Russia cuts gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria as Ukraine conflict escalates

European gas prices shot up upon the news, which the EU Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen called an attempt at “blackmail”

A Belarusian worker on duty at a gas compressor station of the Yamal-Europe pipeline near Nesvizh (AP)

Russia has said it will shut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria – two European Union nations that back Ukraine – in an escalation of a conflict that is increasingly becoming a wider battle with the West.

One day after the US and other Western allies vowed to speed up and improve military supplies to Ukraine, the Kremlin upped the ante, using its most essential export as leverage.