Ukraine-News: Russia stops gas supplies to Finland

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Plant in Imatra, Finland: gas supplies stopped

Photo: Vesa Moilanen / dpa

This article will be continuously updated.

Russia stops gas supplies to Finland

7.03 a.m

.: Finland no longer gets gas from Russia.

The Finnish energy company Gasum announced on Saturday that deliveries had been suspended.

Russian energy giant Gazprom confirmed the stop.

The Russian state-owned company announced the delivery stop on Friday with reference to the dispute over ruble payments.

The reason given by Gazprom was that the April deliveries had not been paid for on time.

The Finnish company Gasum had rejected the demand from Moscow to pay bills in rubles.

Gasum said gas is now being sourced from other sources via the Balticconnector pipeline, which connects Finland and Estonia.

The company had already emphasized on Friday that a Russian delivery stop would not lead to supply problems in Finland.

The gas supply stop comes a few days after Finland's official NATO application.

The country, which has been neutral for decades, decided to take this step in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Russia has criticized its neighbor's plans to join NATO as a "serious mistake".

Finland and Russia share a border that is more than 1,300 kilometers long.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has blamed Russia for a rocket attack on a cultural center in the east of the country that injured at least seven.

An eleven-year-old child was also injured in the shelling in the city of Lozova in the Kharkiv region, the head of state wrote on Telegram.

"The occupiers have identified culture, education and humanity as their enemies," Zelenskyj said.

Such attacks are "absolute stupidity" and "wickedness."

Zelenskyj published a video on his account that showed a rocket impact.

Then a huge cloud of smoke could be seen.

Azov steelworks apparently in Russian hands

1:21 a.m

.: After weeks of resistance, the Azov steelworks in the Ukrainian port of Mariupol is under Russian control, according to information from Moscow.

All fighters surrendered, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday evening.

A total of 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner by the Russians since May 16.

The plant was the last piece of the strategically important city in south-eastern Ukraine that had not yet been completely under Russian control.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu himself reported to President Vladimir Putin about the "complete liberation of the plant and the city of Mariupol," Konashenkov said.

The deployment of Russian soldiers has now been completed.

Initially, there was no confirmation from the Ukrainian side.

However, the last Ukrainian fighters in the industrial complex said on Friday that they had received orders from Kyiv to stop defending the city.

The Ukrainian military leadership gave the order "to save the lives of the soldiers in our garrison," Azov commander Denys Prokopenko said in a video message.

Former Russian chess champion is now a “foreign agent”

12:22 a.m

.: The Russian government has put former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky on its list of “foreign agents”.

The 59-year-old Kasparov and the 58-year-old ex-tycoon Khodorkovsky also had their activities financed by "sources" in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Justice justified the move on Friday.

They are subject to numerous restrictions and requirements, including having to state their status in all their publications.

The classification is reminiscent of the defamation of critics in the Soviet Union as "enemies of the people" and is used extensively against opposition politicians and journalists critical of the government and human rights activists.

The well-known former world chess champion Kasparov has long been a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He has lived in the US for almost a decade.

Khodorkovsky was one of the most powerful businessmen in Russia in the 1990s before his run-in with the Kremlin after Putin took office in 2000.

From 2003 to 2013 he was in Russian custody, after which he went into exile.

Since the Russian military operation in Ukraine began on February 24, dozens of journalists and members of Russia's intellectual elite have fled the country as the authorities increased pressure on the country's remaining critical voices and media.

jpz/AFP/dpa/Reuters