Latest news from Russia and the war in Ukraine

Gazprom said its supply was 42.1 million cubic meters, compared to 42.2 mcm on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Gazprom has blamed the reduction on maintenance of a turbine along the pipeline, which has been greeted with incredulity and condemnation in Europe who say Russia is trying to blackmail nations like Germany. Natural gas prices have surged once again due to the supply squeeze.

“Higher gas prices drive up firms’ costs and squeeze consumers’ budgets, leaving them less money to spend on other goods and services. As a result, we expect the Eurozone to fall into recession this autumn at still high inflation,” Barenberg analysts said in a new research note Thursday.

—Matt Clinch

“The Cold War’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR and NATO – though not without alarming bumps – were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” he said Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the U.S.

“Doctrine is opaque in Moscow and Beijing, let alone Pyongyang or Tehran.”

He added that during the Cold War, the world benefited from a “series of negotiations and dialogues that improved our understanding of Soviet doctrine and capabilities, and vice versa.”

“This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war.”

Watch the full video here.

— Matt Clinch

A U.K. intelligence update Thursday spoke of “gathering momentum” in Ukraine’s attempts to retake the southern city of Kherson from Russian troops.

The city, taken early on in the Russian invasion and the most politically significant area occupied by Moscow, is now “virtually cut off” from the other occupied Russian territories, Britain’s Defense Ministry said.

“Their [Ukraine] forces have highly likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River, which forms the northern boundary of Russian-occupied Kherson,” it said.

On Wednesday, Ukraine confirmed that it had attacked the Antonivsky Bridge, a key supply route for Russian forces in Kherson.

— Matt Clinch