Closing summary
Seven EU countries have ordered ammunition under a landmark EU procurement scheme to get urgently needed artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted western stocks, according to the EU agency in charge.
Top US general Mark Milley will retire on Friday after a four-year tenure in the position. Milley’s tenure included providing military assistance to Ukraine’s defence against the invasion by Russia in February 2022.
Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting out the routine autumn conscription campaign, calling up 130,000 citizens for statutory military service, a document posted on the government website showed.
The UK government on Friday imposed an asset freeze and travel bans on officials in the annexed Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Crimea as part of its broader sanctions against Russia.
Vladimir Putin reportedly met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Friday.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said that “very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine.
Romania is moving air defences closer to its Danube villages across the river from Ukraine where Russian drones have been attacking grain facilities, and is adding more military observation posts and patrols to the area, two senior defence sources told Reuters.
Updated
Joe Biden has called Gen Mark Milley “unflinching in the face of danger” after it was announced on Friday that the top US general would retire after a four-year tenure (see earlier post at 15.33).
The US president said he “once ran across a bridge booby-trapped with mines to stop two battle tanks evacuating wounded troops from driving across it.”
“Mark, your partnership has been invaluable to me,” Biden said.
In a ceremony at Joint Base-Myer Henderson Hall near Washington, with marching bands and a red-coated fife-and-drum corps, Milley handed over command to air force chief Gen Charles Q. Brown.
Milley’s tenure included the killing of Islamic State head Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in 2019 and providing military assistance to Ukraine’s defence against the invasion by Russia in February 2022.
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Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he was confident that both Poland and Slovakia would continue to support Ukraine in its war with Russia after imminent elections, despite recent harsh rhetoric towards Kyiv.
Poland, which elects a new parliament on 15 October, said last week it would no longer agree to new arms deliveries to Ukraine but instead focus on rebuilding its own stocks.
Poland, a Nato member, has been seen until recently as one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies in its war with Russia.
But relations between the two countries soured after Poland’s decision to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain imports.
“I’m expecting and I’m confident that Ukraine and Poland will find a way to address those issues without that impacting in a negative way the military support to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told Reuters in an interview in Copenhagen.
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The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the leaders of five central Asian nations pledged on Friday to cooperate closely on sanctions, in a carefully worded statement that did not pinpoint Russia.
The gathering of Scholz and the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan in Berlin was the first of its kind in an EU country.
It came amid suspicions that Moscow has been flouting EU sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine by receiving vital goods via central Asian nations, AFP reports.
In a joint statement, the leaders said:
The leaders emphasised the significance of close exchanges on sanctions regimes, including dialogue with the EU, and of further efforts to prevent the evasion of sanctions.
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Specialists will arrive in Ukraine in the near future to draw up plans to establish production of military equipment including air defences, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff told reporters on Friday.
“I think very soon specialists will arrive here who will make a plan for our own production of everything that we need. First and foremost, this relates to air defences,” Andriy Yermak was quoted by Reuters as saying.
A large crowd gathered for a concert in Red Square in Moscow on Friday, as the Kremlin held celebrations to mark one year since it claimed to annex four Ukrainian regions.
The crowd, some of them singing, could be seen gathering near a stage and large screens that read: “One Country, One Family, One Russia”, AFP reports.
There were children, families and elderly people, some of whom queued in long lines for ice-cream and took pictures.
“Exactly one year ago, historical justice prevailed,” one of the presenters reportedly told the audience, as the crowd chanted “Russia”.
“Russia does not abandon its own. We are one country,” he said.
Vladimir Putin has declared 30 September “Reunification Day” – one year since Moscow formally claimed the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as its own.
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Vladimir Putin has said that Russian prisoners who died in Ukraine had redeemed themselves in the eyes of society, AFP reports.
To boost regular troops fighting in Ukraine, the army and mercenary group Wagner have extensively recruited from Russian penal colonies.
“They are dead,” Putin is reported to have said during a televised meeting, referring to prisoners who died in Ukraine.
“Everyone can make some mistakes, they once did. But they gave their lives for the motherland, and fully redeemed themselves,” he said at the meeting with service personnel who fought near Ukraine’s Urozhaine on the southern front.
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Norway has joined Finland, the Baltic states and Poland in banning entry of Russian-registered passenger cars from 3 October, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
The move is a part of western measures aimed at stripping Russia of income to finance its invasion of Ukraine.
“It is important that the sanctions are effective so that we prevent as much as possible income that the Russian state needs to finance the war,” the Norwegian foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, said in a statement.
Vehicles owned by Norwegian citizens or EEA citizens with permanent residence in Russia or their family members will be exempt from the ban, which applies to vehicles with nine of fewer seats, the Norwegian foreign ministry added.
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have previously introduced similar bans after a directive by the European Commission.
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Seven countries order ammunition under EU scheme to aid Ukraine
Seven EU countries have ordered ammunition under a landmark EU procurement scheme to get urgently needed artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted western stocks, according to the EU agency in charge.
The orders – placed under contracts negotiated by the European Defence Agency – are for 155mm artillery rounds, one of the most important munitions in the war of attrition between Ukraine and Russia.
The scheme was set up as part of a plan worth at least €2bn, launched in March with the aim of getting a million shells and missiles to Ukraine within a year, Reuters reports.
Some officials and diplomats have expressed scepticism that the target will be met but the initiative marked a significant step in the EU’s growing role in defence and military affairs, spurred by the war in Ukraine.
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Top US general Mark Milley to hand over reins after four years
Top US general Mark Milley will retire on Friday after a four-year tenure in the position, Reuters reports.
Milley will hand over command to air force chief Gen Charles Q Brown, who will be only the second black officer to become chair of the joint chiefs of staff, after Colin Powell two decades ago.
A strong advocate for Ukraine’s defence against Russian forces, Milley has championed sending billions of dollars in arms to Kyiv.
He has previously criticised Moscow as mounting “a campaign of terror” against civilians in Ukraine, including by targeting civilian infrastructure as part of its war strategy.
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Vladimir Putin signs decree on autumn military conscription
Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting out the routine autumn conscription campaign, calling up 130,000 citizens for statutory military service, a document posted on the government website showed on Friday.
Reuters reports:
All men in Russia are required to do a year-long military service between the ages of 18 and 27, or equivalent training while in higher education.
Putin’s move comes as Russia’s armed forces press on with their “special military operation” in Ukraine, now in its 20th month.
The president, who signed an order in March calling up 147,000 people for the spring campaign, said this month he was bracing for a long war in Ukraine.
In July, Russia’s lower house of parliament voted to raise the maximum age at which men can be conscripted to 30 from 27. The new legislation comes into effect on 1 January 2024.
Last year, Russia announced a plan to boost its professional and conscripted combat personnel by more than 30% to 1.5 million, an ambitious task made harder by its heavy but undisclosed casualties in Ukraine.
Switzerland has announced “further sanctions in connection with the supply of Iranian drones to Russia” in a statement from the government. The measure brings it in line with EU sanctions. It said:
In view of Iran’s continued military support for Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, which is contrary to international law, and the fact that Russia is using Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to support the military aggression, the Federal Council decided on 29 September to impose further sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Federal Council has adopted the sanctions imposed by the EU on 20 July as part of its new framework for restrictive measures. The sale, supply, export and transit of components used for the manufacture and production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is now prohibited.
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The air alert in Kherson region has been lifted.
Suspilne reports that “a powerful explosion was heard in Kherson”.
This is not an unusual occurrence, as the city of Kherson is across the Dnipro River from the Russian-occupied portion of Kherson region, and the two sides often exchange fire, but it does follow an air raid alert.
There is an air alert in southern regions of Ukraine, and Suspilne reports residents of Kherson have been warned by local authorities of the launch of a missile attack.
Russia’s embassy in London, which often operates a lively social media account, has had a barbed dig at the UK’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly.
Earlier today, Cleverly posted:
Donetsk and Luhansk are Ukraine. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine. Today, we have sanctioned those responsible for staging sham elections on Ukrainian soil. We cannot accept this attack on Ukrainian sovereignty.
He was writing in the context of the UK government announcing new sanctions against people it claims are responsible for holding sham Russian elections on Ukrainian territory. [See 12.18 BST]
The Russian embassy has just posted a quote from Cleverly’s counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. It writes:
FM Sergei Lavrov: The territorial integrity of #Ukraine was destroyed by those who carried out and supported the coup in 2014, whose leaders declared war against their own people [in #Donbass] and began to bomb them.
Russia declared that it had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kheron in September 2022, with Vladimir Putin signing it into Russian law on 4 October 2022. Crimea was unilaterally annexed by the Russian Federation from Ukraine in 2014.
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Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has expressed thanks to Switzerland for assistance in demining. In a post to social media he wrote:
I am grateful to Switzerland for contributing 100m CHF (£89m/$109m/€103.5m) to humanitarian mine clearance in Ukraine between 2024 and 2027. Substantial aid in cleaning the Ukrainian soil of Russian mines.
He specifically thanked Swiss president Ignazio Cassis and defence minister Viola Amherd in the message.
Switzerland’s legal commitment to neutrality has hindered some efforts to assist Ukraine, with the country forbidding some nations to re-export Swiss-manufactured armaments to a country defending itself from an active invasion.
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Ukraine marked Friday’s 82nd anniversary of a mass killing, mainly of Jews, in Nazi-occupied Kyiv with an appeal not to forget an event that it said provided the moral basis for opposition to “Russian aggression”.
Nazi forces shot dead nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children on 29-30 September 1941 at Babyn Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv, after occupying the Ukrainian capital – which was then part of the Soviet Union – during the second world war.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has paid tribute to the victims of the massacre in a social media post.
Today, Ukraine and the world commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, one of the most terrible Nazi crimes committed during the Holocaust.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 29, 2023
I paid tribute to the victims and thanked the Ukrainian Jewish community leaders for coming to pray and commemorate them. pic.twitter.com/J3BVpXLqfm
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Ukraine’s foreign ministry has reacted to Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, saying that “very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine (see earlier post at 08.04 for his full comments).
The ministry said it was positive “that the Hungarian prime minister is concerned about Ukraine’s accession to the European Union”.
“We would like to inform that Ukraine has not changed its territory within its internationally recognised borders,” the ministry added.
EU countries are due to decide in December whether to allow Ukraine to begin accession negotiations, which would require the unanimous backing of all 27 members. Diplomats have said Hungary may be an obstacle.
Russian athletes will be able to compete as full participants or neutral athletes at next year’s Paris Paralympics after the International Paralympic Committee members voted against a full ban of Russia on Friday.
The decision clears the way for Russians, whose athletes are currently banned from any Paralympic competition, to be in Paris.
The IPC will decide later on Friday whether athletes will do so in full national team gear or if they will compete as neutrals, without national emblems, flags or anthem.
The IPC said:
At the IPC general assembly in Bahrain, IPC members voted 74-65 (13 abstentions) against a motion to fully suspend NPC (National Paralympic Committee) Russia for breaches of its constitutional membership obligations.
The decision comes two weeks before the International Olympic Committee session in Mumbai where it will also discuss Russia’s and Belarus’s participation at the Paris Olympics next year.
You can read the full story here:
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A “powerful” explosion was heard in Russian-occupied Berdiansk, in Zaporizhzhia oblast, on Friday afternoon, reported Viktoriia Halitsina, the head of the city military administration.
The explosion was followed by power supply interruptions in the city, Halitsina said, citing Berdiansk residents, the Kyiv Independent reports. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
We have more details on the Russian officials targeted by the new sanctions announced by the UK government (see earlier post at 11.16).
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said the 11 new designations are in response to attempts by Russia to legitimise its illegal control of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.
Those sanctioned include: the Central Election Commission of Russia; the CEC official Natalya Budarina, and Marina Zakharova, appointed head of the Russian-installed election commission in Kherson. You can read more here.
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said:
Russia’s sham elections are a transparent, futile attempt to legitimise its illegal control of sovereign Ukrainian territory.
“You can’t hold ‘elections’ in someone else’s country.
“The UK will never recognise Russia’s claims to Ukrainian territory – Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson are Ukraine.”
The sanctions include restrictions on movement and finances, the FCDO said.
The department also said the Ukrainian population living in the temporarily controlled territories has endured “large-scale atrocities at the hands of Russian forces”.
In October 2022, the UN general assembly adopted a resolution that condemned Russia for the “illegal so-called referendums in regions within the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine” and the “attempted illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia”.
The resolution declared the “unlawful actions” of Russia have “no validity under international law and do not form the basis for any alteration of the status of these regions of Ukraine” before urging Moscow to “immediately and unconditionally reverse its decisions”.
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In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that in recent weeks, up to hundreds of fighters formerly associated with the Wagner group have probably started to redeploy to Ukraine as individuals and small groups, fighting for a variety of pro-Russian units.
The MoD tweeted:
Wagner withdrew from combat operations in Ukraine by early June 2023, prior to the abortive mutiny of 24 June 2023, and the subsequent death of Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and other senior leaders in a plane crash on 23 August 2023.
The exact status of the redeploying personnel is unclear, but it is likely individuals have transferred to parts of the official Russian Ministry of Defence forces and other private military companies.
Several reports suggest a concentration of Wagner veterans around Bakhmut: their experience is likely to be particularly in demand in this sector. Many will be familiar with current frontline and local Ukrainian tactics, having fought over the same terrain last winter
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Ukrainian tank crews in the eastern front have welcomed the delivery of US Abrams tanks to Kyiv, Reuters reports.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Monday that Ukraine had taken delivery of its first shipment of US jet-powered Abrams tanks to help in the defence against Russia’s invasion.
Mark Milley, the top US general, has said he regards M1 Abrams tanks, which are particularly lethal against heavy armour forces, as the world’s best and that they “will make a difference” in the 19-month-old war.
Ukrainian tank crews training in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine said that once they were deployed, the Abrams tanks would be a big step up from the Soviet-era tanks they are now operating.
Vitalii, a 29-year-old tank driver, said:
The Abrams tank … has protection against ammunition detonation. [This tank] does not have it. If ammunition detonates, there is no chance to survive.
A tank commander, who uses the call-sign “Wel”, said his team needed the additional firepower and protection offered by the Abrams and other western tanks, such as the German-made Leopard.
“It would be better to have foreign weapons. The armour is better and they are more effective, I believe,” he said.
Updated
UK imposes asset freeze and travel bans on officials in annexed regions of Ukraine
The UK government on Friday imposed an asset freeze and travel bans on officials in the annexed Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Crimea as part of its broader sanctions against Russia.
The UK also added Russia’s emergencies minister, Alexander Kurenkov, and the secretary of the Russian central election commission, Natalya Alekseevna Budarina, to the sanctions list.
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said Britain would never recognise Russia’s claims to Ukrainian territory.
In June, the government announced plans to tighten its sanctions policy against Russia, including introducing legislation to keep assets frozen until Moscow has agreed to pay compensation to Ukraine.
Updated
A Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on a substation in a Russian village close to the border in Kursk region on Friday, cutting off the power supply to a hospital, the regional governor said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said on Friday. The meeting underscored the Kremlin’s attempt to show that the state had now gained control over the mercenary group after a failed June mutiny by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August.
Ukraine’s emergency service reports that its workers are dealing with a fire in Kherson which broke out at dawn after Russian shelling earlier today.
Tass reports that Russian security services claim to have arrested a man in Kerch accused of passing information to Ukrainian authorities.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Friday that “very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine. In comments likely to anger Kyiv, which is adamant that the territorial makeup of Ukraine is non-negotiable, Orbán said: “We don’t know how big the territory of this country is, as the war is still ongoing, we don’t know how big its population is as they are fleeing. To admit a country to the EU without knowing its parameters, this would be unprecedented. So I think we need to answer very long and difficult questions until we get to actually deciding about the start of accession talks,” he said.
Romania is moving air defences closer to its Danube villages across the river from Ukraine where Russian drones have been attacking grain facilities, and is adding more military observation posts and patrols to the area, two senior defence sources have told Reuters.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday accompanied Ukraine’s chief rabbi, Moshe Reuven Azman, to Babyn Yar to pay respects on the anniversary of the massacre there in the second world war.
Russia’s central bank has extended restrictions on transferring funds abroad for another six months.
An official of the Russian armed forces has said that those conscripted during the autumn campaign will not be sent to fight in Ukraine.
Updated
Romania is moving air defences closer to its Danube villages across the river from Ukraine where Russian drones have been attacking grain facilities, and is adding more military observation posts and patrols to the area, two senior defence sources have told Reuters.
The measures, along with the deployment of four additional US F-16 fighter jets and an expanded no-fly zone, are a sign of growing concern in Romania and the broader Nato alliance that the Ukraine war could spill over into its territory.
The Romanian defence ministry spokesperson Constantin Spinu has said there was no indication Russia was targeting Romania, but that the nature of attacks on Ukrainian territory nearby made it virtually impossible to prevent all breaches.
The defence sources told Reuters they did not know of any instance where fully functioning Russian drones had entered Romanian airspace, and that the three known cases of drones or their debris falling inside the country did not involve explosives.
The army has now built two bomb shelters in the small Romanian hamlet of Plauru, just a few hundred metres from Izmail, and residents in the wider area are sent alerts on mobile phones when Russian drones are detected heading in their direction.
Other countries bordering Ukraine have also been affected. Two people were killed when what Polish authorities have described as a Ukrainian missile landed in Poland, there have been reports – denied by authorities – of Russian missiles over-flying Moldovan and Romanian airspace, and explosions in Moldova’s breakaway Russian-aligned region of Transnistria.
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Ukraine’s emergency service reports that its workers are dealing with a fire in Kherson that broke out at dawn after Russian shelling.
Updated
Tass reports that Russian security services claim to have arrested a man in Kerch accused of passing information to Ukrainian authorities. It quotes the FSB saying:
On suspicion of high treason, a 45-year-old resident of Kerch was detained. It was established that the Crimean, through an internet messenger, proactively established contact with an employee of the main intelligence directorate of the ministry of defence of Ukraine, on whose instructions he carried out photo and video recording of the movement of military equipment in the direction of the special military operation zone and transmitted the specified information through closed communication channels.
“Special military operation” is the preferred term Russian authorities use for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022.
Russia may introduce quotas on overseas fuel exports if a complete export ban imposed last week does not succeed in bringing down persistently high gasoline and diesel prices, the Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak has said.
Reuters reports the government said in a statement late on Thursday that Novak told a meeting of senior managers at Russian oil companies that the ban on the export of gasoline and diesel had initially led to a fall in prices on the commodity exchange.
The Kremlin and Russia’s energy ministry have said the current fuel export ban, announced on 21 September, will remain in place until the domestic fuel market stabilises. Analysts expect it to last until the Russian harvest, and peak fuel demand, is over in a few weeks.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has today accompanied Ukraine’s chief rabbi, Moshe Reuven Azman, to Babyn Yar to pay respects on the anniversary of the massacre there in the second world war. In his message, the chief rabbi said he had blessed Ukraine’s president, adding:
At Babyn Yar, starting on 29 September 1941, more than 35,000 Jews were killed in the first three days. The tragedy of the Holocaust leaves a deep mark in the hearts of many, the losses are irreversible and painful, and it is important to remember those who lost their lives in those dark days. I blessed the president of Ukraine at this holy place and wished him, on the eve of the Sukkot holiday, strength of spirit, inspiration and God’s protection for the entire Ukrainian people. May the blessings of the Almighty accompany Ukraine on the way to peace and prosperity.
Today, September 29, on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Babyn Yar, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, together with the Righteous Among the Nations and the rabbis of the cities of Ukraine, honored the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Babyn Yar.
— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) September 29, 2023
At… pic.twitter.com/KdyE0dkMrq
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Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires.
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Orbán: 'long and difficult questions' to be addressed before Ukraine could start talks to join EU
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Friday that “very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine.
EU countries are due to decide in December whether to allow Ukraine to begin accession negotiations, which would require the unanimous backing of all 27 members. Diplomats have said Hungary may be an obstacle.
“We cannot avoid the question – when during the autumn we will have negotiations in Brussels about the future of Ukraine – whether we can actually seriously consider membership for a country, to start accession talks with a country that is at war,” Reuters reports that Orbán told state radio.
In comments likely to anger Kyiv, which is adamant that the territorial makeup of Ukraine is non-negotiable, Orbán said: “We don’t know how big the territory of this country is, as the war is still ongoing, we don’t know how big its population is as they are fleeing. To admit a country to the EU without knowing its parameters, this would be unprecedented.”
“So I think we need to answer very long and difficult questions until we get to actually deciding about the start of accession talks,” he said.
Orbán told parliament on Monday that Hungary would not support Ukraine on any issue in international affairs until the language rights of ethnic Hungarians there were restored. A Nato member, Hungary is also one of two countries still blocking Sweden joining the alliance.
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Reuters reports that Russia’s central bank has extended restrictions on transferring funds abroad for another six months, the regulator said on Friday.
Suspilne, citing the regional prosecutor’s office, reports that “in the morning, the Russian army struck Kherson, wounding two workers of a utility company”.
Images shown on Suspilne’s Telegram channel for the region show damage to a vehicle. Reports say the two injured were park employees and that a garbage truck was damaged as a result of the shelling.
Updated
In Russia, Tass reports that an official of the armed forces has said that those conscripted during the autumn campaign will not be sent to fight in Ukriaine.
Citing Vladimir Tsimlyansky, deputy chief of the main organisational and mobilisation directorate of the general staff of the Russian Federation armed forces, it reported that traditionally, the autumn conscription begins on 1 October, but quoted him saying:
Servicemen undergoing conscription military service will not be sent to the points of deployment of units of the armed forces of the Russian Federation in new regions of the Russian Federation: Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, or to participate there in carrying out the tasks of a special military operation.
“Special military operation” is the preferred term by Russian authorities to refer to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine which started in February 2022. The Russian Federation claimed to annex Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia from Ukraine late last year.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
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Former Wagner commander now works at defence ministry, says Peskov
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA news agency that Troshev worked at the defence ministry. “He now works in the defence ministry.”
A highly decorated veteran of Russia’s wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya,
Troshev is from St Petersburg, Putin’s home town, and has been pictured with the president.
He fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union’s decade- long war there. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he served in the North Caucasus with the Russian army and then in SOBR, a quick reaction special forces unit of the Russian interior ministry. He was a commander in the unit.
For his service in Afghanistan, Troshev was awarded the Order of the Red Star twice. He was awarded Russia’s highest medal, Hero of Russia, in 2016 for the storming of Palmyra in Syria against Islamic State militants.
Putin meets former Wagner commander Andrei Troshev
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said on Friday, Reuters reports.
The meeting underscored the Kremlin’s attempt to show that the state had now gained control over the mercenary group after a failed June mutiny by the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August.
The Kremlin said Putin had met with Troshev, who is known by his nom de guerre “Sedoi” – or “grey hair”, and the deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who sat closest to Putin, on Thursday night.
Addressing Troshev, Putin said that they had spoken about how “volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, above all, of course, in the zone of a special military operation”.
“You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year,” Putin said. “You know what it is, how it is done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that the combat work goes in the best and most successful way.”
Putin also said he wanted to speak about social support for those involved in the fighting.
Updated
Russia earlier said it had destroyed two Ukrainian drones over the neighbouring Belgorod region.
The defence ministry said the first drone was “thwarted” at about 5:00pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday.
A second drone was brought down around four hours later.
“The Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was destroyed over Belgorod region by air defence systems on duty,” the ministry said on Telegram.
Belgorod and Kursk, south of Moscow, border eastern Ukraine.
Since Ukraine launched its counter-offensive in early June, Russia has weathered waves of drone attacks that have sporadically damaged buildings, including in Moscow.
Russian officials have downplayed their significance.
Rocket hits Mykolaiv city
The Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv was hit by a rocket this morning at 4:13m local time, Vitaly Kim, head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, wrote on Telegram.
“The hit took place at an infrastructure object on the outskirts of the city. As a result, dry grass caught fire, which was extinguished at 06:45. Detailed information is being clarified,” Kim wrote.
He added that artillery had also been fired at a settlement:
“Today, September 29, at 03:59, the enemy fired artillery at the settlement of the Kutsurub community. A fire was extinguished, without victims, injuries or destruction.”
Ukrainian drone hits Russian power substation: governor
AFP: A Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on a substation in a Russian village close to the border on Friday, cutting off the power supply to a hospital, the regional governor said.
In Belaya, less than 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the border, “a Ukrainian drone dropped two explosive devices on a substation”, Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoyt said on the messaging platform Telegram.
“One of the transformers caught fire. Five settlements and a hospital were cut off from power supply. Fire crews rushed to the scene,” he added.
“Power will be restored as soon as it is safe to do so.”
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.
Our top stories this morning: A Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on a substation in a Russian village close to the border on Friday, cutting off the power supply to a hospital, the regional governor said.
And the city of Mykolaiv was hit by a rocket this morning at 4:13am local time, Vitaly Kim, head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, wrote on Telegram.
“The hit took place at an infrastructure object on the outskirts of the city. As a result, dry grass caught fire, which was extinguished at 06:45. Detailed information is being clarified,” Kim wrote.
More on these stories shortly. Elsewhere meanwhile:
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg and the defence ministers of Britain and France visited Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lobbied for more air defence systems. Their visits came in advance of Kyiv’s first Defence Industries Forum, where Ukrainian officials were to meet representatives from more than 160 defence firms and 26 countries.
International regulators are incapable of properly monitoring safety at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, according to a critical dossier compiled by Greenpeace that has been sent to western governments. The environmental campaign group concludes the International Atomic Energy Agency has too few inspectors at Europe’s biggest nuclear plant – four – and that there are too many restrictions placed on their access.
Brussels warned European companies and governments that it could ban the sale of certain components to Turkey and other countries from where Iran and Russia are sourcing parts for drones and other weapons striking Ukrainian cities. The comments from the European Commission follows a leak to the Guardian of a document in which Kyiv detailed the use of western technology in Russian and Iranian drones.
Belarus claimed on Thursday that a Polish helicopter had twice violated its airspace as tensions escalate between the two countries amid the conflict in Ukraine. The defence ministry said it had scrambled aircraft but provided no further details. In a separate statement, the Belarusian foreign ministry said it had summoned the Polish charge d’affaires and demanded that “an objective investigation be carried out immediately.
The EU has extended the right of refugees from Ukraine to stay in the bloc by a year to March 2025, as Russia’s war against their country continues. The EU triggered its temporary protection directive days after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion to allow the millions of people fleeing Ukraine to remain.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said an escalating grain exports dispute between Kyiv and Warsaw was detrimental to both countries. Poland has extended an embargo on Ukrainian grain, going against a European Commission decision to end the restrictions and triggering a diplomatic spat between the allies.
Ukraine’s air force claimed on Thursday its air defence systems had shot down 34 of 44 Shahed drones that Russia launched overnight, while a regional official said no casualties were caused by the attack. “Fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were engaged to repel the attack,” the military said on the Telegram messaging app.
Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said his region was the main target, but the attack left no casualties. “Our air defence forces did an excellent job,” Kiper said on Telegram.
There were also strikes on Kirovohrad oblast and an infrastructure object was hit in Mykolaiv. One man was killed and another was injured in Kherson overnight. Three people have been hospitalised after a strike on Antonivka, near the Dnipro River.
Alexander Bogomaz, governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, claimed on Telegram that electronic warfare had been used to down a Ukrainian drone on the approach to the city of Bryansk. “There were no casualties or damage. Operational and emergency services are on site,” he wrote.
