Moscow cuts gas supply to some E.U. states; explosions reported in Russia

WARSAW — Poland’s energy czar has spent much of his adult life preparing to break the country’s dependence on Russian natural gas. The coming weeks will bring a sudden and dramatic test of his efforts.

Piotr Naimski and his colleagues in Poland’s energy ministry had been racing to fully cut Russian gas imports late this year after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. But Russia’s abrupt decision to stop deliveries this week is forcing Poland to go it alone months ahead of schedule.

Poland’s success or failure in coping without Russian gas will help guide other European nations that are facing similar breaks with Russian energy — either by their own choice or the Kremlin’s.

“We are prepared,” Naimski said in a Polish radio interview Wednesday morning, hours after Russia informed Poland it was ceasing deliveries. “We have the ability to bring enough gas to Poland, so that there is enough for everyone. We can remain calm.”

Satellite photos show Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance to a key Black Sea port, in a move that may be designed to help protect a significant Kremlin naval base there, according to a naval analyst.

The images, provided to The Washington Post by Maxar Technologies, show two dolphin pens at the entrance to Sevastopol harbor in Crimea — which Russian forces annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

H I Sutton, a submarine analyst who first reported on the dolphins for the U.S. Naval Institute on Wednesday, said the pens were moved there in February, around the time of the invasion of Ukraine.

As the European Union scrambled to bolster alternatives to Russian energy supplies, Shell stepped up its break with Moscow.

The company had earlier vowed to withdraw from involvement with all Russian oil and gas, a move that will cost it $5 billion. The pace of this transition, though, has frustrated critics. The Ukrainian government earlier this month accused Shell of using an “accounting trick” to continue doing business with Russia, noting it was still selling refined products with significant amounts of Russian oil in them.

Shell on Wednesday said it is immediately cutting out of its business any refined products, such as blended fuels, that have any Russian content in them.

“We are working to phase out Russian oil and gas from our supply chain while protecting the energy and fuel supplies millions of people rely on every day,” said an email from a company spokesman. “We are making good progress and have taken a further step to tighten our trading terms to help achieve this.”

As Moscow massed troops along the Ukrainian border this year, a new report from Microsoft says, Russian “wiper” cyberattacks on Ukrainian groups also intensified.

On March 1 — the day a missile struck a Kyiv television tower — suspected Russian actors allegedly targeted a broadcasting company with malicious software.

And as invading forces occupied Ukrainian nuclear power plants, the Microsoft report states, a “suspected Russian nation state actor stole data from a nuclear safety organization.”

Microsoft says these incidents exemplify a parallel cyberwar on Ukraine, with Russian attacks on computer systems appearing “strongly correlated and sometimes directly timed” with elements of Moscow’s physical invasion. The technology company said it has helped Ukraine identify threats and on Wednesday released its report detailing alleged Russian activities.

The report says Russia’s military intelligence is linked to a slew of cyberattacks launched the day before Russia’s invasion — targeting “hundreds of systems in Ukrainian government, IT, energy, and financial organizations” with “wiper” malware, or malicious software that erases information.

The barrage of threats “are ongoing and threaten civilian welfare,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, said in a statement.

Speaking to The Post this month, some experts argued cyberattacks have had little impact on the broader conflict.

“Cyber operations can’t win wars,” Jacquelyn Schneider, a researcher at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told The Post’s Joseph Marks. “And they don’t start wars either. But they make wars harder to fight and they drain manpower, resources, and time.”

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the global systems designed to guarantee peace and security have failed Ukraine — and the Russian invasion has shown nations that they must “reboot” their approach to geopolitics.

The “geopolitical power of economics” is growing, and a new approach should “meld hard security and economic security,” Truss said during a banquet speech at Mansion House, the mayoral residence, in London. Access to the global economy is “no longer a given,” she said, and is earned by playing by the rules.

The consequences of the invasion have shown that countries are willing to prioritize peace and security over short-term economic gain, said Truss. “Growth from cheap gas and money siphoned from kleptocracies is growth built on sand.”

The “new stand” on global security would not only deter, but ensure that “aggressors fail.” She also called out China, where she said Russian exports have risen by nearly a third in the year’s first quarter.

China “will not continue to rise if they do not play by the rules,” Truss said. “China needs trade with the G-7. We represent around half of the global economy. And we have choices.”

The Group of Seven countries should act as an “economic NATO,” she said, adding that if an aggressive regime is targeting one partner’s economy, other partners should act in support.

Threats in the Indo-Pacific region need to be preempted, she said, calling for strong security there and in the Euro-Atlantic region. “We must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves. … We are correcting a generation of underinvestment.”

“Spending 2 percent of GDP on defense must be a floor, not a ceiling,” Truss said.

Donbas: Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Russia captured some settlements in this eastern battleground, which includes the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The ministry said Russian troops seized a village near the city of Izyum, a key Russian staging point. “Virtually the entire territory of Luhansk” was shelled Tuesday in attacks that set homes on fire, Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova said.

Kharkiv: Russia continues to shell residential areas of this major city and its northern region, the Ukrainian government said Wednesday, reporting three new deaths and 15 people injured. Northwest of Kharkiv, the Sumy region bordering Russia has also suffered shelling for several days, an official said.

Kherson: Ukrainian leaders said Russian forces used tear gas to break up protesters Wednesday in this occupied southern city. Gennady Laguta, the Ukrainian head of the Kherson Regional State Administration, said Tuesday that Russian forces are installing their own government, appointing a municipal leader and a replacement for Laguta. That same day, Russian authorities claimed they had “liberated” the entire Kherson region after seizing the city early in its invasion.

A Russian commander said last week that Moscow hopes to control eastern and southern Ukraine in part to open a path toward Crimea — the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014 — and toward Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova.

Mariupol: The United Nations said this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed “in principle” to allow international groups to help evacuate civilians from this wrecked port city. But a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday that the aid group has “no confirmation” of any “functional agreement” to get people out of Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters at a steel plant are refusing to surrender. Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of continuing its strikes on the plant, despite Putin’s claim Tuesday that he had ordered that there be no further assaults.

The Washington Post cannot independently verify Ukraine and Russia’s claims about fighting.

More than half of the 90 artillery pieces that the United States has pledged to Ukraine have arrived, as the Biden administration continues to rush weapons to the battlefield to assist Ukrainian forces countering the Russian invasion, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

Kirby, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, declined to give a specific number, but the Biden administration transferred 18 howitzers in one package of weapons to Ukraine and 72 in another. The artillery comes from the existing Army and Marine Corps arsenal and includes M777 and M198 howitzers.

The United States has completed training for 50 Ukrainian troops on how to use the weapons and has moved to training a second wave of Ukrainians, Kirby said. The training was designed to teach Ukrainians already familiar with artillery warfare the differences between systems they typically use and the U.S. weapons.

The training is underway outside of Ukraine, but the United States has not disclosed where. Other countries, including Canada and France, have also promised to bolster Ukraine’s artillery.

POKROVSK, Ukraine — The 4:30 p.m. train pulled out of the station in this eastern city 16 minutes late on Wednesday. The daily evacuation was taking hundreds of passengers away from the fighting in eastern Ukraine; the delayed departure allowed medics and drivers to complete the slow and careful process of lifting elderly civilians onto the carriages.

Volunteers are collecting the men and women from homes across the Donbas region to the backdrop of the sound of shelling.

Several of the evacuees arrived in Pokrovsk on stretchers; they had to be lifted up the train’s high steps in their blankets. Yevheniy Chegrinets was in a wheelchair. He wore thin slippers on his bandaged feet. He said that his house had been struck with a missile, causing the walls to fall in on him. When asked if he knew where he was heading, Chegrinets shook his head and just looked lost.

Watching on from the carriage doorway was Oleg Kobetskiy, 57, a veteran railway worker. He said he had been working on the train since Feb. 15, nine days before the Russian invasion began. When the train pulls out from the station each day, the atmosphere becomes “heavy.”

“It tears at my heart,” he said.

Svitlana Glotova, a medic with a kind manner and red hair, said she would be onboard to monitor the passengers. On a previous journey, she tended to patients who were in shock. One had a seizure.

Glotova sighed as she watched the evacuees peering anxiously through the train’s grimy windows. “All we can do on the train is be kind to them and show them love,” she said.