas pipeline operations and natural gas deliveries to European consumers rely.
The maintenance work on the gas link was scheduled long in advance, but amid hostile relations between Russia and the west, some fear Gazprom might seize the opportunity to cut the supply through the pipeline for good.
US teasury secretary, Janet Yellen, told reporters on Saturday that finance officials from the G20 reached strong consensus on many issues, including the need to address a worsening food security crisis, despite differences over Russia’s war in Ukraine that prevented leaders from issuing a joint statement, the Associated Press reports.
Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has ordered Russian military units operating in Ukraine to step up their operations to prevent strikes on eastern Ukraine and other territories controlled by Russia, the ministry said in a statement on its website on Saturday.
It said Shoigu “gave the necessary instructions to further increase the actions of groups in all operational areas in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions,” Reuters reports.