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Gazprom cuts gas supplies to Latvia

The state-owned company cut off gas supplies to Latvia on Saturday following tensions between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Ukraine and sweeping sanctions against Russia, Agence France-Presse reported. Gazprom told Telegram: Today Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Latvia… due to violations of terms. The company sharply reduced natural gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to around 20 percent of its capacity. EU states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. The European Union agreed this week to a plan to cut gas consumption in solidarity with Germany. Andrew Roth Andrew Roth reports for us from Moscow: As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fifth month, Moscow is a city doing its best to turn a blind eye to the conflict. It’s a champagne-filled summer like any other in the Russian capital, despite thousands of dead and many more wounded in a war increasingly characterized by acts of savage brutality. In Gorky Park, open-air festivals, cinemas and bars were jammed on a recent evening, with young couples gyrating to ballroom music as others stopped for selfies along the Moscow River nearby. “Yes, we’re partying,” said Anna Mitrokhina, one of the dancers on an open-air dance platform on the Moscow River, wearing a blue sequined dress and heavy eye makeup. “We are out of politics, we want to dance, feel and have fun. I can’t worry anymore and it helps me forget.” Walk around town or turn on a VPN to scroll through Instagram or Facebook and you might not even know the country is at war, a word that Russian censors have banned from local media and which, even among many friends, it has become taboo. Read more about Andrew Roth’s report from Moscow: ‘People are turning off’: Muscovites put war aside and enjoy summer The US ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday that there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to break up Ukraine, Reuters reports. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council that the United States is seeing increasing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to try to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Thomas Greenfield added that this will include installing: Illegal proxies in Russian-controlled areas with the aim of holding fake referendums or decrees to join Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has previously stated that this was the country’s war objective, he added. Apparently implying that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region to the east that includes Donetsk and Luhansk, Lavrov said: We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical. Ukraine’s military said on Saturday it had killed dozens of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kiev’s counteroffensive in the south and a key link in Moscow’s supply lines. Reuters reports that the army’s southern command said rail traffic to Kherson over the Dnipro River has been cut, possibly further isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and to the east. Ukraine has used long-range missile systems supplied by the West to severely damage three bridges on the Dnipro in recent weeks, cutting off the city of Kherson and – according to British defense officials – leaving Russia’s 49th Army stationed on the west bank of the river. vulnerable. Ukraine’s southern command said in a statement: As a result of the fire that put control over the main transport links in the occupied territories, it was found that traffic over the railway bridge crossing the Dnipro is not possible. It said more than 100 Russian soldiers and seven tanks were destroyed in fighting on Friday in the Kherson region, the first major city captured by the Russians since their February 24 invasion. A Russian military truck drives past unexploded ordnance in the Russian-controlled village of Chornobaivka in the Kherson region. Photo: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters Updated 08.06 BST US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in their first contact since the Ukraine war, saying he pressed him to accept a proposal to free two Americans held in Russia. “We had a frank and direct conversation,” Agence France-Presse quoted Blinken as telling reporters after they spoke on Friday. I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantive proposal we put forward. Blinken had said Wednesday that he planned to contact Lavrov in an effort to free two Americans — basketball star Brittney Griner and ex-Marine Paul Whelan — and advance a motion issued several weeks earlier. Blinken declined to qualify Lavrov’s reaction, saying: I can’t give you an estimate of whether I think things are more or less likely. But it was important that he listen directly. The proposal reportedly included swapping the two Americans for convicted Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout. Blinken also said he pressed Lavrov for Russia to honor a Turkish offer to ship grain from Ukraine and Moscow’s alleged plans to annex additional parts of Ukraine seized by Russian troops. Blinken said he told Lavrov in the phone call – their first since February 15 – that “the world will never recognize the annexation” and that Russia would be hit by additional consequences. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s account of the call said Lavrov told Blinken that Russia would achieve all the goals of its “special military operation” and that Western arms supplies to Ukraine would only drag the conflict along. Lavrov also told Blinken that Washington is not keeping promises about exempting food from sanctions, Reuters quoted the ministry as saying. The latest daily assessment from the UK MoD: Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of bombing the Ukrainian prisoner-of-war prison on Russian territory in Olenivka, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying more than 50 were killed and calling the attack a war crime. Russia’s defense ministry claimed the strikes were carried out by Ukraine with long-range missiles supplied by the US in an “extraordinary provocation” intended to prevent soldiers from surrendering, Agence France-Presse reported. The ministry said among the dead were Ukrainian forces who had laid down their arms after weeks of fighting Russia’s shelling of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. But Zelensky squarely blamed Russia, saying in his daily address late Friday: This was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine. As it’s 9am in Kyiv, here’s a summary of the latest developments.

Russia and Ukraine have launched criminal investigations into attacks that reportedly killed at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war held at a detention center in the village of Olenivka, after both countries blamed the other side for the attack. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, accused Russia of an “egregious war crime” over the killings and called on world leaders to “recognize Russia as a terrorist state.” Ukraine has said it is ready for grain exports to leave its ports again, but is waiting for the green light from the United Nations, which it had hoped to get later on Friday. Horrific video has emerged that appears to show a Russian soldier castrating a Ukrainian prisoner, who other reports say was then murdered. The video, which was reviewed by the Guardian, was originally posted on pro-Russian Telegram channels. Aric Toler at the Bellingcat Research Center suggested that the video – of a Russian soldier, wearing a distinctive black wide-brimmed hat, approaching another figure who has his hands bound and is lying face down with the back of his trousers cut off – you seem to be genuine. At least five people were killed and seven wounded in an attack at a bus stop in the city of Mykolaiv, according to regional governor Vitaly Kim. Graphic images from the scene show the street littered with bodies. Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia strongly supported China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned US President Joe Biden not to “play with fire” for Taiwan in telephone communication. Thursday. Germany’s economy minister said on Friday that commissioning the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was not an option as it would only play into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is growing anger in Germany over rising energy prices. Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian agent who was sanctioned by the US on Friday, was accused of using political groups in the US to promote pro-Russian propaganda, including for the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. The US Treasury Department announced on Friday that it had sanctioned another individual along with Ionov, as well as four entities that support the Kremlin’s global malign influence and election meddling, including in the US and Ukraine. Belarus recalled its ambassador to the UK on Friday in response to London’s “hostile and unfriendly” actions. North Macedonia plans to donate an unspecified number of Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine as it seeks to modernize its own army to meet NATO standards, the defense ministry said…