Ukrainian oil, gas facilities burn as West prepares new sanctions

 

.3m people already in need of humanitarian assistance –UN

 

Russian forces have attacked oil and gas facilities in Ukraine, sparking huge explosions, officials said on Sunday, as Western allies prepared new sanctions, including banishing key Russia banks from the main global payments system.

 

Ukrainian forces were holding off Russian troops advancing on the capital, Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said as the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two entered its fourth day.

 

But Zelenskiy said the night had been brutal, with shelling of civilian infrastructure and attacks on everything, including ambulances.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a special military operation on Thursday, ignoring weeks of Western warnings and saying the “neo-Nazis” ruling Ukraine threatened Russia’s security – a charge Kyiv and Western governments say is baseless propaganda.

 

Offering a glimmer of hope for negotiations, the Kremlin said a delegation had arrived in neighbouring Belarus for talks and was waiting for the Ukrainians.

 

But Zelenskiy rejected talks in Belarus, saying it was complicit in the invasion, but he left the door open for negotiations elsewhere.

 

Russian missiles found their mark overnight, including a strike that set an oil terminal ablaze in Vasylkiv, southwest of Kyiv, the town’s mayor said.

 

Blasts sent huge flames and billowing black smoke into the night sky, online posts showed.

 

“The enemy wants to destroy everything,” said the mayor, Natalia Balasinovich.

 

There was heavy fighting for Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, where Russian troops blew up a natural gas pipeline, a Ukrainian state agency said.

 

That blast sent a mushroom cloud up into the darkness, though Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator said the transit of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine was going on as normal.

 

Russian troops later entered Kharkiv, interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said on Telegram.

 

Videos posted by him and a state agency showed several military vehicles moving on a street and, separately, a burning tank.

 

Russian-backed separatists in the eastern province of Luhansk said a Ukrainian missile had blown up an oil terminal in the town of Rovenky.

 

Reuters witnesses in Kyiv reported occasional blasts and gunfire through the night, then three blasts after air raid sirens went off shortly before 9 a.m. (0600 GMT).

 

Ukrainian leaders were defiant.

 

“We have withstood and are successfully repelling enemy attacks. The fighting goes on,” Zelenskiy said in a video message from the streets of Kyiv posted on his social media.

 

A U.S. defence official said Ukraine’s forces were putting up “very determined resistance” to Russia’s air, land and sea advance, which has sent hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing westwards, clogging major highways and railway lines.

 

 

Meanwhile, the  United States and its allies have imposed a range of sanctions on Russia in response to an assault that threatens to upend Europe’s post-Cold War order.

 

On Saturday, they moved to block certain Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system.

 

They also said they would impose restrictions on Russia’s central bank to limit its ability to support the rouble and finance Putin’s war effort.

 

“We are resolved to continue imposing costs on Russia that will further isolate Russia from the international financial system and our economies,” said a statement from the United States, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Britain and the European Commission.

 

After initially shying away from such a move largely because of concern about the impact on their economies, the allies said they committed to “ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system.”

 

They did not name the banks that would be expelled, but an EU diplomat said some 70% of the Russian banking market would be affected.

 

The decision – which the French finance minister had called a “financial nuclear weapon” because of the damage it would inflict on the Russian economy – deals a blow to Russia’s trade and makes it harder for its companies to do business.

 

SWIFT, a secure messaging network that facilitates rapid cross-border payments, said it was preparing to implement the measures.

 

Sanctions on Russia’s central bank could limit Putin’s use of his more than $630 billion in international reserves, widely seen as insulating Russia from some economic harm.

 

Google barred Russia’s state-owned media outlet RT and other channels from receiving money for ads on their websites, apps and YouTube videos, similar to move Facebook made.

 

Meanwhile, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said an eight-year-long conflict in Eastern Ukraine had already made three million people to be in need of humanitarian assistance “on both sides of the contact line”.

 

Griffiths, who also serves as the humanitarian affairs chief, told journalists that the UN and its partners had been responding to that need for many years.

 

Griffith spoke to journalists on Saturday at the UN headquarters in New York about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

 

“This year alone, for example, UN coordinated humanitarian convoys delivered over 150 tonnes of assistance to the most vulnerable people in the non-government controlled areas in the Donbas,” he said.

 

Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, those living close to the contact line and those living in the non-government areas are currently the most in need.

 

“They continue to require food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation and protection,” the senior UN official said.

 

He painted a grim picture of shelling of urban centres across Ukraine and unconfirmed reports of human casualties and damage to residential infrastructure, expressing extreme concern over the impact of the ongoing escalation.

 

“We are concerned about reports of population movement…fleeing in search of safety and protection,” Griffiths said.

 

He said that hundreds of thousands of people were “on the move in Ukraine and out of Ukraine, as we speak.”

 

The UN emergency coordinator echoed the Secretary-General’s position in stressing that UN humanitarians were committed to expanding their presence.

 

“We have not left. We are not leaving Ukraine,” he said.

 

As people there are “bunkered down,” Griffiths said that the UN was scaling up its efforts to help meet the needs of those effected, “and we have been doing this for some weeks.”

 

At this alarming phase of escalation, he flagged that the safety and security of all UN staff and their dependents was a top priority.

 

“We are currently facilitating the temporary relocation of non-essential UN staff and eligible family member within Ukraine,” said the Emergency Coordinator.

 

In the meantime, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OHCHA, has set up an inter-agency operation centre in Geneva and will be launching an appeal.

 

It will bring together the needs of the region outside Ukraine, under the leadership of the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, as well as for those within the country.

 

Turning to the UN chief’s announcement on Thursday that 20 million dollars would be released from the Central Emergency Response Fund, CERF, to increase an immediate response, Griffiths said that it was imperative for the scale of needs in these “very, very extraordinary circumstances.”

 

“In the coming days, we will launch two coordinated emergency appeals in response to Ukraine’s escalating humanitarian needs, including rising internal displacement, and the needs of people seeking refuge in countries neighbouring Ukraine.”

 

He explained that donors were needed to mobilise financial resources, which would be outlined in a few days.

 

The most important point Griffiths said was the safety of UN humanitarian workers and their humanitarian partners, saying that our humanitarian response is guided by humanity, neutrality, operational independence and impartiality.

 

The senior UN official reminded that 50 per cent of the wheat used by the World Food Programme’s (WFP) comes from Ukraine, which illustrates that the effects of the crisis are “spooling out before us, and we have yet to see where it will lead.”