Germany’s vice chancellor has said Russia’s continued income from high fuel prices “hurts”, but insisted “time is working against Russia” with its economy collapsing.
Robert Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy minister, told the German parliament on Thursday that “the income that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has obtained in recent months because of high prices hurts, and we can only be ashamed that we haven’t yet managed to reduce this dependence more significantly”.
But he argued that looking at Russia’s gas and oil income does not tell the whole story.
Mr Habeck said that “Putin is still getting money, but he can hardly spend it any more” because of Western sanctions. He also pointed to big drops in exports to Russia, including from Germany.
The minister said that “time is not working for Russia. It is working against Russia, it is working against the Russian economy”.
He added that “no-one wants to invest in Russia any more”.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s emergency officials said Russian shelling overnight set a school on fire in the city of Kharkiv, with a woman dying in the blaze.
Another man sustained injuries, Ukrainian officials said.
Fires from the shelling also occurred in other areas of the Kharkiv region.
Russian forces also shelled the Dnipropetrovsk region overnight, its governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said on Telegram.
He said the shelling took place on the border with the Kherson region, much of which is under Moscow’s control.
In the Sumy region that borders Russia, three people were wounded as a result of overnight missile strikes, governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyi said.
In the east, according to Ukraine’s General Staff, Russian troops continued storming the key city of Sievierodonetsk.
Moscow’s forces also stormed the town of Komyshuvakha in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, large parts of which are under Russian control, the General Staff’s morning update said.
Earlier, a Russian missile hit rail lines in the western Lviv region, a key conduit for supplies of Western weapons and other supplies, officials said.
Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said five people were wounded in the strike.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the country’s interior minister, said the Russians hit the Beskidy railway tunnel in the Carpathian Mountains in an apparent effort to cut a key railway link and disrupt shipments of weapons and fuel.
However, the head of Ukrainian railways said the damage to the railway was still being assessed, but the tunnel was spared.
The strike reportedly delayed three passenger trains, but all later resumed their journeys.
