MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow is ready to resume gas supplies to Europe via a link of Germany-bound Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea which has never been in use.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has never brought natural gas to Europe because Germany prevented the flows from ever starting just before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russia has cut off the parallel Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been at the center of an energy standoff with Europe. Russia has blamed technical problems for the stoppage, but European leaders call it an attempt to divide them over their support for Ukraine.
Speaking at a Moscow energy forum, Putin again claimed Wednesday that the U.S. was likely behind the explosions that ripped through both links of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one of the two links of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, causing a massive gas leak and taking them out of service.
The U.S. has previously rejected similar allegations by Putin.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant loses external power
— Belarus army would likely have little impact in Ukraine war
— Bodies exhumed from mass grave in Ukraine’s liberated Lyman
— EU countries turn to Africa in bid to replace Russian gas
— Leak detected in pipeline that brings crude oil to Germany
— Worried UN meets on Ukraine hours after Russian strikes
— Follow all AP stories on the war in Ukraine at https:/ /apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities say a Russian attack on a market in the eastern Donetsk region has killed seven people and wounded eight.
The deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office says the attack happened early Wednesday morning in Avdiivka.
“The Russian military needs more blood, more death and more destruction,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram. “This is a hunt for the lives of peaceful citizens.”
Photos attached to the post showed dead people lying in line near one of kiosks that had potatoes and bread on the counter.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine government’s energy minister says Russian attacks in the past two days have damaged about one third of the country’s energy infrastructure.
“For the first time since the start of the war, Russia is targeting energy infrastructure,” German Galushchenko said on Wednesday. He says this is because Ukraine is exporting energy to Europe.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s presidential office says Russian shelling in the past 24 hours has affected eight regions in the southeast, while strikes on central and western areas have eased for the moment.
Russian forces used drones, heavy artillery and missiles, according to the presidential office’s Wednesday morning update.
Three people have been rescued alive from the rubble in Zaporizhzhia after over a dozen missiles rained on the city, the report said. A six-year-old girl and two more people were wounded in the shelling of Nikopol, where the attacks damaged some three dozen residential buildings, private houses, kindergartens, a school, two plants and several shops, the report added.
Ukrainian forces say they shot down nine Iranian Shahed-136 drones and destroyed eight Kalibr cruise missiles near Mykolaiv, leaving the southern city without power.
“Russian shelling intensifies and subsides, but doesn’t stop, not for a day the city lives in tension, and the Russians’ main goal appears to be keeping us in fear,” Mykolaiv regional governor Vitali Kim said.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials and military analysts say Kyiv’s counteroffensive in the occupied regions in the south and east of the country has slowed down significantly despite Ukraine retaking five towns and villages in the Kherson area.
Russian troops have been re-enforcing the front lines and regrouping following Ukrainian successes, which has forced the Ukrainian forces to ease their advances.
Regional administrator in the eastern Luhansk region says Russian forces there have been building a multi-layered defense line and mining the front line’s first section.
Serhiy Haidai says people in the Luhansk region are moving from the Russia-occupied cities to villages, where they have been settling down in empty houses to “spend the winter in warm.”
Luhansk is among the four region that Russia unlawfully annexed following referendums dismissed as sham by both Ukraine and the West.
“In the south, the Ukrainian army is slowing down the pace of the counteroffensive, because the Russians managed to regroup and put forward paratrooper units, and unexpected issues arose,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told The Associated Press.
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin says there are no plans for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden during a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia next month.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said “neither the Russian, nor American side put forward any initiatives about organizing bilateral contacts” during the summit in Bali.
Asked about Biden’s comments in an interview with CNN in which he warned that the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine would lead to a “horrible outcome,” Peskov said the remarks were part of “harmful and provocative” Western nuclear rhetoric.
Putin has said he wouldn’t hesitate to use “all means available” to protect Russian territory in a clear reference to Russian nuclear arsenals, a statement that was broadly seen as an attempt to force Ukraine to halt its offensive to reclaim control of the four regions that were illegally absorbed by Russia.
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BRUSSELS — A Belarus opposition leader says Russia is now de facto occupying her country by deploying its troops there and using authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko as its puppet.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya urged more support from EU leaders during a two-day visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels. She says “we face an enemy who denies the very existence of our country as a free and independent nation.”
The exiled opposition leader fears that Lukashenko could force the Belarus army to join Russian forces in Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Russia has already used Belarus as a staging ground to send troops and missiles into Ukraine earlier in the war.
Tsikhanouskaya adds the situation has become “dramatic” in Belarus, which has become totally subservient to the wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin and Lukasenko, she says, have “tried to increase and legalize the constant deployment of Russian troops on Belarus territory.”
“It’s an occupation,” adds Tsikhanouskaya. “Our position is clear, Belarus must officially withdraw from participation in Russian war, and the Russian soldiers must leave Belarus unconditionally.”
Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania after Lukashenko claimed victory in disputed August 2020 elections that many thought she won.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine Southern Operational Command says its forces have recaptured five settlements in the Kherson region.
The villages of Novovasylivka, Novohryhorivka, Nova Kamianka, Tryfonivka and Chervone in the Beryslav district were retaken as of Oct. 11, according to the speaker of the southern command Vladislav Nazarov.
The settlements are in one of the four regions recently illegally annexed by Russia.
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MOSCOW — Russia’s top KGB successor agency said Wednesday that it has arrested eight people on charges of involvement in the attack on the bridge linking Russia to Crimea.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said it arrested five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia on charges of involvement in Saturday’s attack on the bridge.
A truck loaded with explosives blew up while driving across the bridge, killing four and causing two sections of one of the two automobile links to collapse.
The FSB charged that the arrested suspects were working on orders of Ukraine’s military intelligence to secretly move the explosives into Russia and forge the accompanying documents.
It said the explosives were moved by sea from the Ukrainian port of Odesa to Bulgaria before being shipped to Georgia, driven to Armenia and then back to Georgia before being transported to Russia in a complex scheme to secretly deliver them to the target.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the attack on the bridge as an “act of terrorism” and responded by ordering a barrage of missile strikes on Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have lauded the explosion on the bridge, but stopped short of directly claiming responsibility for it.
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KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian official says a Russian attack blew up windows and doors on residential buildings in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
City council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev on Wednesday warned the residents of possible follow-up attacks. There were no reports of injuries from the initial shelling.
Zaporizhzhia, which sits fairly near the front line, has been repeatedly struck with often deadly attacks in recent weeks. It is part of a larger region, including Europe’s largest nuclear power plant now in Russian control, that Moscow has said it has annexed in violation of international law. The city itself remains in Ukrainian hands.
Another powerful blast struck Melitopol, which is in the same region, sending a car flying into the air, said mayor Ivan Fedorov. There was no word on casualties. Also Wednesday, air raid sirens sounded in the capital Kyiv.
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WARSAW, Poland — A leak has been detected in an underground oil pipeline in Poland which is the main route through which Russian crude oil reaches Germany.
Polish operator, PERN, on Wednesday said it detected a leak in the Druzhba pipeline, which originates in Russia, on Tuesday evening about 70 kilometers (45 miles) form the the central Polish city of Plock. It said the cause of the leak wasn’t known.
The Druzhba pipeline, which in Russian means “Friendship,” is one of the world’s longest oil pipelines, and after leaving Russia it branches out to bring crude to points including Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
The incident follows leaks late last month in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines running along the Baltic seabed.
