Ukrainian president makes appeal to Nato members; Russia’s state-run atomic energy agency warns of risk of nuclear accident. This live blog is now closed
Ukrainian soldiers fire an artillery at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine.
Italy’s government will ask parliament to pass a new law on military and civilian supplies to Ukraine throughout 2023, defence minister Guido Crosetto said in an interview.
Continue reading...Russian forces launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday, Zelenskiy says; UN nuclear watchdog to assess Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
Continue reading...Explosions cause damage at Ukrainian power plant, as Kyiv says it will investigate videos allegedly of surrendering Russians being shot
The UN nuclear energy watchdog has said the forces behind the shelling of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant are “playing with fire”, after a series of explosions shook the facility.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts based at Zaporizhzhia, reported on Sunday that powerful explosions had shaken the area on Saturday night and Sunday. It said its on-site experts saw some of the explosions from their windows.
Continue reading...French president says Moscow is pursuing ‘predatory project’ to spread influence in African countries
Emmanuel Macron has accused Russia of feeding disinformation to further its “predatory project” in Africa, where France has had military setbacks.
In an interview with TV5 Monde on the sidelines of a conference of Francophone nations in Tunisia, he said there was a “predatory project” pushing disinformation into African countries, which was “a political project financed by Russia, sometimes others”.
Continue reading...Attacks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are ‘playing with fire’, UN warns as Ukraine adviser urges against talks with Kremlin
Continue reading...Opposition to Russian aggression has helped Poles and Ukrainians put bitter 20th-century history behind them
Patriot missiles ring the airport in the Polish border city of Rzeszów, and US troops have taken over the Holiday Inn opposite the terminal. On its runway, once the preserve of budget carriers, private jets are lined up beside cargo planes crammed with weapons.
The bristling circle of military protection, set up hastily in early spring as the historic town became the world’s gateway to the war in Ukraine, is both a shield and a constant reminder of the conflict on its doorstep.
Continue reading...UK prime minister makes first visit to Ukraine since taking power
Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering.
“Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.
This is important for Russia as debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defence spending, which has increased significantly since the invasion of Ukraine.
Debt issuance is expensive during periods of uncertainty. The size of this auction highly likely indicates the Russian Ministry of Finance perceives current conditions as relatively favourable but is anticipating an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment over the next year.
Continue reading...Kyiv could face ‘complete shutdown’ of power amid crippled Ukrainian grid; hundreds of Ukrainians disappeared in Kherson, say war crime researchers
Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, the government in Kyiv has said, as authorities warned that the city could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.
With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the war. The UN says Ukraine’s electricity and water shortages threaten a humanitarian disaster.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the idea of a “short truce” with Russia, saying it would only make things worse. “Russia is now looking for a short truce, a respite to regain strength,” the Ukrainian president said in remarks broadcast at the Halifax International Security Forum. “Someone may call this the war’s end, but such a respite will only worsen the situation.”
Hundreds of Ukrainians were detained and abducted in Kherson after Russia seized the province, in evidence of a planned campaign, a Yale University group researching war crimes has said. The Conflict Observatory said it had documented 226 extrajudicial detentions and forced disappearances in Kherson. About a quarter of that number were allegedly subjected to torture and four died in custody.
The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline. The footage appears to show Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie face down. One of the men, as he emerges from the building, appears to turn his gun on Ukrainian soldiers. The footage suggests all the Russians were killed in the violence that followed.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, talked with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and they congratulated each other for the extension of a UN-brokered grains deal, Erdoğan’s office said. Erdoğan told Zelenskiy the “extension of this understanding to the negotiation table” would benefit all parties.
The Dutch government will summon the Russian ambassador in the Netherlands over Russia’s response to the verdict in the trial over the 2014 shooting down of passenger flight MH17, news agency ANP reported, citing the foreign minister, Wopke Hoekstra. Russia has criticised the Dutch court’s decision to convict two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader.
Ukrainian experts were working at the site in the border area of south-eastern Poland where a missile killed two people, said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. He wrote on Twitter that Ukraine would continue “open and constructive” cooperation with Poland over the incident.
Poland will not grant a Russian delegation visas to attend an Organisation for Security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Lodz on 1 and 2 December. “We are not giving them visas,” said Lukasz Jasina from the Polish foreign ministry.
Vladimir Putin discussed creating a Turkish “gas hub” with Erdoğan, the Kremlin said on Friday. “Particular attention is paid to the prospects of implementing the initiative, launched by the Russian president in October and supported by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
Ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group said some members condemned the war in Ukraine and also pledged to keep supply chains and markets open. “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” their joint statement read, adding that Apec was not the forum to resolve security issues.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, has said two more bodies have been recovered in Vilniansk in the Zaporizhzhia region. “Thus nine people have already been found dead from the rockets of Russian terrorists who fired at residential buildings yesterday,” he said on Telegram. The claims have not been independently verified.
The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia appeared to be preparing defences for further major Ukrainian breakthroughs in Donetsk province.
Construction of a planned barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia will start early next year, Finnish border guard officials said, amid concerns over Europe’s changing security environment.
Continue reading...A video has circulated on social media reportedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting at least 10 Russians
The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline.
The footage appears to show a group of Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie facedown.
Continue reading...First-hand accounts from Russian prison where US basketball star has been sent paint a grim picture
The US basketball star Brittney Griner will endure harsh conditions inside the remote Mordovian penal colony to which she has been sent this week to serve her nine-year prison sentence, human rights experts and former prisoners of the colony have said.
“Prisons in Mordovia are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards. The prisons there are known for the harsh regimes and human rights violations,” said Olga Zeveleva, a sociologist at the University of Helsinki who specialises in Russian prison conditions as part of the Gulag Echoes project. “It is a place any prisoner wants to avoid,” Zeveleva said.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
The Russian state-owned RIA Novosti news agency has reported that a school was struck by Ukrainian fire in the occupied region of Donetsk, one of the areas of Ukraine that the Russian Federation claims to have annexed.
It quotes the Russian-imposed mayor of Donetsk Aleksey Kulemin saying that 10 shells were fired at the central districts of the city, two of which landed in close proximity to the school. The report states that:
According to local residents, there were about five hits. Due to the fact that the shelling took place during the curfew, there were no casualties. The windows were broken, the walls in the school building were cut with shrapnel.
Continue reading...Swedish prosecutor says ‘complex’ investigation and analysis continue to see if suspects can be identified
Traces of explosives have been found at the sites of September’s multiple leaks from the Nord Stream gas pipelines, confirming that the breaches were the result of sabotage, Sweden’s prosecution authority has said.
“Analysis that has now been carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the objects that were recovered” from the scene in the Baltic Sea, Mats Ljungqvist, the prosecutor leading the investigation, said on Friday.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
Multi-employer bargaining should be limited to low paid sectors – Westacott
The second thing Jennifer Westacott tells Patricia Karvelas the BCA doesn’t like, is that big business could bargain together:
The second thing we’re really concerned about is the kind of expansion of the multi-employer agreement remember at the summit of the jobs and skill set that this was very much about low paid workers.
So our argument is, well, why wouldn’t you just fix up that low paid stream rather than what we’re currently doing, which was more we have to carve the sector out. The issue and this is more complex is than in the current proposal, and we’re very worried about this, that big employers could be forced to bargain together and that is not good for wages.
The first is and the government to be fair, let’s be clear, we are working constructively with the government. We’re working constructively with the crossbench I think everyone wants Australians wages to go up.
I don’t think the legislation in its current form is going to do that and let me give you those three reasons.
Well, we want to see obviously that period longer, but we want to see kind of much clearer kind of restatement of the objects of the act that the single enterprise system is the system that we want people to use. We want it to be much easier for people where they agree they just keep bargaining.
Continue reading...Campaigners hope agreement will change military norms, though it was not endorsed by countries including Russia, Israel and China
Eighty countries led by the US, UK and France have signed a declaration in Dublin pledging to refrain from urban bombing, the first time countries have agreed to curb the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
The international agreement is a product of more than three years of negotiation – predating the war in Ukraine – but was not endorsed by several major military powers, including Russia, China, Israel and India.
Continue reading...Lawyers say US basketball star ‘doing as well as could be expected’ at IK-2 in Mordovia, following visit
Basketball star Brittney Griner has been sent to a remote Russian penal colony to start serving her sentence, her lawyers have said.
“Brittney began serving her sentence at IK-2 in Mordovia,” lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov said in a statement.
Continue reading...Kremlin spokesperson claims ‘Ukrainians do not want any negotiations’; Kyiv and Dnipro air defence systems work to shoot down incoming rockets
Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov has said that the Black Sea grain initiative will be prolonged for 120 days.
Writing in a tweet, he said the deal was agreed between UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres and Ukraine’s president, Volodimir Zelenskiy.
He added that Ukraine had officially appealed to extend the initiative, which was agreed in July and enables Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, for one year and to include the Mykolaiv port.
His remarks could not immediately be confirmed independently.
The July deal has helped stave off a global food crisis by allowing exports through ports that had been blockaded by Russia.
Germany latest to end peacekeeping mission as operations prove unable to stop Islamic extremist insurgency
Thousands of international troops are withdrawing from Mali amid surging violence, growing Russian influence and an acute humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday Germany became the latest country to end its participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in the unstable west African country. Earlier this week, British officials said that 300 British soldiers sent in 2020 to join the United Nations force would be returning earlier than planned.
Continue reading...Court says Russia had overall control of the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine at the time when the plane was shot down
A Dutch court has found three men guilty of the murder of 298 people onboard flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was flying over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
The court handed down sentences of life imprisonment to the Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy and a Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko, after finding them guilty of bringing down the plane and the murder of everyone onboard. They were ordered to pay “more than €16m” in compensation to the victims. The three men remain at large and it remains unclear if they will ever serve their sentences.
Continue reading...Attack is the sixth since early October and authorities in Kyiv said energy infrastructure was again being targeted
Russia has unleashed another wave of rocket, drone and missile strikes across Ukraine in its sixth mass attack since early October.
Ukraine’s authorities said the attack, like the previous five, was aimed at destroying the country’s energy system.
Strikes on critical infrastructure in Odesa and Dnipro were confirmed by the presidential administration and the regional heads on Thursday morning. Three people were reportedly injured in Odesa region its authorities said, while a another 14 people were injured, including a teenager, in the strike on Dnipro city, according to its mayor, Borys Filatov. The Dnipro regional administration reported that five people were injured.
Poland says no evidence to suggest missile was launched by Russia – but Kyiv insists ‘it was not our rocket’
Ukraine’s air defence was probably responsible for a blast that killed two people in south-eastern Poland, the Polish president has said, while Nato said Russia was ultimately to blame as Moscow had started the war and launched the attack that triggered Kyiv’s defences.
While fears eased of a dangerous escalation in the war, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, insisted on Wednesday he had “no doubt” the missile concerned was not Ukrainian.
Continue reading...