G7 and European Union plan to ban restart of Russian gas pipelines

4 Russian military aircraft crash near border with Ukraine

The Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers and the European Union will ban Russian gas imports on routes where Moscow has cut supplies, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing officials involved in the negotiations. The decision, to be finalised by G7 leaders at a summit in Hiroshima starting on Friday, will prevent the resumption of Russian pipeline gas exports on routes to countries such as Poland and Germany, where Moscow cut off supplies last year, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his country is preparing a counteroffensive designed to liberate areas occupied by Russia, not to attack Russian territory. Speaking during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s goal is to free the territories within its internationally recognised borders. There has been speculation that Ukraine might try to capture areas in Russia proper and use them as bargaining chips in possible peace negotiations to end the war launched by Moscow in February 2022 Zelenskyy said: “We don’t attack Russian territory, we liberate our own legitimate territory.” “We have neither the time nor the strength (to attack Russia),” he said, according to an official interpreter. “And we also don’t have weapons to spare, with which we could do this.”

“We are preparing a counterattack for the illegally occupied areas based on our constitutionally definied legitimate borders, which are recognised internationally,” Zelenskyy said.

Fighter jets,  military aircrafts crashed
 

Russian news outlet Kommersant has reported that two Russian fighter jets and two military helicopters were shot down close to the Ukrainian border in Russia’s Bryansk region in what would be a stunning military operation for Kyiv if confirmed.

Kommersant, a business-focused daily, said on its website on Saturday that a Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber, Su-35 fighter, and two Mi-8 helicopters that had made up a military raiding party were “shot down almost simultaneously” in an ambush in the Bryansk region, adjoining northeast Ukraine.

“According data … the fighters were supposed to deliver a missile and bomb attack on targets in the Chernihiv region, and the helicopters were there to back them up — among other things to pick up the ‘Su’ crews if they were shot down,” the media reported.