(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday to halt contracts supplying Europe with a third of its gas unless they are paid in Russian currency, his strongest economic riposte so far to crushing Western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine.
FIGHTING
* Ukrainian forces are preparing for new Russian attacks on the Donbas region in the southeast after they repelled Russia’s assault on the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
* The southern port city of Mariupol and a “corridor” between two eastern towns, Izyum and Volnovakha, are becoming the key battlefronts, a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser said.
* Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in Mariupol, the mayor’s office estimates, and about 170,000 people remain trapped amid ruins without food, heat, power or running water. Reuters has been unable to verify the figures.
* Russian forces have killed 148 children during shelling and air strikes, fired 1,370 missiles and destroyed 15 Ukrainian airports since the start of the invasion, Ukraine’s defence ministry said. Reuters could not independently verify the information.
* The Ukrainian state nuclear company said most of the Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power station had withdrawn.
ECONOMY
* Putin is demanding foreign buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles from Friday or else have their supplies cut, a move European capitals rejected and which Berlin said amounted to “blackmail”.
* U.S. President Joe Biden announced the release of 1 million barrels of oil a day for the next six months from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to bring down prices.
* Washington also imposed fresh sanctions on Russia, targeting operators in the technology sector.
* Russia will provide domestic airlines with 100 billion roubles ($1.25 billion) in support to deal with the consequences of international sanctions.
DIPLOMACY
* Russia and Ukraine are to resume peace talks online on April 1, said a senior Ukrainian official.
* Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been, a U.S. official said, citing declassified intelligence.
HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS
* A convoy of Ukrainian buses set out for Mariupol to try to deliver humanitarian supplies and bring out trapped civilians, the deputy prime minister said.
* The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it would evacuate people from Mariupol from Friday if the warring parties allowed safe passage.
* The Russian defence ministry said on Thursday it would open a humanitarian corridor from the besieged city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia on Friday, Tass news agency reported.
QUOTES
* “We spent 30 days in the basement, with small children. The children are shaking, even still. They ask: ‘When will we go to kindergarten? When will we go to school?’ They don’t understand what has happened,” said a woman named Larisa in Trostyanets, a town in the country’s east recaptured by Ukrainian forces.
(Compiled by Frank Jack Daniel and Alexandra Hudson)
