It’s Day 64 of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a war that’s been going on since 2014.
Russia released a U.S. Marine for a drug trafficker but Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened retaliation if any of Ukraine’s allies interfere in the war. You could say the West has been involved since the beginning.
Gazprom stuck to its word by cutting off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. Europe’s gas prices have soared.
Russia strikes Kyiv during UN meeting in the city:
Russia fired two missiles into the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday during a visit by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and one hit the lower floor of a residential building, injuring at least three people, its mayor said.
Reuters could not independently verify the cause of the explosions. Kyiv has enjoyed relative calm since Russian invasion forces failed to capture it in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance and withdrew several weeks ago, but remains vulnerable to longer-range Russian heavy weaponry.
The blasts shook Kyiv’s central Shevchenko district and the three injured have been hospitalised, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Twitter post.
Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba both said the blasts were caused by Russian missiles. Reuters witnesses had earlier reported the sound of two blasts.
The explosions occurred after U.N. chief Guterres completed talks with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensiky focusing on efforts to evacuate civilians from the Russian-besieged southern port of Mariupol.
Guterres told Portuguese broadcaster RTP when asked about the blasts: “There was an attack on Kyiv…it shocked me, not because I’m here but because Kyiv is a sacred city for Ukrainians and Russians alike.”
Um….maybe not bring up the Russians when talking about Kyiv?
Russia released U.S. Marine Trevor Reed in exchange for a Russian drug trafficker incarcerated in America.
Reed started living in Russia in 2019. He was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer. They sentenced him to nine years in prison:
He had been celebrating in a park with his longtime Russian girlfriend and her colleagues at the time, his father, Joey Reed, told Fox News Digital earlier this month.Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison, though his family has maintained his innocence and the U.S. government has described him as unjustly detained.”He was extremely intoxicated because they’d been to a party for her law firm in a park,” he explained.At the time, Reed had been taking Russian language classes for an international studies degree through the University of North Texas, his father said.Following a public trial, Reed was convicted in July 2020 of assaulting police officers and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Reed spent time in prisons and labor camps.
From Fox News Digital:
In their own statement, the Reed family thanked Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home” as well as other administration officials and Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations whom the family said traveled to Moscow in the hours before the Ukraine war began in hopes of securing Reed’s release.”Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely on his way back to the United States,” the statement read, adding that “as soon as he’s ready, he’ll tell his own story” and that the Reed family stands with “all the other families of wrongfully detained Americans who are still waiting for their own release moment.”Reed was one of several Americans known to be held by Russia, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was detained in February after authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative, and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, who is being held on espionage-related charges his family says are bogus.”We won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends,” Biden also said Wednesday.
Putin said that unfriendly countries would lose their energy supplies if they do not pay in rubles.
A lot of countries told Putin where to shove his rubles. Russia’s Gazprom then stopped the gas flow to Poland and Bulgaria. Neighboring EU countries have sent the two countries some gas.
Now all of Europe is suffering:
European gas prices rose by a fifth after Russia’s Gazprom suspended supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, saying they had failed to make payments that were due a day earlier in roubles.Futures contracts tracking Europe’s wholesale gas price advanced almost 20 per cent at €117 per megawatt hour in early trading on Wednesday.“Gazprom has completely suspended gas supplies to Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) due to non-payment in roubles,” Gazprom said in a statement on Wednesday.Gazprom Export, the gas group’s export subsidiary, did not receive payments for April gas supplies from Bulgargaz and PGNiG in roubles as of the end of the business day on April 26, as was required by the new Russian rule, it said.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that NATO is already in a proxy war with Russia. I guess Putin missed that message:
Countries “that get it into their heads to meddle in ongoing events from the side and create unacceptable strategic threats for Russia, they must know that our response to counterpunches will be lightning-quick,” Russia’s president said in a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday.Putin said Moscow had “all the instruments for this, ones nobody else can boast of now,” in an apparent reference to recent Russian tests of hypersonic and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear payloads and are particularly difficult for anti-air systems to intercept.“We will use them, if the situation calls for it. And I want everyone to know,” Putin said. “All decisions on this matter have been taken.”Putin said western attempts to “economically strangle Russia” through sanctions had failed. He claimed Russian troops had prevented “a real danger of . . . a major conflict that would have unfolded on our territory according to other people’s scripts” by invading Ukraine.He said the west wanted to use Ukraine as a platform to attack Russia through the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and the separatist-held eastern Donbas border region.“The countries that have historically tried to contain Russia don’t need a self-sufficient, massive country such as ours. They think that it is dangerous to them just by means of its existence. But that’s far from the truth. They are the ones threatening the whole world,” he said.”
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