City evacuations continue; Red Cross still trying to reach Mariupol

Russian natural gas has not flowed to the Baltic states for the past two days, the head of the Latvian natural gas storage operator said Saturday, a potential first sign of a broader cutoff of Russian gas to Europe.

The warning of the halted flow of Russian gas came as Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda declared that starting in April, his country no longer plans to purchase natural gas from Russia.

European Union nations, along with the United States, imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in late February, but they continued to import Russian fossil fuels because they are deeply dependent on them to keep homes warm, to generate electricity and to keep the continent’s factories humming.

But the Kremlin and the European Union have been locked in a battle over the future of the energy relationship, with some European policymakers saying they should cut off Russian energy altogether, no matter how painful it would be in the short term. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has demanded payment for Russian fossil fuels in rubles instead of euros, threatening a unilateral cutoff if he doesn’t get his way.

In the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there may already have been a cutoff, Uldis Bariss, the chairman of Conexus Baltic Grid, the Latvian natural gas grid operator and storage company, told Latvian Radio on Saturday.

“While there was still doubt that Russian supplies could be relied on, these events clearly show that, from a security perspective, there is no longer any confidence,” Bariss said.

Bariss said that Latvia has extensive reserves of natural gas in storage and that there is no immediate crisis. More in question is what will happen next winter, he said.

A halt to Baltic gas flows could also be the result of a lack of supply on the Russian side or other disruptions to pipelines, rather than a deliberate, politically motivated cutoff. However, gas appears to largely be flowing as normal to Western Europe via other pipelines that don’t serve the Baltic states. Russian energy officials have not commented on gas flows to the Baltics.

Nauseda urged other countries to follow Lithuania’s lead by cutting off Russian gas purchases. Lithuania opened a liquefied natural gas terminal in 2014, enabling it to import natural gas from overseas providers, including the United States.

“Years ago my country made decisions that today allow us with no pain to break energy ties with the agressor. If we can do it, the rest of Europe can do it too!” Nauseda wrote on Twitter.

The director of Russia’s space agency suggested he would submit a proposal to end cooperation in the International Space Station program, citing sanctions placed on the nation.

In tweets on Saturday, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the agency Roscosmos, pointed to sanctions against a “number of enterprises in the Russian rocket and space industry.” He said that he appealed to the heads of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency to lift sanctions and that in their responses, the “position of our partners is clear: the sanctions will not be lifted.”

“I believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,” Rogozin wrote.

He said proposals from Roscosmos “on the timing of terminating cooperation with the space agencies” from the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union would be reported to the country’s leadership “in the near future.”

Rogozin has frequently used threatening and blustery rhetoric, including to repeatedly suggest Russia could exit the partnership.

His latest remarks came three days after two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned from the space station, a symbol of partnership in space even amid mounting tensions over the war in Ukraine.

Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, NASA has maintained that the station has been operating as normal, unaffected by the conflict. NASA has said it would be unable to operate the ISS without the Russians because the nation provides the propulsion necessary to keep the station orbiting.

Four people were “injured and severely burned” after Russian forces fired mortars at protesters in a city near Zaporizhzhia, the site of a nuclear plant that Russia captured last month, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman.

Residents of Energodar, a satellite town of Zaporizhzhia, which has been occupied by Russian forces for nearly four weeks, held a rally in support of Ukraine on Saturday. Russian soldiers used light and noise grenades to disrupt the protest and opened mortar fire on residents, the ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said in a statement posted to Telegram.

“Such treatment of civilians is a crime against humanity and a war crime as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” Denisova said.

The Washington Post verified two videos recorded by witnesses and posted to Telegram. The images were filmed at the same time from separate angles and show at least nine flashes followed by large booms. Gunfire is audible as people run away from the site of the protest.

“There is a fight in the city center!” a man yells in a third video, verified by The Post, while rushing away from multiple loud booms. “Russian occupiers attacked civilians. There was a peaceful protest here.”

A photo verified by The Post and posted to Telegram on Saturday appears to show the protest earlier in the day. A large group of protesters stood peacefully on the steps of a community center, holding Ukrainian flags.

Nearly a dozen people in military fatigues appear to monitor the protesters from a little more than 100 feet away. They stand next to two vehicles marked with the letter “Z,” suggesting the vehicles belong to Russian forces.

Ukraine’s state nuclear company, Energoatom, said loud explosions took place at the scene of what it described as a peaceful rally of locals singing the Ukrainian anthem. Families with children were present at the gathering, and Russian forces carted off some residents in vehicles, Energoatom said.

The company said some of the injured would be released from the hospital later Saturday.

Denisova called on the United Nations commission investigating human rights violations in Ukraine and an expert mission established by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to look into alleged rights violations and war crimes.

From the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reports have emerged of Russian troops looting homes and businesses in places they captured or passed through in their multipronged onslaught.

Now, according to Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, the Russian military has opened a “looting bazaar” in a town in neighboring Belarus to sell the stolen property. In a Facebook post Saturday, the agency said items for sale at the market in the town of Narovlya, about 30 miles north of the Ukrainian border, include “washing machines and dishwashers, refrigerators, jewelry, cars, bicycles, motorcycles, dishes, carpets, works of art, children’s toys, cosmetics.” In short, it said, “everything that the Russians have gained by looting and robbing civilians in Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian defense intelligence agency’s account of the special “bazaar” and an organized looting operation could not immediately be confirmed independently. But ample evidence has emerged from witnesses and surveillance video that Russian soldiers have engaged in looting in Ukraine.

“They stole everything they saw,” Andrii Kolesnyk, 45, who runs a guesthouse in Irpin, told The Washington Post in early March, shortly after he said about 15 Russian troops took over his property on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv. “They stole money I left to run the hotel. All the jewelry, everything. All the electronics.”

Russian forces tighten grip on Kyiv gateway as residents describe growing perils

Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a Virginia-based think tank, has noted that looting is not uncommon for Russian troops in wartime. Indeed, numerous videos have been posted on social media showing Russian troops looting goods in Ukraine.

Sometimes the looters have focused on obtaining food — reportedly because their rations were inadequate and they were hungry.

But the operation called out by Ukrainian military intelligence suggests a more systematic pillaging. The Defense Ministry agency, known as the GUR, claimed that the Russians have been trying to exchange stolen dollars and euros but have been thwarted by Belarusian restrictions. It also accused the Russian military of organizing a “centralized supply” of newly looted Ukrainian “industrial goods and household items” that are moved over the border in truck convoys.

And in the Belarusian city of Mozyr, the GUR said, Russian military trucks bring in looted items that are unloaded by soldiers and sent to Russia via a “Russian express delivery service.”

In the latest sign that Ukrainian personnel have regained control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the nation’s state-owned atomic energy firm Energoatom reported Saturday that the country’s flag has been raised again over the site.

A post shared on the agency’s Telegram account showed the distinctive blue-and-yellow standard fluttering against cloudy skies over a dark gray building.

“The Ukrainian flag has been raised above the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” the post read. “The Ukrainian national anthem was also played over speakers around the station.”

Ukraine’s State Agency on Exclusion Zone Management announced Friday in a Facebook post that no Russian troops were near the site. “At the present moment there are no outsiders at the Chernobylka NPP site,” the agency wrote.

The scene of a major 1986 nuclear accident, the Chernobyl plant was among the first strategic facilities seized by Russian troops in the early days of the invasion, prompting fears around the world of another disaster that could spread radiation to surrounding countries.

The power plant’s last reactor shut down in 2000, and few people live in the surrounding zone, but the site still needs to be managed. The nuclear waste cleanup is expected to be complete more than 40 years from now.

What's at risk at Chernobyl

The former chief prosecutor of two international criminal tribunals has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and said an international warrant should be issued for his arrest.

“Putin is a war criminal,” Carla Del Ponte, said in an interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps published Saturday.

Del Ponte called for the international justice system to issue an international arrest warrant for Putin and other high-ranking Russian political and military officials.

The Swiss lawyer served as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, two ad hoc judicial bodies that preceded the formation of the International Criminal Court. In the former role, she prosecuted war crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and proved that Bosnian Serbs had committed genocide against Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Del Ponte was involved in indicting former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia when he held power in Belgrade.

The U.S. says Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine. Here’s what you need to know.

As head prosecutor for the Rwanda-focused tribunal from 1999 to 2003, Del Ponte was involved in investigating the Rwandan genocide. She also served on a United Nations commission investigating human rights violations in Syria, but she resigned that post out of frustration in 2017 after countries failed to create an international tribunal for Syria.

In interviews with Swiss media about her new book, “Ich bin keine Heldin” (“I am not a heroine”), Del Ponte said scenes emerging from Ukraine evoked memories of the Yugoslav conflicts — particularly images of mass graves. Ukrainians killed by Russian attacks in Mariupol, the besieged city in southeastern Ukraine, have been buried in mass graves as morgues overflow with bodies.

Del Ponte told the German-language newspaper Blick that Russian attacks on civilians and the destruction of entire Ukrainian cities constituted evidence of war crimes.

PARIS — UNESCO warned Friday of a grave risk to Ukraine’s world heritage, saying dozens of culturally significant sites have already been damaged in the Russian invasion.

“Humanity’s heritage is at risk” in Ukraine, UNESCO official Ernesto Ottone said at a news conference in Paris.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) said it has no knowledge of damage to Ukraine’s seven official world heritage sites, which include the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and Lviv’s historic center.

But the organization said at least 53 other culturally significant sites have been damaged or destroyed since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Most of the damage has been reported from areas in and around Kharkiv and Donetsk, although U.N. officials also suspect severe destruction in the city of Chernihiv.

More than two dozen religious sites are confirmed to have been damaged or destroyed, along with several monuments, museums and other buildings, according to UNESCO. U.N. officials are conducting daily assessments of additional damage, and “the list is growing,” Ottone said.

The Ukrainian Culture Ministry said in a statement that bombing caused destruction to monuments and museum buildings in the Kyiv and Sumy regions, in Mariupol and in the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. It also reported damage to six theaters or cinemas and five libraries, as well as churches, mosques and synagogues in the country.

In a letter two weeks ago, UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay urged Russia to respect its obligations under international law and to “ensure the protection of all cultural assets in Ukraine.”

The deliberate targeting of cultural sites can constitute a war crime.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the country must prepare itself for “difficult fights” ahead, even as officials note that Russia appears to be pulling back troops stationed near the capital, Kyiv.

“We need to rid ourselves of illusions: We stand before difficult fights in the south, Mariupol, for the east of Ukraine,” he told national television on Saturday. “But after these fights, I don’t think that there will remain with the Russian Federation enough reserves for active, offensive actions.”

Arestovych also said Ukrainian forces had regained “over 30 settlements” in the Kyiv region, though he did not name them and the claim could not be independently verified by The Post.