MOSCOW: Russia’s Black Sea port of Taman, which handles oil products, grain, coal and commodities, has been damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said on Sunday.
Two people were injured as an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals took damage in Volna village, the site of Taman port, Veniamin Kondratyev said in a post on Telegram.
Kondratyev said that more than 100 people were working to put out several fires at the port.
Separate strikes on the resort city of Sochi and the village of Yurovka, close to the seaside town of Anapa, had caused less significant damage, he added.
Ukraine has resumed attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in recent days after a US-brokered moratorium on such strikes expired.
Russia has repeatedly targeted energy and utility infrastructure in Ukraine, cutting off heating and electricity to hundreds of thousands of people in the midst of an unusually cold winter.
Industry sources said that about 4.16 million metric tons of oil products were shipped through Taman last year.
Russia’s Taman port damaged by Ukrainian drone strike
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Russia’s Taman port damaged by Ukrainian drone strike
- Two people were injured as an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals took damage in Volna village, the site of Taman port
Germany’s Merz vows to keep out far-right as he warns of a changed world
- “We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” Merz told party delegates
- He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats
STUTTGART, Germany: Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Friday not to let the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “ruin” Germany and told his fellow conservatives to prepare for a raw new climate of great-power competition.
Merz’s message to the Christian Democrat (CDU) party’s conference in Stuttgart reiterated points he made at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, saying the “rules based order we knew no longer exists.” He also made calls for economic reform, and a rejection of antisemitism and the AfD, which is aiming to win its first state election this year.
“We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” he told party delegates, who welcomed former chancellor Angela Merkel with a storm of applause on her first visit to the conference since stepping down in 2021.
Merz, trailing badly in the polls ahead of a string of state elections this year, said he accepted criticism that the reforms he announced during last year’s election campaign had been slower than initially communicated.
“I will freely admit that perhaps, after the change of government, we did not make it clear quickly enough that we would not be able to achieve this enormous reform effort overnight,” he said.
He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats and promised to push ahead with efforts to cut bureaucracy, bring down energy costs and foster investment, saying that economic prosperity was vital to Germany’s security.
He also pledged further reforms of the welfare state and said new proposals for a reform of the pension system would be presented, following a revolt by younger members of his own party in a bruising parliamentary battle last year.
Merz’s speech was greeted with around 10 minutes of applause as delegates put on a show of unity and he was re-elected as party chairman with 91 percent of the vote, avoiding any potentially embarrassing display of internal dissatisfaction.
Among other business, the party conference is due to discuss a motion to block access to social media platforms for children under the age of 16. However any legislation would take time because under the German system, state governments have the main responsibility for regulating media.
The elections begin next month with the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate before a further round later in the year, one of them in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD hopes to win its first state ballot.
