Europe’s Russian gas in jeopardy, Ukraine braces for new assaults

Fire burns in a building after a shelling, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Irpin, Kyiv region, Ukraine March 30, 2022. (Reuters)
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Updated 31 March 2022
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Europe’s Russian gas in jeopardy, Ukraine braces for new assaults

  • European governments rejected Putin’s ultimatum for Friday, with Germany, calling it “blackmail”
  • Ukraine’s state nuclear company said most of the Russian forces that occupied the Chernobyl nuclear station had left the defunct plant

TROSTYANETS/LVIV: President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday to halt contracts supplying Europe with a third of its gas unless they are paid in Russian currency, his strongest economic riposte so far to crushing Western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine.
European governments rejected Putin’s ultimatum for Friday, with the continent’s biggest recipient of Russian gas, Germany, calling it “blackmail.” Moscow did, however, offer a mechanism for buyers to obtain roubles via a Russian bank.
The energy showdown has huge ramifications.
Europe wants to wean itself off Russian energy but that risks further inflating soaring fuel prices. Russia has a huge revenue source at stake even as it reels from sanctions.
Putin’s five-week invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, pulverised residential buildings, left masses of terrified people cowering in basements, and uprooted about a quarter of the 44 million population from their homes.
Facing stiff resistance from Ukraine’s military and a militant Western stance, Putin has played one of his biggest cards in the demand on European energy buyers.
“They must open rouble accounts in Russian banks. It is from these accounts that payments will be made for gas delivered starting from tomorrow,” he said on Thursday, adding that Europe had until now been getting some gas for free because it was paying in euros then freezing them.
“If such payments are not made (in roubles), we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences ... existing contracts will be stopped.”

Energy crash?
Western companies and governments say that would be a breach of contracts in euros or dollars, but they were anyway preparing for a potential full-blown energy crisis.
However, the order signed by Putin does allow them to send foreign currency to a so-called “K” account at Russia’s Gazprombank, which would then return roubles for the buyer to make payment for the gas.
“Russia would have to physically halt gas flows to EU 27 (European Union member states) to force the issue, marking a major escalation not even performed at the height of the Cold War. It would mark another major financial blow to Russia’s coffers,” said analysts at Fitch Solutions.
Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine.
But at talks this week, Moscow said it would scale back offensives near the capital Kyiv and north as a goodwill gesture and focus on “liberating” the southeastern Donbas region.
Kyiv and its allies say Moscow is simply trying to regroup following losses after a Ukrainian counter-offensive that has recaptured suburbs of the capital plus strategic towns and villages in the northeast and southwest.
US and European officials say Putin has been misled by generals about his military’s dire performance.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky praised “our defenders” who had resisted aerial bombardments and pushed armored columns back. Now, he said, Russia was building up forces for new strikes on the Donbas, which it demands Ukraine cede to pro-Moscow separatists.

“The children are shaking”
The war has been particularly fierce in the besieged Black Sea port of Mariupol, which links a strategic corridor between Donbas and the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.
The mayor’s office estimates 5,000 people have died.
Tens of thousands have been trapped for weeks with scant food, water and other supplies in the city that once housed 400,000 people but has been pulverised by bombardment.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was sending an aid convoy and Ukraine dispatched 45 buses in hopes of evacuating people on Friday.
In a Russian-held part of Mariupol, people climbed out of cellars to appear, ghostlike, among the ruins. One man named Pavel placed a bowl and spoon as a tribute on a makeshift grave in a patch of grass, marked with a plain wooden cross.
“Our friend. March 16. Driving in a car. A bullet hit him in the throat. He was dead in five minutes,” he said.
Elsewhere, there was evidence of Ukraine’s successful counter-attack in Trostyanets, an eastern town. Burnt-out Russian tanks and abandoned ammunition littered muddy roads while dazed civilians and a few Ukrainian soldiers roamed.
“We spent 30 days in the basement, with small children. The children are shaking, even still,” said a woman named Larisa.
“They don’t understand what has happened.”
Ukraine’s state nuclear company said most of the Russian forces that occupied the Chernobyl nuclear station had left the defunct plant, possibly concerned over radiation.
Western countries say Putin’s real aim was to swiftly topple Ukraine’s government, and that its failure is a strategic catastrophe, bringing economic ruin and diplomatic isolation.
Britain piled on more sanctions, including on state media organizations behind the RT broadcaster and Sputnik news agency. “Putin’s war on Ukraine is based on a torrent of lies,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
The United States also imposed fresh sanctions, targeting Russia’s technology sector, a sanctions evasion network and what it called “malicious cyber actors.”
With the war exacerbating fuel prices around the world, US President Joe Biden was to release 1 million barrels of oil a day for the next six months from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest release ever, to try to bring down gasoline costs.


Uganda’s president seeks a seventh term that would bring him closer to 5 decades in power

Updated 57 min 50 sec ago
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Uganda’s president seeks a seventh term that would bring him closer to 5 decades in power

  • Museveni first took power as head of a rebel force in 1986, he has been elected six times, though recent elections have been marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging

KAMPALA: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday sought nomination for a seventh term, a move that would bring him closer to five decades in power.
Museveni, 80, has defied calls for his retirement, as critics warn that he as veered into authoritarianism with virtually no opposition even within his ruling National Resistance Movement party.
He was welcomed by a large crowd of supporters as he went to collect nomination papers from the offices of the ruling party in Kampala, the Ugandan capital.
Museveni first took power as head of a rebel force in 1986. He has since been elected six times, though recent elections have been marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging. His main opponent in the last election was the popular entertainer known as Bobi Wine, who has also declared his candidacy in the polls set for January 2026.
Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, has seen many associates jailed or go into hiding as security forces cracked down on opposition supporters.
Museveni has dismissed Wine as “an agent of foreign interests” who cannot be trusted with power. Wine has been arrested many times on various charges but has never been convicted. He insists he is running a nonviolent campaign.
Decades ago, Museveni himself had criticized African leaders who overstayed their welcome in office. In Uganda, lawmakers did the same thing for him when they jettisoned the last constitutional obstacle — age limits — for a possible life presidency. His son, army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has asserted his wish to succeed his father, raising fears of hereditary rule.
A long-time opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, has been jailed since November over alleged treason charges his lawyers say are politically motivated. Besigye, a physician who retired from Uganda’s military at the rank of colonel, is a former president of the Forum for Democratic Change party, for many years Uganda’s most prominent opposition group.
The East African country has never seen a peaceful transfer of power since independence from Britain in 1962.


Belgrade braces for another anti-government protest, calling for an early parliamentary election

Updated 28 June 2025
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Belgrade braces for another anti-government protest, calling for an early parliamentary election

  • Tensions have soared ahead of the protest organized by Serbia’s university students, a key force behind nationwide anti-corruption demonstrations that started after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed

BELGRADE: Belgrade is bracing for yet another student-led protest on Saturday to pressure Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic to call for a snap parliamentary election after nearly eight months of rallies that have rattled his firm grip on power in the Balkan country.
Tensions have soared ahead of the protest organized by Serbia’s university students, a key force behind nationwide anti-corruption demonstrations that started after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed, killing 16 people on Nov. 1.
Many blamed the concrete roof crash on rampant government corruption and negligence in state infrastructure projects, leading to recurring mass protests.
Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party have refused the demand for an early vote and accused protesters of planning to spur violence at orders from abroad, which they didn’t specify.
In a show of business as usual, the Serbian president handed out presidential awards in the capital to people, including artists and journalists, he deemed worthy, as his loyalists, camping in a park in central Belgrade, announced they would hold a “literary evening.”
“People need not worry — the state will be defended and thugs brought to justice,” Vucic told reporters on Saturday.
Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections are due in 2027.
Saturday marks St. Vitus Day, a religious holiday and the date when Serbs mark a 14th-century battle against Ottoman Turks in Kosovo that was the start of hundreds of years of Turkish rule, holding symbolic importance.
Police earlier this week arrested several people accused of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government and banned entry into the country to several people from Croatia and a theater director from Montenegro without explanation. Serbia’s railway company halted train service over an alleged bomb threat in what critics said was an apparent bid to prevent people from traveling to Belgrade for the rally.
Authorities made similar moves back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest in the Balkan country, which drew hundreds of thousands of people.
Vucic’s loyalists then set up a camp in a park outside his office, which still stands. The otherwise peaceful gathering on March 15 came to an abrupt end when part of the crowd suddenly scattered in panic, triggering allegations that authorities used a sonic weapon against peaceful protesters, which they have denied.
Vucic, a former extreme nationalist, has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power over a decade ago. Though he formally says he wants Serbia to join the European Union, critics say Vucic has stifled democratic freedoms as he strengthened ties with Russia and China.


What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling

Updated 28 June 2025
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What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling

  • US President Trump’s executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the US illegally or temporarily

WASHINGTON: The legal battle over President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite the Republican administration’s major victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions.
Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent.
The high court’s ruling sends cases challenging the president’s birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president’s policy remains uncertain.
Here’s what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court’s ruling and what happens next.
What does birthright citizenship mean?
Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally.
The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the amendment states.
Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the US to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the US after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the US, no matter their parents’ legal status.
It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of US law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the US to foreign diplomats.
Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship
Trump’s executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the US illegally or temporarily. It’s part of the hard-line immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration.”
Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” – saying it means the US can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally.
A series of federal judges have said that’s not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” US District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom.
In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, US District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed” Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship.
Is Trump’s order constitutional? The justices didn’t say
The high court’s ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge’s authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president’s authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters.
But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.
“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges’ decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is “very confident” that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case.
Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps
The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps.
The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump’s order.
But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor.
“It’s not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,” said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned the court’s dissenting opinion, urged the lower courts to “act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court’s prompt review” in cases “challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order.”
Opponents of Trump’s order warned there would be a patchwork of polices across the states, leading to chaos and confusion without nationwide relief.
“Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports refugees and migrants. “By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear.”


A Russian drone strike on Odesa kills a married couple and injures 17 people, Ukraine says

Updated 55 min 19 sec ago
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A Russian drone strike on Odesa kills a married couple and injures 17 people, Ukraine says

  • A drone slammed into a residential tower block in the city, causing damage to three floors and trapping residents, emergency services said
  • The two killed in the attack were a married couple

KYIV: Russian drones struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa overnight, killing two people and injuring at least 17, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday.

A drone slammed into a residential tower block in the city, causing damage to three floors and trapping residents, emergency services said. The two killed in the attack were a married couple, according to regional Gov. Oleh Kiper, who added that three children were among the injured.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, over 40 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight and on Saturday morning over western Russia and Kremlin-occupied Crimea.

Long-range drone strikes have been a hallmark of the war, now in its fourth year. The race by both sides to develop increasingly sophisticated and deadlier drones has turned the war into a testing ground for new weaponry.

Ukrainian drones have pulled off some stunning feats. At the start of June, nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged in a covert Ukrainian operation using cheaply made drones sneaked into Russian territory.

Smaller, short-range drones are used by both sides on the battlefield and in areas close to the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report published Thursday that short-range drone attacks killed at least 395 civilians and injured 2,635 between the start of the war in February 2022 and April 2025. Almost 90 percent of the attacks were by the Russian armed forces, it reported.

More than 13,300 civilians have died and over 34,700 have been injured in the war, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said a June 11 report.


Europe bakes in summer’s first heatwave as continent warms

Updated 28 June 2025
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Europe bakes in summer’s first heatwave as continent warms

  • Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment

MARSEILLES: Sweating Europeans braced on Saturday for the first heatwave of the northern hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes the world’s fastest-warming continent’s thermometers increasingly into the red.
Temperatures are set to rise to 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rome, driving the Eternal City’s many tourists and Catholic pilgrims to the Vatican alike toward the Italian capital’s some 2,500 public fountains for refreshment.
With residents of the southern port city of Marseille expected to have to cope with temperatures flirting with 40C (104F), authorities in France’s second-largest city ordered public swimming pools to be made free of charge to help residents beat the Mediterranean heat.
Two-thirds of Portugal will be on high alert on Sunday for extreme heat and forest fires with 42C (108F) expected in the capital Lisbon, while visitors to — and protesters against — Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s Friday wedding in Venice likewise sweltered under the summer sun.
“I try not to think about it, but I drink a lot of water and never stay still, because that’s when you get sunstroke,” Sriane Mina, an Italian student, told AFPTV on Friday in Venice.
Meanwhile Spain, which has in past years seen a series of deadly summer blazes ravaging the Iberian peninsula, is expecting peak temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) across most of the country from Sunday.
Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment, with Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves a direct result of that warming.
With peaks of 39C (102F) expected in Naples and Palermo, Sicily has ordered a ban on outdoor work in the hottest hours of the day, as has the Liguria region in northern Italy.
The country’s trade unions are campaigning to extend the measure to other parts of the country.
The heatwave comes hot on the heels of a series of tumbling records for extreme heat, including Europe’s hottest March ever, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate monitor.
As a result of the planet’s warming, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves like this weekend’s have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.
By some estimates 2024, the hottest year in recorded history so far, saw worldwide disasters which cost more than $300 billion.