07/20/2022
Ukraine war in the live ticker
+++ 05:36 Jill Biden receives Ukrainian President’s wife +++
Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska is in the US, where she is for bilateral talks with First Lady Jill Biden. Both had already met during a surprise visit by the First Lady to Ukraine in May. During her visit to the White House, US President Joe Biden presented her with a bouquet of flowers. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife campaigns in the USA for support for her country against the Russian invaders. Today she is scheduled to address members of the US Congress at the invitation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Selenska on Monday. Since the Russian invasion, the United States has been by far Ukraine’s most important arms supplier.
+++ 04:14 Putin: “Ukraine does not comply with the March agreement” +++
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the government in Moscow sees no willingness on the part of Ukraine to fulfill the conditions of an interim peace agreement reached in March. After a visit to Iran, Putin told reporters, without elaborating, that Kyiv had not adhered to the terms of an interim peace agreement that was “virtually reached” in March. Asked about a possible meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin says it depends on the will of both sides to implement the agreements reached. “Today we see that those in power in Kyiv do not have this will.” However, no breakthrough had been achieved in the March negotiations. According to Putin, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have now offered to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.
+++ 02:35 Selenskyj wants to increase control over western arms deliveries +++
A new parliamentary commission in Ukraine is to control the use of western weapons. In his daily video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that there were no allegations of misuse of weapons from the West. “But in order to eliminate all manipulations by Russian propagandists and those who help them in Ukraine or elsewhere, such an additional parliamentary control instrument is being set up,” he says.
+++ 00:40 Putin threatens to cut gas supplies further +++
Russian President Vladimir Putin warns against a further reduction in Russian gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. If Russia does not get back the turbine repaired in Canada, the daily throughput capacity of the pipeline threatens to fall significantly at the end of July, the Kremlin chief said on the sidelines of a meeting in Tehran according to the Russian state news agency Tass. At the same time, he refers to Nord Stream 2, the pipeline whose commissioning was called off after Russia’s attack on Ukraine: “We still have a finished route – that’s Nord Stream 2. We can put it into operation,” said Putin. More about this here.
+++ 00:19 Iran’s spiritual leader: “Cooperation with Russia is very beneficial for both countries” +++
After a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for continued close cooperation with Russia. This would “greatly benefit both countries,” explains on its website. “There are many agreements between the two countries, including on oil and gas, that must be fully implemented.” The Russian gas company Gazprom and the Iranian state oil company previously signed a memorandum of understanding online for strategic cooperation, which Iran says is worth around $40 billion. It is about the development of Iranian oil and gas fields. Khamenei also emphasizes that both Russia and Iran are affected by Western sanctions.
+++ 23:29 Putin: Gazprom will fulfill obligations “in full” +++
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian gas company Gazprom will “fully” fulfill its obligations. “Gazprom has fulfilled its obligations, is fulfilling them now and will continue to fulfill them in the future,” Putin said after a summit with Turkey and Iran in Tehran. Against the background of the Ukraine conflict and Western sanctions, Gazprom recently significantly reduced deliveries to Europe.
+++ 22:18 Melnyk finds Kretschmer’s statements “disgusting” +++
With the words “We must stand up for this war to be frozen”, the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer today called for Germany to play a mediating role in Russia’s war against Ukraine and also questioned whether the attitude of never buying raw materials from Russia again , was relevant for ceasefire negotiations. The outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, has now sharply criticized Kretschmer’s statements. “Ukrainians advocate sticking your head in a freezer to freeze your hot Russian fantasies. Your constant pandering to war criminal Putin is disgusting,” Melnyk wrote on Twitter.
+++ 21:55 USA blacklist Russia for human trafficking +++
The US puts Russia on a blacklist of countries involved in human trafficking and forced labor. The list is part of a report by the US State Department. The government in Moscow is also accused of recruiting child soldiers and kidnapping children to Russia. Millions of Ukrainians have fled the Russian attack, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, the report said.
+++ 21:17 High energy prices: Polish government plans one-time payment for coal stove owners +++
Due to rising energy prices, the Polish government is planning a one-time subsidy of 3,000 zlotys (630 euros) for every household with hard coal heating. Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said this after a government meeting in Warsaw, as reported by the PAP agency. The coal allowance project had only been presented the previous evening. The national-conservative government thus changed its plan, which was only a few days old, on how it intends to remedy the energy shortage following the ban on Russian coal imports. In the European energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Poland, unlike Germany, is less vulnerable when it comes to gas supplies; It is more difficult with coal, the main source of energy. Hundreds of thousands of Poles heat with hard coal. The one-off subsidy is intended to relieve households that suffer most from energy poverty, according to the draft. The government had previously tried to cap the price of hard coal for private consumers to just under 1,000 zlotys per ton. However, the coal suppliers did not play along because the amount of the respective state subsidies was uncertain. The new model is criticized for the fact that the relief is less pronounced than with the fixed price.
+++ 20:43 Iran’s religious leader Chamenei invokes cooperation with Russia +++
Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls for continued close cooperation with Russia after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This would “greatly benefit both countries,” Khamenei explains on his website. “There are many agreements between the two countries, including on oil and gas, that must be fully implemented.” He pointed out that both countries are subject to sanctions from the West. At his meeting with Putin, Khamenei once again accused the West of NATO’s eastward expansion. Had Russia not taken the initiative in the war of aggression against Ukraine, a different conflict would have erupted, Khamenei said.
+++ 20:17 EU wants to put Sberbank on the sanctions list +++
The European Union wants to add Russia’s largest bank and the head of the zinc and copper group UMMC to its sanctions list. She accuses Sberbank and UMMC boss Andrei Kositsyn of supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to a draft document available to Reuters. The move would have far-reaching consequences for the bank: the authorities would freeze the bank’s assets in the west and stop all transactions except payments for food and fertilizer deliveries, an EU insider said. The EU has already blocked Sberbank’s access to the international payment system SWIFT, thereby restricting the business of the Russian bank.
You can read earlier developments of the Ukraine war here.