And Finland and Sweden are scheduled to apply for NATO later this week.
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And Finland and Sweden are scheduled to apply for NATO later this week.
But read the full report here for the complete story: https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...t-2022-05-10/:
KYIV/LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday it would suspend the flow of gas through a transit point which it said delivers almost a third of the fuel piped from Russia to Europe through Ukraine, blaming Moscow for the move and saying it would move the flows elsewhere.
Ukraine has remained a major transit route for Russian gas to Europe even after Moscow's invasion.
GTSOU, which operates Ukraine's gas system, said it would stop shipments via the Sokhranivka route from Wednesday, declaring "force majeure", a clause invoked when a business is hit by something beyond its control.
But Gazprom (GAZP.MM), which has a monopoly on Russian gas exports by pipeline, said it was "technologically impossible" to shift all volumes to the Sudzha interconnection point further west, as GTSOU proposed.
GTSOU CEO Sergiy Makogon told Reuters that Russian occupying forces had started taking gas transiting through Ukraine and sending it to two Russia-backed separatist regions in the country's east. He did not cite evidence.
The company said it could not operate at the Novopskov gas compressor station due to "the interference of the occupying forces in technical processes", adding it could temporarily shift the affected flow to the Sudzha physical interconnection point located in territory controlled by Ukraine.
Ukraine's suspension of Russian natural gas flows through the Sokhranivka route should not have an impact on the domestic Ukrainian market, state energy firm Naftogaz head Yuriy Vitrenko told Reuters.
The state gas company in Moldova, a small nation on Ukraine's western border, said it had not received any notice from GTSOU or Gazprom that supplies would be interrupted.
The Novopskov compressor station in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine has been occupied by Russian forces and separatist fighters since soon after Moscow began what it describes as a "special military operation" in February. read more
It is the first compressor in the Ukraine gas transit system in the Luhansk region, the transit route for around 32.6 million cubic metres of gas a day, or a third of the Russian gas which is piped to Europe through Ukraine, GTSOU said.
GTSOU said that in order to fulfil its "transit obligations to European partners in full" it would "temporarily transfer unavailable capacity" to the Sudzha interconnection point.
Gazprom said it had received notification from Ukraine that the country would stop the transit of gas to Europe via the Sokhranivka interconnector from 0700 local time on Wednesday.
The Russian company said it saw no proof of force majeure or obstacles to continuing as before. Gazprom added that it was meeting all obligations to buyers of gas in Europe.
The United States has urged countries to lessen their dependence on Russian energy and has banned Russian oil and other energy imports in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday's announcement does not change the timeline to lessen global dependence on Russian oil "as soon as possible."
Today's South China Morning Post (https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russ...gtype=homepage) has printed a Business Insider (https://www.businessinsider.com/russ...pgtype=article) article that makes it abundantly clear why Putin cancelled the traditional fly pass at Monday's May 9th Victory Parade.
The article/s cite UK defense minister Ben Wallace as saying that there was evidence suggesting Russian military hardware was being pushed to breaking point by the invasion of Ukraine and that “GPS receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian Su-34s so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems.”
Wallace also stated, "Last month, Ukrainian troops paraded a Russian drone that had been covered in duct tape and fitted with a generic plastic bottle top for a fuel cap. In late March, Ukrainian troops found Russian army bandages dating back to 1978 discarded on a battlefield."
Wallace also said Russian vehicles “are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them” and that soldiers are using “pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks” and attaching “overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks.” Perhaps all the working tanks (if any) are part for parades to impress Russians in Moscow.
Bullshit. Clearly speculation. There were 2 rehearsal - at May 4 and May 7 - in Moscow, including flights. Russian military aircrafts uses GLONASS instead of GPS.
Video from streets, May 7 2022.
https://youtu.be/srUnICBuxd4
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A "rehearsal" by definition means that Putin was not present, and the empty grandstands can clearly be seen in the China Global Television Network (CGTN) report at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYQXJfZK55E. He was probably in one of his bunkers, such as that in Siberia for his closest family, located in the district of Ongudaysky, close to the borders of Russia with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, or in his hideaway near Surgut, in Siberia, while Defence minister Sergei Shoigu hid in his bunker in Ufa, in the Urals. But when they realized they had to be under the flight path, the 77-plane flypast was cancelled. Putin scrapped the Victory Day flypast at the last minute 'because he feared a strike from the air' anti-Vladimir Russian news outlet claims. A 77-plane airshow was due to take place over Moscow's Red Square yesterday. Putin pulled the plug at the last minute due to concerns over an airstrike. He blamed poor weather despite clear blue skies over the Russian capital. Air shows were also canceled or restricted in at least ten other cities. (See, e.g., https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...trike-air.html, and https://news.yahoo.com/putin-doomsda...145722338.html, etc.).
There are several possible explanation for Russian pilots using GPS rather than GLONASS. For starters, the US GPS network includes 31 satellites, while GLONASS uses 24 satellites. The two systems also differ somewhat on accuracy. GLONASS position accuracy is 5-10m while GPS is 3.5-7.8m. Therefore, GPS outweighs GLONASS in accuracy as lower error numbers are better. As far as frequencies go, GLONASS operates at 1.602 GHz and GPS at 1.57542 GHz (L1 signal). When used alone, GLONASS doesn't provide as strong of coverage compared to GPS. In fact There are no significant advantages of GLONASS over GPS. (https://blog.bliley.com/the-differen...constellations).
GLONASS has also experienced failures - see "Map illustrates 'Russian GPS' failure" (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26957569). Then, the failure meant that position fixes that were off by more than 50km. Such failures might explain why "Russians accidentally wipe out own troops with TOS-1A flamethrowers in friendly fire disaster" in Zaporizhzhya province on Sunday May 8 (https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-...roops-26920381), and "Russian tank that appears to blow up "own comrades" in a friendly fire incident during a Ukrainian outside the city of Kyiv" (https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...ent-Ukraine-vn). Either that, or sheer incompetence and poor training of Russian conscripts and contract troops.
If it had taken place, the parading of 500 Ukrainian prisoners of war through Red Square on May 9 would have met the threshold of "humiliating and degrading treatment" under Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, one seen worldwide.