More than 500 Ukrainian localities were still without electricity on Sunday, December 4, following Russian strikes which have largely damaged the national electricity grid in recent weeks, explained a representative of the Ministry of the Interior. “Eight regions of our country are cut off from the electricity supply”First Deputy Interior Minister Yevgeniy Yenin told Ukrainian television.
In details, “the Kharkiv region is the most affected, where 112 villages are isolated ; in the Donetsk and Kherson regions : more than 90 ; the Mykolaiv region: 82; Zaporizhia region : 76 ; the Lugansk region : 43″he specified.
OPEC maintains oil production quotas
The representatives of the 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Riyadh, and their ten allies led by Moscow, agreed to stay the course decided in October on a reduction of two million barrels per day until the end of 2023. And this, while Russia is headwind against the cap on the price of its oil that the European Union, the G7 and Australia have planned to put in place on Monday, “or very shortly thereafter”, to deprive Russia of the means to finance its war in Ukraine.
Speculation had run on a more drastic cut, but the group preferred to temporize in front of “uncertainty about the impact on Russian crude production” of the new set of sanctions, underlined Giovanni Staunovo, analyst of UBS interviewed by AFP.
“There is no diplomatic solution with the Putin regime”
“I am absolutely convinced that there is no diplomatic solution with the Putin regime, as long as it is still there”estimated Irina Chtcherbakova, who co-founded the Russian human rights NGO Memorial, dissolved by the authorities and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2022. She spoke from Hamburg, Germany, because she left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
“The solution that presents itself now is a military solution”, even if later, diplomacy can play a role in the resolution of the conflict, specified Irina Chtcherbakova. “But these decisions, this diplomacy can only be taken when Ukraine believes it has won the war and can put an end to it”she added.
