Putin: No More Gas Discounts for Ukraine Under Current Oil Prices

[bemildred]

Kiev currently purchases gas from Russia with a $100-discount per 1,000 cubic meters, and also receives reverse gas flows from Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

"Moscow can no longer give Ukraine gas discounts due to the current drop in oil prices", Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. The price must be comparable to that for other European countries, like Poland, he added.

Kiev currently purchases gas from Russia with a $100-discount per 1,000 cubic meters, and also receives reverse gas flows from Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150624/1023786997.html

[Fred Sanders]

1. Giving massive discounts on vital energy supplies to a neighbor while "invading" at the same time....strange man.

[bemildred]

2. Russia's Putin extends ban on Western food imports by one year

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he had extended a ban on food imports from the West by one year.

Putin told a meeting of government members that he had signed the necessary order.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/24/ukraine-russia-eu-sanctions-idUSR4N0YV02H20150624

[bemildred]

3. NATO says won't be dragged into arms race with Russia

BRUSSELS, June 24 (Reuters) - The head of NATO said on Wednesday the alliance would not be forced into a new arms race with Russia but that what he called Moscow's aggression in Ukraine had compelled it to strengthen its defences.

The United States announced plans this week to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO member states on Russia's border, shortly after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would add 40 missiles to its nuclear arsenal.

"We will not be dragged into an arms race, but we must keep our countries safe," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at the start of a meeting of alliance defence ministers.

A Russian official last week accused NATO of pushing Russia into an arms race by stepping up its military activity around its borders, not least in the formerly Soviet Baltic States.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/24/ukraine-crisis-nato-idUSL8N0ZA31O20150624?rpc=401

[bemildred]

4. Russian former leader of Ukraine rebels warns of "big war"

A ceasefire is likely to collapse in east Ukraine and Russia could be drawn into a "big war" to cleanse the "sore on its borders", the former leader of the region's pro-Russian separatists said.

Violence has eased but not halted in east Ukraine under what are known as the Minsk 2 agreements, reached in the Belarussian capital on Feb. 12 after an earlier ceasefire collapsed.

Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen and former journalist for nationalist newspapers who emerged last year as prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), said he expects the Ukrainian army to launch a new offensive.

"To be honest, I expect that the Minsk 2 agreements will not be observed, in the same manner as the Minsk 1 agreements were not," Borodai said in an interview this week in a Moscow restaurant surrounded by former rebel commanders.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/06/24/uk-ukraine-crisis-borodai-interview-idUKKBN0P41SB20150624?rpc=401

[bemildred]

5. 'Nearly half' of MH17's wreckage still in Ukraine

Kiev (AFP) - A top pro-Russian rebel said Wednesday that nearly half the wreckage of the Malaysia Airline jet shot down over Ukraine last year remain strewn across fields controlled by the separatists.

Insurgency leader Andrei Purgin said about 40 percent of the plane's charred parts were left behind by international investigators and recovery teams.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse the militants of accidentally shooting down the Boeing 777 liner after mistaking it for a Ukrainian jet.

All 298 passengers and crew who boarded the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight MH17 in Amsterdam were killed.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/28541471/