A call to end the war to avoid the precipice of a nuclear confrontation
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that the West, Russia and Ukraine must end the conflict to avoid the “precipice” of “nuclear war,” in an exclusive interview with AFP.
“Come on, let’s stop. We shouldn’t go any further. Beyond that is the precipice, it’s nuclear war. You can’t get there,” said Lukashenko, Russia’s main ally.
“This has to stop, we have to listen, stop this chaos, the operation and the war in Ukraine,” added the Belarusian leader.
For Lukashenko, who allowed Russian troops to pass through his territory to attack Ukraine, it is up to kyiv to accept concessions and go to negotiations, since for him it is the only way out of the conflict.
Previous talks, which began in the early days of the Russian offensive, failed, with each side blaming the other.
“Everything depends on Ukraine, currently, the peculiarity of this moment is that the war can end in preferable conditions, more acceptable to Ukraine,” Lukashenko considered.
kyiv has to agree “never to harbor on the territory of Ukraine weapons that might threaten Russia.”
Lukashenko accused the West of provoking the war, considering that the threat hanging over Russia was such that it should attack its neighbor.
“We have seen that the causes of this war, the cause is that if Russia had not gotten ahead of NATO, you (Westerners) would have organized and attacked,” Lukashenko said.
“You are at the origin and are prolonging this war,” accused the Belarusian leader.
Russia accuses Ukraine of attacking a nuclear power plant
Russian diplomacy on Thursday accused kyiv of carrying out a week of drone strikes on the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant site in southern Ukraine, under the control of Kremlin forces since March.
“This confirms the will of the Ukrainian authorities to create the conditions for a nuclear catastrophe not only on their territory, but throughout Europe,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told her weekly news conference.
It did not report any damage endangering the nuclear safety of the site.
According to her, Ukrainian forces carried out a drone attack on Monday “a few dozen meters from structures vital to the safety of the plant, a spent nuclear fuel depot and a reactor cooling tank.” The spokeswoman added that kyiv attacked the site once more on Wednesday.
The Russian media published alleged images of plumes of smoke in the city of Energodar, where the plant is located.
Maria Zakharova noted that Moscow contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency secretariat following both incidents.
Ataque en Jarkov
Russia launched an attack on Thursday in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov in which at least two people were killed. In addition to the dead, the bombardment left a balance of 19 wounded.
Kharkov is the second city of Ukraine located in the northeast. Three other people were killed in an attack on Wednesday, including a teenager near a bus stop.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday accused Russian and Ukrainian troops of “unnecessarily” endangering civilians by stationing troops in the center of populated areas.
The Kremlin blames the West for gas supply problems
The Kremlin said on Thursday that Western restrictions are the cause of technical problems in the delivery of Russian gas to Europe, at a time when the Nord Stream gas pipeline resumed its activities following a maintenance period.
“It is these restrictions that prevent repairs to equipment, especially turbines in compression stations,” said presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov, who rejected accusations that Russia uses the gas as “blackmail.”
In the context of the conflict in Ukraine and the fight between Moscow and Westerners over energy, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin uses gas as “a weapon.”
On Thursday, Dmitry Peskov repeated that Russia’s gas giant Gazprom will fulfill “all its obligations.”
Russia has reopened the gas tap to Europe with the resumption on Thursday of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, a vital supply for the EU’s energy security this winter.
The first data published by the German network operator, Gascade, shows that the performance is the same as before the maintenance, around 40% of its capacity.
After ten days of annual maintenance on the pipeline, which directly connects Siberian gas fields to northern Germany, Europe had braced for energy company Gazprom, which owns the pipeline, to turn off the tap forever.
Since mid-June, Gazprom has reduced deliveries via Nord Stream to 40% of capacity, citing the lack of a maintenance turbine in Canada.
Turkey expects agreement in the coming days on grain exports from Ukraine
Turkey’s foreign minister expressed “optimism” regarding an agreement in the “next few days” on grain exports blocked in Ukraine, if Western countries respond to Russia’s demands.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s statements come at a time when his country was hoping to host a new round of negotiations between Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish military experts, in addition to UN mediation to resume Ukraine’s grain exports, which are blocked due to the Russian invasion.
However, this week Russian President Vladimir Putin put an additional condition on any deal, demanding that his country’s grains be included in the negotiations.
“We are hopeful regarding grains. We hope to be able to give you news in the next few days,” Cavusoglu told public broadcaster TRT in an interview.
About 25 million tons of wheat and other food are blocked in Ukrainian ports by Russian warships and mines that kyiv planted to prevent a waterborne assault.
This crisis has skyrocketed food prices around the world and has millions of people on the brink of famine.