Ukraine and Russia: what you need to know now
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At least 15 people have been killed and two dozen others fear being trapped after Russian Uragan rockets hit a five-story apartment building in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, local officials said as rescuers made their way through the rubble.
FIGHTING * Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on the Telegram messaging service that a Russian missile hit Druzhkivka, a town behind the frontline, and reported the shelling of other population centers. * Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Telegram that Russian forces were gathering in the area of Bilohorivka village, about 50 km (30 miles) east of Sloviansk, from where they were shelling surrounding settlements and carried out airstrikes. * Russian news agency Tass quoted pro-Russian separatists as saying Ukrainian forces fired an artillery barrage at residential neighborhoods in the city of Donetsk. * Russian forces struck two Ukrainian army hangars storing American-made M777 howitzers, a type of artillery weapon, near Kostantinovka in the Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said. * Reuters could not independently verify the Battlefield accounts.
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ECONOMY/DIPLOMACY * Canada will return a repaired turbine to Germany which is needed for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline and could help ensure continued flows of energy until Europe can end its dependence on gas Russian, said the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources. * Ukraine’s energy and foreign ministries said the decision amounted to adjusting sanctions on Moscow « to Russia’s whims » and called for its reversal. * The French government is preparing for a complete cut in Russian gas supply, which it sees as the most likely scenario in its forward planning, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said. * US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging the international community to join forces in condemning Russian aggression, told reporters on Saturday that he had raised concerns with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi over the alignment of Beijing over Moscow.
QUOTE ‘I was thrown into the bathroom, it was chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood,’ a survivor named Venera says after Russian rockets hit a building in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. « By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full of rubble, three floors collapsed. » (Compiled by Robert Birsel and Frances Kerry)
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