Police used pepper spray and batons against protesters in the German city of Kassel in the early hours of Friday morning as anti-war demonstrators attempted to block the entrance to an arms factory.
Officers said the protesters had begun to throw objects at them. At least one person was arrested.
Activists for the Disarm Rheinmetall movement have been calling for protests across the country to try and stop the production and delivery of weapons, including for the war in Ukraine.
The scale of energy rationing that may be required at home, in the NHS, schools, care homes, shops, pubs and on the streets of Britain because of surging energy prices and the threat of blackouts is laid bare today.
Experts have told MailOnline there is ‘no escape’ for the 66million people in the UK who will be encouraged to cut their use of gas and electricity this winter and even turn off the lights when the wind drops.
Kathryn Porter, from consultancy Watt-Logic, fears that the crisis will cost lives in the coming months and told MailOnline: ‘We should keep our fingers crossed for a warm and windy winter’. Ms Porter has said that it’s ‘very possible’ the UK will see plans for energy rationing, despite Liz Truss, the likely next prime minister, absolutely ruling it out, but the energy expert added: ‘It would be voluntary, asking people to make a small sacrifice to avoid blackouts’.
Russia’s Gazprom has said natural gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will remain shut off.
It comes after G7 finance ministers agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports in an effort to limit funding for President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Well that worked. I guess.
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over each others’ actions around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Friday as a team of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog tried to check the safety of the facility and avert a potential disaster.
Ukraine’s state nuclear company said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission had not been allowed to enter the plant’s crisis centre, where Ukraine says Russian troops are stationed, and would struggle to make an impartial assessment.
#Ukraine: Perhaps everyone assumed that Bayraktar TB-2 UCAVs are no longer used for offensive actions- but that isn't true.
Aided by HARM strikes, they are operating intensely during the #Kherson Offensive- such as this Russian 2S3 Akatsiya 152mm SPG torn apart just yesterday. pic.twitter.com/Xw3TXAkPzq
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 1, 2022
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, several packages of sanctions targeting Russia’s lucrative energy industry (mostly oil, gas, and coal) have been introduced by the United States, the European Union, and other Western nations. These countries are also undertaking efforts to wean themselves off their dependency on Russian energy supplies.
After shelling occurred near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya power plant, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the international community to come up with a stronger response and ban Russian imports from yet another sector: nuclear power. But blocking and replacing Russia’s deliveries of uranium, reactors, and nuclear technology to the rest of the world is easier said than done.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is investigating allegations that two senior civil servants working in the economy ministry could have been spying for Russia, according to a local media report.
Die Zeit, which first revealed the case, said the officials being investigated had close involvement with energy supply issues and held key positions.
The economy ministry and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, would not comment on the reports. The economy ministry would only say that it was in continual dialogue with the BfV, and that the ministry found itself “under particular focus” due to its work tackling the energy crisis.
Hmmm
German FM: I will put Ukraine first “no matter what my German voters think” or how hard their life gets. pic.twitter.com/GwAqIZ2jL7
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) August 31, 2022
h/t Mauser
As the Ukrainian war rages on, Europeans across the continent are appalled to discover that the man they found shockingly repulsive, Donald Trump, correctly warned that over-reliance on Russia’s energy would cripple their entire way of life.
On Wednesday, Russia announced that it would be cutting off Germany’s gas supply via Nord Stream 1 for the next three days. According to German officials, all they can do is “trust” that they can handle the decrease in natural gas.
They are more willing than I predicted to immiserate their populations
Europe is belatedly grappling with the (entirely foreseeable) consequences of imposing sanctions on Russia. The Nord Stream pipeline has been intermittently closed over the summer, reportedly for “maintenance” (which no one believes). Another closure has just been announced.
As a result, prices are rocketing across the continent, with the ripple effects already being felt by businesses and consumers. “The electricity market is no more a functioning market because there’s one actor — Putin — who’s systematically trying to destroy it”, EU President Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday, as she pledged emergency EU action to mitigate the impact of soaring costs on consumers and businesses.
Eurozone inflation surged to another record high in August, fuelled by soaring energy prices that are threatening to plunge the region into recession.
Annual inflation across the bloc rose to 9.1pc this month, up from 8.9pc in July, according to the latest figures from Eurostat.
Prices are rising at the fastest rate since records began in 1997, piling pressure on the European Central Bank to continue raising interest rates at its meeting next week.
Russia has stopped the flow of gas via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Europe, citing the need to carry out repairs, in a move that has heightened already acute nervousness over the reliability of winter energy supplies.
The halt on the Baltic Sea pipeline at 5am on Wednesday would last for three days, Gazprom, the Russian state energy company said. It had warned two weeks ago that the outage was due but the German government said it had not been formally told, receiving the information instead via social media after it was posted on Gazprom’s Telegram channel.
Kherson was the first major city to fall to Russia after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now it has become the focus of a reported counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces to take it back.
Ukrainian claims of new attacks on Russian positions around the strategic southern port city at the mouth of the Dnieper River’s exit into the Black Sea have spurred speculation that the long-awaited attempt to seize back the region and its capital was under way.
#Ukraine: The K2 Unit of the Ukrainian 54th Mechanized Brigade destroyed a Russian T-72B tank in the vicinity of Marinka, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/12ZpjawXps
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 30, 2022
Ukraine has deployed a fleet of dummy Himars across the battlefield to trick Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range weapons on pointless targets.
The decoy versions of the US-supplied rocket launcher systems have drawn fire from at least 10 Kalibr cruise missiles fired by Moscow’s naval fleet in the Black Sea.
Russian drones were said to be unable to distinguish between the wooden dummy targets and the real deal when scouting the battlefield for Ukrainian targets.
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian Air Force has released video showing for the first time ever US-supplied AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles being fired from their MiG-29 jets.
They seem to be fired in pairs from the inboard pylons where R-27 AAM would otherwise be carried. pic.twitter.com/o0OMTiwnow
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 30, 2022
The European Union now faces up to ten years of “terrible” winters of energy insecurity as a result of its green agenda, with many nations in the bloc having gotten themselves addicted to Russian gas in service of climate crazy ideals.
When Donald Trump was president, he warned Germany that leaving its economy vulnerable to Russia, by depending on Russia for natural, gas was dangerous.
Now I’m not entirely foolish. Please note the qualifier. I am aware that any sentence with Donald Trump as subject, and suggesting that on any issue, any issue at all, he knew what he was talking about and should have been listened to, will for many sensitive readers, bring on convulsions.
#Ukraine: When you need very mobile firepower- a Ukrainian lightweight dune buggy with a French-donated MILAN 2 ATGM launcher mounted on the roof for rapid deployment against Russian armour. pic.twitter.com/htMxtyoUTl
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 24, 2022
