The European Union and Britain announced new serious sanctions against Russia, the Chief Rabbi of Russia called on Lavrov to apologize to the Jews, and the situation on the fronts again did not change.

In a time of war, the BBC cannot promptly verify the allegations of the parties.

The situation on the fronts on May 4, on the 70th day of the war, judging by the reports, again did not undergo significant changes.

The Russian side did not report on any noticeable territorial acquisitions.

The Ukrainian General Staff in the evening report writes that Russian troops on Wednesday continued their attempts to advance from Izyum to the south, to Liman and Severodonetsk (this is the northern part of the eastern front), on the border of the Kherson and Nikolaev regions in the south, and also resumed attempts to storm the besieged “Azovstal” in Mariupol – but nowhere, according to the Ukrainian military, they were not successful.

The European Commission has published a draft of a new round of sanctions against Russia, which could deal a serious blow to the Russian economy and budget.

The European Commission proposes:

The oil embargo is, in terms of money, potentially the most powerful measure that Europe has applied or could apply to the Kremlin. 60% of Russian oil exports go to Europe. During the two and a half months of the war, the EU paid Russia more than 20 billion euros for oil and over 30 billion euros for gas (but several European countries cannot give up gas in the near future without too much damage to their economies).

Some cannot give up oil quickly either, and therefore, according to Brussels, some countries – at least Hungary and Slovakia – will be asked to get rid of oil dependence on Russia more slowly than others.

“Let’s face it: it will not be easy. Some members of the union are heavily dependent on Russian oil. We will take care of the phase-out of Russian oil. We will increase the pressure on Russia as much as possible, minimizing the impact on our economy,” Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.

It is expected that the new package of sanctions will be officially approved by the European Union and put into effect within a few days. True, the Hungarian government continues to say that it will not support the current proposal of the European Commission regarding the oil embargo, so negotiations with the Hungarians and the process as a whole may be delayed.

Britain also once again expanded sanctions against Russia. Chief among the new measures is a ban on providing management consulting, accounting and PR services to Russia and its firms.

“Doing business with the Putin regime is morally untenable and helps fund a war machine that is causing untold suffering throughout Ukraine. Cutting off Russia’s access to British services will increase pressure on the Kremlin and ultimately help lead Putin to failure in Ukraine,” she said. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on this occasion.

In addition, Britain has imposed sanctions on Kamaz, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, several small Russian publications and several employees of Russian television companies and a newspaper, namely against the host of the Odnako program on Channel One and vice president of Rosneft, Mikhail Leontiev, the presenter and the author of the programs at the VGTRK, Naila Asker-Zade, the VGTRK war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, the Komsomolskaya Pravda war correspondent Alexander Kots, and the Irishman Brian McDonald, who works in the English-language edition of RT.

In addition, several other high-ranking officials and managers fell under the sanctions.

Belarus on Wednesday morning announced a big exercise – a “sudden check of combat readiness.”

So far, these exercises do not look like a serious cause for concern: there is no mass movement of troops towards Ukraine, at least in open sources, and the Ukrainian military and border guards have again assured that they are ready for a hypothetical entry of Belarus into the war.

Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar committed an extremely unusual act and condemned a representative of the Russian leadership, namely Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who had previously stated that Hitler allegedly had Jewish roots.

“I do not consider myself entitled to give advice to the head of Russian diplomacy, but it would be nice if he apologized to the Jews and simply admitted his mistake,” Lazar said in a commentary to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

Lavrov made a remark about Hitler’s Jewish roots in an interview on Italian television on 1 May. In response to an Italian journalist’s remark that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew, Lavrov said that Hitler also had Jewish roots, and that Jews themselves are ardent anti-Semites.

This statement outraged many, and above all – the Israelis. The Israeli Foreign Minister and other officials sharply condemned Lavrov’s words, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a rebuke that further angered the Israelis – and now the Israeli press writes that Israel, which has so far tried to balance in the Russian-Ukrainian rivalry, has withdrawn its objections to re-exports by third countries his weapons to Ukraine and he himself is thinking about military assistance to the Ukrainians.