The European Union renewed on Monday its wide-ranging sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, after Hungary stopped holding up the move in return for a declaration on energy security.
The European Union would provide €30-million to purchase and transport natural gas to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria, said Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean on Monday.
Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery had suspended operations after an attack by Ukrainian drones late last week, two industry sources told Reuters on Monday.
EU renews Russia sanctions after Hungarian delay
The European Union renewed on Monday its wide-ranging sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, after Hungary stopped holding up the move in return for a declaration on energy security.
“Europe delivers: EU Foreign Ministers just agreed to extend again the sanctions on Russia,” Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, posted on social media.
“This will continue to deprive Moscow of revenues to finance its war,” she added. “Russia needs to pay for the damage they are causing.”
Officials from other EU countries had warned that failure to roll over the sanctions before a 31 January deadline would have consequences, such as the unfreezing of Russian assets in Europe used to help Kyiv.
The sanctions up for renewal include all sector-based bans on trade as well as measures that immobilised Russia’s central bank assets. Legally, the EU’s 27 countries must unanimously vote to renew these restrictions every six months.
Profits from the frozen assets are being used to finance a $50-billion loan to Ukraine backed by the G7.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who maintains close ties with Moscow, had first called for consultations with the US Trump administration before a renewal decision. He also said it was time for a “sanctions-free” relationship with Russia.
But President Donald Trump has not backed the Hungarian position. He said last week he was ready to increase economic pressure on Russia to strike a peace deal.
Budapest then cited its complaints about Ukraine ending a transit deal that brought Russian gas to Hungary.
At a meeting of EU ambassadors on Monday, the European Commission presented a statement declaring it was “ready to continue discussions with Ukraine on the supply to Europe through the gas pipeline system in Ukraine”.
EU provides €3m for Transdniestria’s gas supply
The European Union would provide €30-million to purchase and transport natural gas to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria, said Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean on Monday.
Tens of thousands of people in Transdniestria have been without gas or winter heating since 1 January when Russia’s Gazprom suspended gas exports to the region, citing an unpaid Moldovan debt of $709-million that Chisinau does not recognise as valid.
“The EU is immediately providing financial assistance in the amount of €30-million for the purchase of the necessary amount of natural gas,” said Recean.
He said that Moldova had approved the transfer of an additional three million cubic metres of gas to Transdniestria.
Recean confirmed during a press conference that Hungarian company MOL intended to sign a contract with Moldovagaz to supply gas to Transdniestria.
Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery halts operations after drone strikes
Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery had suspended operations after an attack by Ukrainian drones late last week, two industry sources told Reuters on Monday.
They said oil storage at the refinery had been set ablaze. Among the damaged equipment were a railway loading rack and a hydrotreater unit used to remove impurities from refined products.
“The railway loading equipment has been damaged. There have been no railways loadings, they stopped oil processing,” said one source.
Another source said the loadings had been suspended since Friday, also confirming that the plant had been stopped due to its inability to dispatch oil products.
Ryazan oil refinery processed 13.1 million metric tons (262,000 barrels per day), or almost 5% of Russia’s total refining throughput in 2024.
Russia in diplomatic spat with Moldova
Russia said on Monday it had summoned the Moldovan ambassador in Moscow to protest against what the Russian Foreign Ministry called “unfounded accusations” against the Russian ambassador in Chisinau by a Moldovan political party.
The foreign ministry said that the unnamed political party had called for Russia’s ambassador to be expelled and for the work of Russia’s embassy to be limited.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu told her Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday that Russia was orchestrating an energy crisis in her country with the intention of bringing a pro-Moscow government to power there.
Russia denies any interference in Moldova’s internal affairs.
Ukraine replaces commander of eastern front
Zelensky replaced the commander of the eastern front, the most heated battlefield of the Ukraine war, after Russian forces captured another strategic town there.
Brigadier General Andriy Hnatov was replaced as the battlefield commander in the east by Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, overall commander of ground forces, who will keep his previous duties. Hnatov was given a role overseeing training and communications.
In his nightly video address late on Sunday, Zelensky said the aim was to strengthen the command of troops in the Donetsk region. Donetsk, a battlefield since 2014 and one of four provinces Russia claims to have annexed since its 2022 full-scale invasion, has been the main focus of fighting for more than a year.
The Ukrainian military confirmed on Monday that it had withdrawn from the Donetsk region town of Velyka Novosilka, a day after Russia said it had captured it. Viktor Trehubov, a military spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern front, confirmed that Russian troops had entered the town but said fighting continued on the outskirts.
Russian forces have been slowly but steadily advancing in eastern Ukraine for more than a year in relentless ground combat that has caused massive military losses on both sides. Kyiv, for its part, has managed to capture and hold a pocket of territory inside Russia over the past six months.
The new eastern commander, Drapatyi (42), is well respected in the army, where he is credited with stopping a Russian offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last year.
Putin ally Lukashenko declared winner of Belarus vote
Belarusian leader and Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko extended his 31-year rule on Monday after electoral officials declared him the winner of a presidential election that Western governments rejected as a sham.
Lukashenko, who faced no serious challenge from the four other candidates on the ballot, took 86.8% of the vote, according to initial results.
European politicians said the vote was neither free nor fair because independent media are banned in the former Soviet republic and all leading opposition figures have either been jailed or forced to flee abroad.
“The people of Belarus had no choice. It is a bitter day for all those who long for freedom & democracy,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for an expansion of Western sanctions against Belarusian companies and individuals involved in repressing opponents of Lukashenko and supplying munitions for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
“As long as Belarus is under Lukashenko and Putin’s control, there will be a constant threat to the peace and security of the entire region,” she said.
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said in a statement the bloc would keep imposing “restrictive and targeted measures against the regime” while supporting civic society and the exiled opposition.
Asked about the jailing of his opponents, Lukashenko said on Sunday that they had “chosen” their fate. He denied that his decision to release more than 250 people convicted of “extremist” activity was a message to the West to seek an easing of his isolation.
“I don’t give a damn about the West,” he told a rambling news conference that lasted well over four hours.
“We have never refused relations with the West. We have always been ready. But you do not want this. So what should we do, bow before you or crawl on our knees?”
Russia issues school textbook saying it was ‘forced’ to attack Ukraine
A new school textbook that likens Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Soviet struggle against the Nazis and says Russia was “forced” to send troops into Ukraine was presented in Moscow on Monday.
Putin casts the war, which Moscow officially calls a “special military operation”, as a difficult but necessary fight against a Western- and Nato-backed Ukraine. He says it is part of a wider existential battle against a decadent West trying to weaken and dismember Russia.
For their part, Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is waging a brutal and unprovoked war, merely to gain territory.
The three-volume Military History of Russia was edited by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin who headed a delegation that held unsuccessful peace talks with Ukraine in 2022, in the early months of the war, and has already co-authored Russia’s main history textbook.
The third volume, likely to be dismissed by Ukraine’s leadership as propaganda, is designed to be taught to children aged 15 and older.
It explains why the Kremlin believes the war started and how it is being fought, highlights what it regards as incidences of battlefield heroism, and describes how the modern Russian army sometimes employs techniques used by the Soviet army during World War Two.
In a chapter entitled Professionalism, indomitability and courage: Russian troops in the Special Military Operation, the book tells schoolchildren that Russia was “forced” to send its troops into Ukraine in 2022.
It says the West had for years ignored Russia’s security concerns — a reference to the eastward expansion of the Nato military alliance, and to what the book described as the Western-backed toppling of a Russia-friendly Ukrainian president in 2014, which had turned Ukraine into an “aggressive anti-Russian bridgehead”.
NATO and Ukraine deny ever posing a threat to Russia. DM