Moscow suspends gas pipeline indefinitely

European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer says Gazprom’s complete halt to flows on Nord Stream 1 was made under “fallacious pretenses”.

“It’s also proof of Russia’s cynicism, as it prefers to flare gas instead of honoring contracts,” he wrote on Twitter.

Germany says its gas supplies were secure despite a move by Russian energy giant Gazprom to extend a stop to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, adding to fears of shortages this winter.

“The situation on the gas market is tense, but security of supply is guaranteed,” a spokeswoman for the economy ministry said in a statement.

The spokeswoman did not comment on the “substance” of Gazprom’s announcement earlier on Friday but said Germany had “already seen Russia’s unreliability in the past few weeks”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Grossi, has said six members of his team remain in the Zaporizhzhia power plant and that two of them will stay next week as part of the mission’s continuous presence at the site in the longer term.

Grossi spoke in Vienna after completing a tour in certain areas of the Russian-occupied power plant. He also said the plant is not fully functioning but not in critical sections. Grossi also described the situation as “extremely complex and challenging”.

Grossi said he was expecting to produce a report on the site early next week and that another crisis centre was set up at the plant. He noted that he was able to inspect everything that his team had requested.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said Russia will find it advantageous to sell oil at a price capped by Western countries because otherwise it would have to shut down production, and its ability to restart output would suffer permanent damage.

Yellen told MSNBC in an interview that the G7’s price cap plan would reduce funds available for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

“They will do much better economically if they choose to sell into the price cap than if they were to shut in that oil,” she said of Russia.

Russian gas flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany will remain halted beyond Saturday after an oil leak was detected, the state-owned company Gazprom says.

The Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers have agreed to implement a price cap on Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products, they confirmed in a joint statement.

The initial price cap will be based on a range of technical inputs and the price level will be revisited as necessary, said the ministers.

“We aim to align implementation with the timeline of related measures within the EU´s sixth sanctions package,” they added.

The move comes a day after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that Moscow would halt oil and petroleum products supplies to countries deciding to cap the Russian oil price.

Russia has said gas deliveries via one of the main supply routes to Europe, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, remained at risk because just one turbine was operational, deepening European concerns as it struggles to secure enough fuel for winter.

Nord Stream 1’s flows were halted for three days this week for maintenance, with deliveries due to resume on Saturday at 01:00 GMT.

Sources familiar with Gazprom’s plans said the state-controlled firm was set to resume Nord Stream 1 deliveries on schedule, although European nations remain wary about Russian intentions.

Europe’s energy security is impossible without Russia, the country’s State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin says.

“Sanctions against our country led to an energy crisis in European states,” Volodin said on social media. The EU member states, Volodin added, have two ways out of the current situation: removing sanctions against Russia and launching the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Vitaliy Kim, the regional governor of the southern region of Mykolaiv, says Russian forces shelled several villages overnight, partially destroying commercial and residential buildings.

No casualties were reported, he added on his Telegram channel.

The fifth reactor of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been reconnected to Ukraine’s grid a day after it shut down due to shelling near the site, state nuclear company Energoatom said.

“At present two reactor blocks are working at the station, generating electricity for the needs of Ukraine,” Energoatom said on Telegram, adding the fifth reactor had been reconnected at 1.10pm local time (10:10 GMT).

The plant was occupied by Russian troops in March, but it continues to be operated by Ukrainian engineers despite repeated shelling on its territory, for which Kyiv and Moscow blame each other.

The counterattack launched by Ukraine in the south of the country has largely failed, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said.

“Ukrainian forces continue to launch attempted attacks between Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, as well as in other areas, and the enemy is suffering heavy losses,” Shoigu said on the ministry’s Telegram channel on Friday.

Kyiv’s only goal in the offensive is “to create an illusion among Western officials that the Ukrainian army is capable of attacks,” he said.

Kyiv wants to drive Russian troops stationed west of the Dnieper back behind the river in the Kherson region, Shoigu added.

The statements could not be independently verified.

Here are three maps, which are updated daily by Al Jazeera, charting the war in Ukraine:

World food prices have fallen for a fifth consecutive month, partly thanks to the resumption of exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, a UN agency said on Friday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index, which tracks the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, has been falling steadily since hitting an all-time high in March following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There was a moderate decline of 1.9 percent in August.

The Kremlin has said it viewed as “very positive” the arrival of inspectors from the UN atomic agency at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine

“In general, we are very positive about the fact that, despite all the difficulties and problems … the commission arrived and started to work,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, adding it was “too early” to evaluate the UN team’s work.

Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would turn off gas supply to Europe if Brussels pushes ahead with a price cap on Russian gas.

Responding to comments by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about putting a ceiling on the price Europe pays for Russian gas, Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “There will simply be no Russian gas in Europe.”

The Kremlin says Moscow will stop selling oil to countries that impose price caps on Russia’s energy resources.

Moscow said the caps will lead to significant destabilisation of the global oil market.

“Companies that impose a price cap will not be among the recipients of Russian oil,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a conference call, endorsing comments made on Thursday by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu says Ukraine is continuing to shell the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the risks of a nuclear catastrophe in Europe.

Shoigu accused Ukraine of “nuclear terrorism” and rejected assertions by Kyiv and the West that Russia had deployed heavy weapons at the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March.

Both Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of attacking the facility.

Russian automaker AvtoVAZ says the sales of new cars rose sharply in August as the industry continues to grapple with the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Lada manufacturer said it sold 18,087 passenger cars during the month – up 75.2 percent from July. Sales were down 7 percent compared with August 2021. It was the best monthly performance for the car manufacturer since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February.

AvtoVAZ President Maxim Sokolov said sales of two Lada models – the Granta and Niva – had recovered to “pre-crisis levels”, which he said was an “important achievement” on the company’s road to recovery.

“We will successfully overcome the current difficulties and meet demand in the Russian car market,” he said in a statement.

Pavel Palazhchenko, Mikhail Gorbachev’s interpreter for decades, says the late Soviet leader was traumatised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Palazhchenko, who worked with the late Soviet president for 37 years and was at his side at numerous US-Soviet summits, spoke to Gorbachev a few weeks ago by phone and said he and others had been struck by how traumatised he was by events in Ukraine.

“It’s not just the (special military) operation that started on February 24, but the entire evolution of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the past years that was really, really a big blow to him. It really crushed him emotionally and psychologically,” Palazhchenko told the Reuters news agency.

“It was very obvious to us in our conversations with him that he was shocked and bewildered by what was happening (after Russian troops entered Ukraine in February) for all kinds of reasons. He believed not just in the closeness of the Russian and Ukrainian people, he believed that those two nations were intermingled.”

Read more here.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) mission to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant could still be important despite the difficulties caused by the Russian presence at the site,

“We did everything to ensure that IAEA would get access to the Zaporizhzhia plant and I believe that this mission may still have a role to play,” Zelenskiyy said in a video streamed at a forum in Italy.