Donetsk: Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday to cut off Ukraine’s gas unless Europe drummed up the cash to help cover its debts in an intensifying standoff over the splintered ex-Soviet state.
The veteran strongman’s most direct warning about deliveries on which European nations also depend came with Ukraine facing a secession crisis and relations between Moscow and the West plumbing new post-Cold War lows.
The latest sign of the Kremlin's growing isolation came with a decision by the Council of Europe's human rights body to strip Russian lawmakers of their voting rights through the end of the year over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
Ukraine’s embattled leaders meanwhile tried to keep what was left of their nation of 46 million people whole by vowing to amnesty pro-Russian separatists occupying eastern state buildings if they laid down their arms and halted a four-day seige.
The militants’ demand to join Russia has added extra urgency to the first round of direct talks that EU and US diplomats have managed to convince both Moscow and Kiev to attend, set for April 17 in either Geneva or Vienna.
But Mr Putin did not appear to be in a conciliatory mood as he dispatched a note to EU leaders warning that his energy-rich country was tired of accruing debts from a Western-backed leadership in Kiev whose legitimacy it did not recognise in the first place. A copy of the letter distributed by the Kremlin showed Mr Putin warning that Russia’s state gas firm Gazprom would be “compelled to switch over to advance payment for gas deliveries and for further violation gas supply would be cut.
Russian spy held in kiev via social media posts
If Maria Koleda is a Russian spy, her specialty does not appear to be covert ops. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) claims the 22-year-old arrived in the southern city of Kherson on April 4, where over the course of two days she met and coordinated with pro-Russian activists.
An April 7, she allegedly traveled to Mykolayiv and shot and wounded three people in clashes. Ukrainian security services say she informed “her supervisor in the Russian Federation” that she had formed two groups to participate in anti-Kyiv riots in Donetsk. On April 9, Kiev said it apprehended Ms Koleda in southern Ukraine.
