Russian missile attacks on state-owned natural gas assets in Ukraine have forced the country to buy expensive replacement fuel from the European Union, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Ukraine has turned to buying natural gas from the European Union as Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have reduced domestically sourced supply

The European Commission will continue talks with Ukraine on natural gas supplies to Europe and will include Hungary and Slovakia in these talks, according to a statement shared by an EU diplomat and seen by Reuters on Monday.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union greatly affected this decades-old gas business. Russian gas now had to transit an independent Ukraine. Even so, Russia continued to increase its exports to Europe, with the exported volume rising from 110 billion cubic meters in 1990 to 175 billion in 2020.

The U.S. special envoy to Russia and Ukraine said Thursday the U.S. plans to significantly step up pressure on Russia through sanctions to end the war in Ukraine. In an exclusive interview with the New York Post,

Earlier this week, a bomb went off in a quiet Moscow suburb. A man named Armen Sargsyan was killed. He was the leader of a pro-Russian paramilitary group in eastern Ukraine and was a wanted man in Kyiv since 2014.

"As of 2100 [6pm], units of the North group of forces have thwarted an attempted counter-attack by the Ukrainian armed forces aimed at the settlements of Cherkasskaya Konopelka an