(CN) — In a move to strike back at the European Union’s support for Ukraine, Russia on Wednesday cut off natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, causing gas prices to soar in Europe, and it threatened to shut off gas to other countries.
After the EU began imposing heavy sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine invasion, Moscow demanded ruble payments for its gas supplies, but most of the bloc’s members are refusing to comply.
On Wednesday, the EU responded angrily to the shutoff, calling it “blackmail.” Since the outbreak of war, the EU has scrambled to find new sources of oil and gas to keep its economies going and has vowed to drastically reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
The EU is looking at liquefied natural gas imports from the U.S. and increasing imports from North Africa and the Middle East, but experts say it will be very difficult to fully replace Russian energy any time soon.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the shutoff “another provocation from the Kremlin.” She said the bloc had been preparing for such a step by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas giant, and that Poland and Bulgaria will receive gas from other EU member states.
“But it comes as no surprise that the Kremlin uses fossil fuels to try to blackmail us,” she said in a statement.
Before Wednesday, Poland got more than 50% of its gas from Russia and Bulgaria even more. According to Investing.com, the price for the benchmark Dutch gas futures jumped by about 6% on the news by the end of trading, adding to the EU’s economic woes over inflation.
“It is a direct attack on Poland,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. “We’ll deal with this blackmail, this pistol to the head in such a way that it doesn’t affect Poles.”
The Ukraine war continues to escalate with Western leaders now openly talking about seeking to defeat Moscow on the battlefield in Ukraine and weakening Russia militarily so it can’t launch further invasions. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on Tuesday warned that the world was on the brink of World War III and he said NATO was engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
On Wednesday, NBC News ran a story saying that U.S. intelligence services have been giving Ukraine detailed real-time information about Russian troop movements and the enemy’s plans for missile attacks.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrown his support behind Ukrainian attacks inside Russia and his foreign secretary advocated sending military aircraft to Kyiv, a step NATO has been reluctant to take.
In an interview with Talk TV, Johnson said Ukrainians “plainly … have a right to defend themselves. They're being attacked from within Russian territory... they have a right to protect and defend themselves.”
Russia accused the United Kingdom of provoking Ukraine into attacking Russia and warned London against such language.
Explosions at fuel depots and most recently at ammunition depots inside Russia are becoming an almost daily feature and Ukraine appears ready to acknowledge it is behind the attacks. On Wednesday, Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called the explosions in Russia “karma.”
“The disarmament of the Belgorod-Voronezh warehouses of murderers is an absolutely natural, natural process,” he said on social media. “Karma is a cruel thing.”
Increasingly, the war is at risk of expanding into Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. There have been a series of explosions there and Ukraine said it was ready to send troops into Moldova to counter Russia, a statement condemned by the Kremlin. Russian troops have been stationed in the pro-Russian region of Transnistria since the 1990s.
Zelenskyy accused Russia of seeking to destabilize Transnistria and he said Ukrainian troops are ready for Russian escalation there.
“The goal is obvious: to destabilize the situation in the region, to threaten Moldova,” Zelenskyy said. He alleged Russia wants to punish Moldova for its support of Ukraine.
“But we understand their capabilities, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready for this and are not afraid of them,” Zelenskyy said.
The government in Transnistria, though, is accusing Ukraine of being behind recent explosions. It said Ukraine sent drones into the region and fired shots in the direction of Kolbasnaya, a village on the border with Ukraine, overnight. There are reportedly Russian artillery depots in the village.
On Wednesday, there were reports from eastern Ukraine that Russian forces were attacking across the front lines and making some advances. The worst fighting is taking place there, a region known as Donbas. The Kremlin has made seizing this region the focus of its military campaign.
Wednesday also saw the first hint of a serious resumption in possible ceasefire talks with Turkey saying it was putting together a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy. Moscow and Kyiv did not immediately confirm that such a meeting will take place.
“We hope that despite some difficulties, the two leaders will be able to meet in the coming days thanks to the proposals of our president [Recep Tayyip Erdogan],” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in a statement, according to Tass, the Russian state news agency.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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