The Swiss government has agreed to offer financial help to the publicly owned electricity group Axpo, Agence France-Presse reports.
It is the latest European energy company to require state aid after Russia’s war in Ukraine sent gas prices soaring.
Axpo, which requested temporary government help last week, will have access to credit line of 4bn Swiss francs ($4.1bn) to ensure liquidity amid the energy crisis.
The Federal Energy Office said:
The government responded favourably to avoid putting Switzerland’s energy supply in jeopardy.”
It added that Axpo was an electricity firm of “systemic importance” for the country.
Updated at 05.26 EDT
05.06 EDT
Erdogan blames Europe energy crisis on sanctions imposed on Russia
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has blamed Europe’s energy crisis on sanctions it imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine - a line taken by the Kremlin itself.
He said that European nations were “harvesting what they sowed” by imposing economic restrictions on Russia, Agence France-Presse reports.
Erdoğan added:
Europe’s attitude towards Mr Putin, its sanctions, brought Mr Putin – willingly or not – to the point of saying: ‘If you do this, I will do that.’
He is using all his means and weapons. Natural gas, unfortunately, is one of them.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday blamed Russia’s halting of gas deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline on “sanctions that were imposed against our country”.
Jailed Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny’s chief of staff said worsening prison conditions were threatening his health.
In a post on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, Navalny wrote last week via his lawyers that he had been sent to a punishment cell for a third time in August in revenge for his political activity. The prison service did not respond to a request for comment.
Navalny’s cell is reported to be two by three metres wide with a table, chair and bed which is folded from 6am to 10pm.
His chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, told Reuters:
Suddenly, three weeks ago, they started to dramatically worsen his conditions, which actually poses an enormous threat to his health, because no normal person could spend a long time in that ‘special’ cell.
And for Alexei, who had just survived the poisoning, it is especially dangerous.”
Volkov, who keeps in touch with the opposition leader through lawyers, said that Navalny is still “mentally and physically very fit”.
He added:
The fact that Putin is losing (the war), and is getting less and less predictable, makes the situation more dangerous.”
Navalny is serving eleven-and-a-half years in prison for parole violations, fraud and contempt of court charges, which he denies.
His Anti-Corruption Foundation is preparing to turn the upcoming local elections in Moscow into an anti-war vote.