As UN inspectors sought to avert a nuclear disaster on Ukraine’s frontline, the West and Russia wounded each other’s economies, with Moscow keeping its main gas pipeline to Germany shut on Saturday while threatened with price caps on oil exports.
Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom blamed a technical fault in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for the delay on Friday. But the high-level manoeuvres in energy politics were seen as an extension of the war, and the ramifications would be felt far beyond Ukraine.
The announcements came as Moscow and Kyiv traded blame over their actions at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where U.N. inspectors arrived on Thursday on a mission to help avert a catastrophe.
