Japan stops buying coal from Russia
Japan announced Friday that it will give up Russian coal and expel eight of its diplomats, in response to “war crimes” allegedly perpetrated by Moscow in Ukraine.
These announcements come after the EU adopted a series of similar measures, reinforcing pressure on Russia, accused of carrying out massacres of civilians in the kyiv region.
“We will ban the import of Russian coal. We will adopt alternatives by progressively reducing imports, we will reduce our energy dependence on Russia,” he added.
In 2001, 11% of Japan’s coal imports came from Russia, according to data from the Japanese Ministry of Finance.
The FAO recorded a sharp increase in international food prices in March
The world prices of food raw materials registered a “significant jump” in their prices in March, with “strong increases in the values of corn, wheat and vegetable oils”, driven by the war between Russia and Ukraine, as reported today the indicator of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The index, which records the monthly changes in the most traded food commodities in the world and which has accumulated an increase of 75% since the middle of 2020, averaged 159.3 points in January, 12.6% more than in February -when presented record numbers – and 33.6% in the interannual comparison, thus reaching the highest level since its creation in 1990.
Among the reasons for the jump, is the “shock that the war represented in the markets of basic grains and vegetable oils”, according to the FAO report, a conflict that also caused a “modification in the flows of trade and export restrictions in various countries.
Likewise, to these reasons we must add the rise in the prices of energy and fertilizers in the world.
In the case of the index that makes up cereals, it registered a rise of 17.1%.
Since Russia and Ukraine both account for 30% and 20% of world wheat and corn exports, respectively, prices for both grains rose 19.7% and 19.1%.
The EU has already frozen at least 32 billion dollars of Russian and Belarusian assets
The European Union has frozen at least $32 billion of Russian and Belarusian assets so far under sanctions imposed in the wake of the war in Ukraine, according to a still-partial tally by the European Commission on Friday.
The assets include ships, helicopters, real estate and works of art worth nearly €6.7 billion. This count “is still going on,” the European executive said in a statement.
Brussels asked member states to share their information and so far “more than half of them” have done so.
The EU Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, urged “all Member States to take all necessary measures to apply the sanctions and those that have not yet done so to inform the Commission without delay.”
The EU approved a fifth package of sanctions against Russia on Thursday, which includes an embargo on Russian coal and the closure of European ports to Russian ships.
Zelenski describes the attack on the train station in Ukraine as “unlimited evil”
the ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenskydescribed the rocket attack on the Kramatorsk train station, in the east of the country, where at least 35 people were killed this Friday, as an act of “unlimited evil” on the part of Russia.
“Since they have no strength or courage to face us on the battlefield, they cynically destroy the civilian population. It is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop,” the president said on Telegram.
Crossed accusations for the attack on the Kramatorsk station
Kramatorsk station is located in the east of Ukraine. At the time of the attack, hundreds of people were waiting for a train to leave that region. besieged by Russian forces on the 44th day of the invasion of Ukraine. The fact produced a new exchange of accusations between Russia and Ukraine.
The event was first reported by the person in charge of the railway station, Oleksander Kamishin, and by an authority in the Donetsk area -where Kramatorsk is located- that is not in the hands of Russia, and led to emphatic condemnations from the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, and of the European Union.
The Russian Ministry of Defense immediately stated that it had not launched any attack against the Kramatorsk station. and went further by pointing out that “Tochka-U tactical missileswhose fragments were found in the vicinity of the Kramatorsk station and (whose images) were released by witnesses, they are only used by the Ukrainian armed forces”.
“All the statements of the representatives of the nationalist regime in kyiv about the alleged ‘rocket attack’ carried out by Russia on April 8 at the railway station in the city of Kramatorsk they are a provocation and they are absolutely false”the ministry said in a statement.
At least 35 people were killed in an attack on the Kramatorsk railway station.
At least 35 people died and another 100 were injured. this Friday, in a rocket attack on the station of Kramatorskin eastern Ukraine, where hundreds of people were waiting for a train to leave the region.
“More than 30 people died and more than 100 were injured after a rocket fired at the station (…) It is a deliberate attack,” he said on Telegram. Oleksander Kamyshinresponsible for the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia.