WASHINGTON/LVIV, Ukraine, March 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that the United States is banning imports of Russian oil and gas, a major move as part of Western efforts to step up international pressure against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the face of the bloody invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia may continue to push forward at horrific cost, but one thing is already clear: Ukraine will never be a victory for Putin. Putin may be able to take a city, but he will never be able to control the country,” Joe Biden told reporters at the White House.
Until then, the energy sector of Russia, the world’s largest exporter of oil and natural gas, had been spared Western sanctions, which had not prevented an unprecedented surge in crude oil prices on world markets, which further amplified with Washington’s announcement.
A similar decision was taken by Britain, which said it would stop imports of Russian petroleum products by the end of the year. In addition, the British major Shell SHEL.L has announced that it is giving up buying Russian oil.
If they do not seem ready to take such a drastic measure, when 40% of their gas imports come from Russia, the EU countries intend to reduce their exposure as quickly. A plan presented Tuesday by the European Commission considers possible a two-thirds reduction in Russian gas imports this year and their end “well before 2030”.
In Moscow, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak threatened to close the tap of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline which supplies Germany and predicted that the price of a barrel of oil would reach 300 dollars (against 125 on Tuesday and less than 100 before the invasion of Ukraine) in the event of sanctions.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck responded by assuring that Berlin was ready to face such a retaliatory measure, while promising to diversify Germany’s energy sources “at the speed of a Tesla”, alluding to the construction in two years by the American company of a giga-factory of batteries near Berlin.
FIRST EVACUATIONS OF CIVILIANS
As the pressure on Moscow increases, a humanitarian corridor was opened on Tuesday to allow the evacuation of the inhabitants of Sumy, a city located northwest of Kharkiv, besieged and bombarded by the Russian army for several days.
Sumy Governor Dmitro Tchivitsky said in a video that the first buses had left the city in the morning bound for Poltava, further west, and that the disabled, pregnant women and orphans had priority.
An adviser to the Ukrainian president, Kirilo Tymoshenko, said in the afternoon that a second convoy carrying civilians had been able to leave the city.
Civilians also left Irpin, a suburb of Kiev close to the front line which had been subjected to intense shelling on Sunday.
“The city is practically in ruins and in the neighborhood where I live, it seems that there is not a single house that has not been bombed,” said a young mother carrying a baby in a blanket, her daughter walking beside her.
“It was yesterday that the bombardments were the hardest, the lightning and the noise were so scary… The whole building was shaking.”
The Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, accused the Russian army of having bombarded a convoy which was to evacuate the inhabitants of Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of people have been deprived of water and electricity and have been subjected to intense bombardments for a week.
The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by Russian agencies, said for its part that Kiev had accepted only one of the ten “humanitarian corridors” that Moscow had proposed to open – some of which would have taken Ukrainian civilians to Russia and Belarus.
TWO MILLION UKRAINIANS HAVE LEFT THE COUNTRY
The Russian invasion, which Moscow presents as a “special operation”, has already led two million Ukrainians (out of a population of 44 million) to flee their country, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Twitter, Filippo Grandi.
The UN has reported a provisional toll of 474 civilians killed since the start of the assault on February 24. A Ukrainian police official said on Tuesday that at least 27 civilians had been killed in Russian strikes on Kharkiv in the past 24 hours.
Ukraine said on Tuesday that the advance of Russian troops was being slowed and its defense ministry announced that General Vitaly Gerasimov, first deputy commander of Russia’s 41st army, had been killed in action on Monday, saying he s He was the second Russian general to be killed since the invasion began on February 24.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced for its part the destruction of nearly 900 tanks and armored vehicles of the opposing camp, as well as 84 drones.
Western countries, judging that the initial Russian plan betting on a rapid offensive to overthrow the authorities in Kiev has failed, believe that Moscow has changed its strategy to prepare for long sieges of several major Ukrainian cities.
The main Russian military convoy heading for Kiev is still blocked north of the capital, while in the south of the country, Moscow’s forces are advancing along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts.
A senior Pentagon official said President Vladimir Putin had now deployed nearly 100% of the more than 150,000 troops massed near Ukraine’s borders before the operation began. According to the CIA, between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the offensive.
Alongside the tightening of sanctions against Russia, discussions continue between major Western and Asian powers: Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by videoconference with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz .
Xi Jinping supported the action of France and Germany for a ceasefire in Ukraine, assured the Elysée after this meeting.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, who received a standing ovation from members of the British Parliament whom he addressed via video link, also said he remains in constant dialogue with Emmanuel Macron to discuss the issue of humanitarian corridors .
(Steve Holland in Washington and Pavel Polityuk in Lviv, with Reuters bureaus; French version Bertrand Boucey, Marc Angrand, Tangi Salaün and Jean Terzian, editing by Sophie Louet and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)