Russia struck Ukraine’s Kremenchuk oil refinery with long-range missiles and hit military installations in its former Soviet neighbour, the Russian defence ministry reported on Monday.
Russia said it struck Ukrainian military installations and the Kremenchuk oil refinery near the Dnipro River that the governor of the Poltava region had said was destroyed earlier this month.
Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.
President Vladimir Putin says the conflict in Ukraine is part of a much broader confrontation with the United States which he says is trying to enforce its hegemony even as its dominance over the international order declines.
Russia warned US against sending more arms to Ukraine
Meanwhile, Russia has warned the United States against sending more arms to Ukraine, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov told Russian state television.
Antonov said an official diplomatic note had been sent to Washington expressing Russia’s concerns. He said such arms supplies from the United States would further aggravate the situation and raised the stakes of the conflict.
Washington’s top diplomat and its defence secretary met Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv late on Sunday, pledging new assistance worth $713 million for Zelenskiy’s government and other countries in the region fearing Russian aggression
Greenpeace blocks tanker
Greenpeace activists sought to block a tanker on Monday from delivering Russian oil to Norway, chaining themselves to the vessel in a protest against the war in Ukraine, the advocacy group said.
The Ust Luga product tanker is currently anchored outside Exxon Mobil’s Slagen oil terminal some 70 km (43 miles) south of the capital Oslo, according to vessel tracker Marine Traffic.
Activists arriving in a small boat chained themselves to the tanker’s anchor chain as they sought to prevent the offloading of a cargo estimated at 95 000 tonnes of oil, Greenpeace said in a statement.
‘G20 cannot function with Russia at the table’
Candian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland speaks to journalists outside the US Trade Representative’s office in Washington, US, August 28, 2018.
The Group of 20 major economies cannot effectively function as long as Russia remains a member, Canada’s finance minister said on Friday after a week of protests against Moscow’s war in Ukraine at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington.
Discord over Russia’s presence at the meetings has been on display all week, with officials from the U.S., Canada, Britain and other Western countries staging walkouts three days in a row whenever Russian officials spoke.
Ukraine will need hundreds of billions to rebuild
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday told participants in World Bank/IMF meetings Ukraine needs $7 billion per month to make up for economic losses caused by Russia’s invasion of his country.
He said the global community needed to exclude Russia immediately from international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and others.
Zelenskyy, in remarks made in a virtual address, called for countries that have imposed sanctions and freezes on Russian assets to use that money to help rebuild Ukraine after the war and to pay for losses suffered by other countries.
‘Smart sanctions’
The European Union is preparing “smart sanctions” against Russian oil imports, possibly an oil embargo, the Times newspaper said on Monday, citing the European Commission’s executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis.
VIDEO | Zelenskyy vows ‘wickedness’ will not destroy Ukraine and prayed that God returns happiness:
