Putin changes who is affected by partial mobilisation drive
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said in televised commentsthat he signed a decree making “corrections” to the partial mobilisation drive he announced 21 September.
Reuters reports that speaking at a meeting with teachers, which was broadcast on state television to mark World Teachers’ Day, Putin said the decree would defer conscription for additional categories of students, including those enrolled at accredited private universities and certain postgraduate students.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has signed the four laws ratifying the Russian Federation’s claimed annexation of the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russian forces do not fully control any of the four areas, and it remains unclear where Russia is attempting to set its new external border.
Ukraine has made major and rapid advances this week, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying in an address on Tuesday night that “dozens” of towns had been recaptured. Ukrainian forces captured the town of Dudchany on the west bank of the Dnipro River in their major advance in Kherson region, and in the east, Ukrainian forces were advancing after capturing Lyman, the main Russian bastion in the north of Donetsk province.
Pro-Russian leaders in the occupied regions have claimed that the situation is stabilising this morning. Denis Pushilin, installed as governor in Donetsk by Russia, has said “the situation on the front line in the Lyman direction is stabilising, the defence line is being strengthened”, while Kirill Stremousov, part of the occupation administration imposed on Kherson, has been quoted saying that Russian forces were “conducting a regrouping in order to gather their strength and deliver a retaliatory blow” in the region, and that “the advance of the armed forces of Ukraine in the Kherson direction has stopped”. None of the claims could be independently verified.
Asked about the proposed borders, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said: “In general, of course, there we are talking about the territory in which the military-civilian administration operated at the time of admission [to Russia]. But I repeat once again: certain territories there will be returned, and we will continue to consult with the population that expresses a desire to live with Russia.”
The UK ministry of defence has said in its daily operational briefing that “Ukraine continues to make progress in offensive operations along both the north-eastern and southern fronts. In the north-east, in Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine has now consolidated a substantial area of territory east of the Oskil River.”
Putin said in televised comments that he had signed a decree making “corrections” to the partial mobilisation drive he announced 21 September. The Russian president said the decree would defer conscription for additional categories of students, including those enrolled at accredited private universities and certain postgraduate students.
The EU has agreed to set a price cap on Russian oil and ban trade in numerous technical and consumer goods, as part of further sanctions designed to counter Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine. The latest round of sanctions, the eighth since February, were signed off by EU ambassadors on Wednesday, a week after the measures were proposed, a timescale regarded as lightning speed in Brussels.
Russia’s foreign ministry has said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) would operate under the supervision of Russian agencies after the annexation declaration. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is expected to visit Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation at the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since the earliest days of the war. Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-enterprise that owns the plant, has said it may restart it to ensure safety.
Oleksandr Starukh, Ukraine’s governor of Zaporizhzhia, said that overnight “the enemy fired rockets at the regional centre and the outskirts of the city. Infrastructure facilities were destroyed.”
Zelenskiy has posted a series of images of damaged buildings across social media from recently liberated Lyman, with the message “Our Lyman after the occupier. All basics of life have been destroyed here. They are doing so everywhere in the territories they seize. This can be stopped in one way only: liberate Ukraine, life, humanity, law and truth as soon as possible.”
The Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, famous for staging an on-air protest against Russia’s war in Ukraine, confirmed she had escaped house arrest over further charges of spreading fake news, saying she had no case to answer.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, says Washington’s decision to send more military aid to Ukraine poses a threat to Moscow’s interests and increases the risk of a military clash between Russia and the west.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that it had expelled a Lithuanian diplomat.
The British prime minister, Liz Truss, has said that Ukraine “will win” and that no peace deal should give away Ukrainian territory. She said: “The Ukrainian people aren’t just fighting for their security but for all of our security. This is a fight for freedom and democracy around the world. We should not give in to those who want a deal which trades away Ukrainian land. They are proposing to pay in Ukrainian lives for the illusion of peace. We will stand with our Ukrainian friends, however long it takes. Ukraine can win. Ukraine must win. And Ukraine will win.”
The latest report from Guardian correspondents in Kyiv and Kryvyi Rih.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has appeared to concede the severity of the Kremlin’s recent military reversals in Ukraine, insisting Russia would “stabilise” the situation in four Ukrainian regions it illegally claimed as its own territory last week.
Russia has suffered significant losses in two of the four regions since Friday, when Putin signed treaties to incorporate them into Russia by force, with Russian officials saying their forces were “regrouping”.
With Ukraine pushing its advance in the east and south, Russian troops have been retreating under pressure on both fronts, confronted by fast moving and agile Ukrainian forces supplied with advanced western-supplied artillery systems.
Ukrainian staff running the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) are preparing to restart one of the plant’s six reactors, all of which are currently shut down, the UN nuclear watchdog has said.
“Senior Ukrainian operating staff informed IAEA experts present at the ZNPP that preparations are under way to start unit 5 at reduced power to produce steam and heat for the needs of the plant,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement, adding that preparations would take “some time”.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Wednesday ordering the Russian government to take control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and make it “federal property”, Reuters reported.
The plant, the biggest in Europe, is controlled by Russian troops but has been operated until now by Ukrainian staff. Its proximity to the frontline of fighting has raised international fears of a nuclear disaster.
The electricity supply to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is fragile, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog has said.
“The situation with regards to external power continues to be extremely precarious. We do have at the moment external power, but it is, I would say, fragile. There is one line feeding the plant,” said Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, via telephone link from Ukraine.
Addressing the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Wednesday, he added that his itinerary would also take him to Russia for talks.
Russia’s foreign ministry said today that it had expelled a Lithuanian diplomat in a retaliatory move. Reuters reports that in a statement posted on its website, the ministry said that it “reserves the right to take additional measures” in response to what it called Lithuania’s “unfriendly steps”.
Putin changes who is affected by partial mobilisation drive
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said in televised commentsthat he signed a decree making “corrections” to the partial mobilisation drive he announced 21 September.
Reuters reports that speaking at a meeting with teachers, which was broadcast on state television to mark World Teachers’ Day, Putin said the decree would defer conscription for additional categories of students, including those enrolled at accredited private universities and certain postgraduate students.
Reuters has a quick snap that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said at a televised meeting with teachers today that Russia had “great respect” for the Ukrainian people, despite what he called “the current situation”.
Referring to the four partly Russian-controlled Ukrainian regions that he declared Russian territory on Friday, Putin said he expected the situation there to “stabilise”.
The former spokesperson to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and one of his erstwhile closest confidantes who was present during his only encounter with Vladimir Putin in 2019, has published a book in which she recalls her time working at Zelenskiy’s side, and does not shy away from criticising him.
In an interview with the newspaper Bild, to coincide with the German publication of her book, Mendel said that no one in Ukraine had been prepared for war, not even Zelenskiy.
But she says she believes Zelenskiy should have acted sooner on intelligence information that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent.
“There is of course criticism in Ukraine. People say: ‘If he knew, he should have told people so that they could have been brought to safety.’ I would say it was very unfair not to tell people anything. There is a lot of injustice contained in this behaviour. But if you ask me what I would have done as a leader, then I really don’t know.”
Mendel said that much of what Zelenskiy has done since the invasion has been “very natural and intuitive. Very logical and correct.”
“I have often been asked about the transition of his image, from the suit to the T-shirt, and whether there were stylists behind the scenes,” she said. But Zelenskiy she insists “made all the decisions himself” and there was “no place for stylists” in the air-raid bunker in which he lived with his core team for weeks on end.
Kirill Stremousov, who is one of the leaders in the Russian-imposed authorities in occupied Kherson, has suggested on Telegram that Ukrainian forces have been suffering casualties during their attempt to push down into Kherson. He posted:
The big game in the Kherson region continues. For many Ukronazis, this game has already ended on the outskirts. All who come with weapons to the territory of the Kherson region of the Russian Federation will be destroyed.
The EU has agreed to set a price cap on Russian oil and ban trade in numerous technical and consumer goods, as part of further sanctions designed to counter Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine.
The latest round of sanctions, the eighth since February, were signed off by EU ambassadors on Wednesday, a week since the measures were proposed, a time scale regarded as lightning speed in Brussels.
EU diplomats confirmed that the bloc had agreed to cap the price of Russian oil, after providing “assurances” to Greece, Cyprus and Malta, countries with large shipping industries. Prior to the agreement, these countries argued the oil price cap should not be imposed by the EU without guarantees that other non-EU countries, such as India, would also sign up to a price cap.
The EU oil price cap follows a pledge by the G7 earlier this month. Under plans agreed by the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, firms shipping and insuring Russian oil will only be able to operate if they adhere to a price below a yet-to-be-determined level.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomed the agreement, saying the EU had moved quickly and decisively.
I welcome the Member States’ agreement today on the 8th sanctions package.
We have moved quickly and decisively.
We will never accept Putin’s sham referenda nor any kind of annexation in Ukraine.
We are determined to continue making the Kremlin pay.
EU officials will be relieved to have secured agreement before two days of summitry in Prague, partly intended as a show of solidarity with Ukraine. Leaders from 44 countries across Europe will meet on Thursday in the Czech capital to discuss security on the continent, followed by an EU summit on Friday where the bloc’s leaders will meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires.
People receive humanitarian aid from a self-organised volunteer group, in the recently recaptured city of Lyman. Photograph: George Ivanchenko/EPA
A destroyed bridge near the recently recaptured city of Lyman. Photograph: George Ivanchenko/EPA
Armoured personnel carriers head to the front lines outside of Kramatorsk. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Leda Buzinna, 56 years-old, sits inside her home that was seriously damaged by shelling overnight on 4 October outside of Kramatorsk district. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion and anti-Putin regime campaigner, has given an interview to the German news magazine Spiegel in which he says that “every Russian who is living in Russia now is part of the war machine” and demands that those who want to stand on the right side of history should leave.
Kasparov tells the magazine that he has spent 20 years fighting against Vladimir Putin. “I always said that his regime would unavoidably become a fascist threat – not only for Russia, not only for its neighbours, but for the entire world. It would have been nice if a few more people would have taken this warning to heart.”
Asked by Spiegel if being abroad – he has lived in political exile since 2013 – he wasn’t in too comfortable a position to be making such demands of those who have yet to leave Russia, he said: “This is war. Either you’re on one side of the front or the other. Every Russian citizen, including me, carries collective responsibility for this war, even if not a personal responsibility. Today Russia is a fascistic dictatorship, which, while we’re speaking here, is carrying out crimes against humanity. And everyone who is still living in Russia now, is a part of this war machinery, whether he wants to be or not.”
Kasparov said Russians who want to be given asylum elsewhere should first have to sign a three-point declaration in which they would “declare the war to be criminal, the Putin regime illegitimate and Ukraine indivisible”, Kasparov said. By signing it, the individual would be liable for prosecution in Russia on three counts according to laws Putin has put in place, he added.
The 59-year old chess grandmaster makes the interesting claim that Putin “never played chess, but poker, and he was good at geopolitical poker. He often played with bad cards and won, because his opponents fell for his bluff.”
The Financial Times is quoting Ihor Romanenko, a former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff, on how vital it is that Ukrainian forces are able to make swift progress during this phase of their counter-offensive. The newspaper reports he said:
Certainly it is crucial to advance swiftly in liberating occupied territory because there is a sense that changes in the weather will limit further active military actions in this region. If our allies were to help us by providing more of the modern weaponry we are asking for, then the situation would be much swifter and we would not be talking about the factor of weather.
Russian news agency RIA is carrying quotes from the deputy foreign minister of RussiaSergei Vershinin confirming that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi will be visiting Moscow. It quotes Vershinin saying:
I confirm reports that Grossi is going to come to Kyiv, and then to Moscow. In terms of time, these will be the next few days.
Vershinin went on to say:
Grossi put forward a number of ideas that are now being discussed with experts. The task is nuclear safety and the exclusion of shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is carried out by the Ukrainian side, and the normal functioning of the nuclear power plant.
The IAEA has previously called for a nuclear safety exclusion zone around the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March. Until now it has continued to be operated by staff employed by Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-enterprise which manages the plant.
However, the plant sits on land that has now been claimed to be annexed by Russia, and Vershinin said: “The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is now on the territory of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, should be operated under the supervision of our relevant agencies.”
Both Russian and Ukraine have accused the other side of shelling the plant and risking a nuclear accident.
Reuters is reporting some diplomatic tension between Russia and Kazakhstan over the Ukraine war with Kazakh authorities rejecting a demand from Russia that they expel Ukraine’s ambassador over comments about killing Russians, chiding Moscow for what they called an inappropriate tone between “equal strategic partners”.
Ukraine’s ambassador in Astana, Petro Vrublevskiy, said in August in an interview with a local blogger that “the more Russians we kill now, the fewer of them our children will have to kill”.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Tuesday said Moscow was “outraged” by the fact that Vrublevskiy was still in Astana and had summoned the Kazakh ambassador.
Kazakh foreign ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov on Wednesday called Zakharova’s tone “discordant with the nature of the allied relations between Kazakhstan and Russia as equal strategic partners”, adding that the Russian ambassador would in turn be summoned to the Kazakh ministry.
British PM Truss: there should be no peace deal which 'trades away Ukrainian land'
The British Prime Minister Liz Truss has said that Ukraine “will win” and that no peace deal should give away Ukrainian territory while addressing the annual conference of the UK’s ruling Conservative party in Birmingham. She said:
The Ukrainian people aren’t just fighting for their security but for all of our security. This is a fight for freedom and democracy around the world.
Putin’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory is just the latest act in his campaign to subvert democracy and violate international law.
We should not give in to those who want a deal which trades away Ukrainian land. They are proposing to pay in Ukrainian lives for the illusion of peace.
We will stand with our Ukrainian friends, however long it takes. Ukraine can win. Ukraine must win. And Ukraine will win.
She received one of the warmest rounds of applause of her speech for the section on Ukraine and went on to say that she was sure that Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian people would appreciate “our solidarity with them at this very difficult time”.
Prime minister Liz Truss speaks during the final day of the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was asked in his regular briefing about the borders of Russia’s claimed annexation. He said:
Read the order. There is a legal wording there. In general, of course, there we are talking about the territory in which the military-civilian administration operated at the time of admission [to Russia]. But I repeat once again: certain territories there will be returned, and we will continue to consult with the population that expresses a desire to live with Russia.
The state-owned Tass news agency reported earlier:
New regions within Russia will retain the status of republics and regions and their former names. According to the documents, the boundaries of the regions will be determined by their borders, which “existed on the day of their formation and acceptance into the Russian Federation”. The territory of the DPR and LPR is defined by the 2014 borders established in their constitutions. Zaporizhzhia is part of the Russian Federation within its administrative boundaries, and Kherson region - with two districts of the Mykolaiv region, explained the head of the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov.
