European far-right politicians just stormed to victory in Italy, after achieving historic results in France and Sweden.
“Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” said Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party.
But if you think there is a new wave of right-wing radicalism sweeping Europe, you’d be wrong. Something else is going on.
Analysis by POLITICO’s Poll of Polls suggests far-right parties in the region on average did not increase their support by even one percentage point between the start of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in February and today.
POLITICO looked at the median and average increase of all parties organized in right-wing European Parliament groups of Identity and Democracy, the European Conservatives and Reformists or unaffiliated parties with political far-right positions.
Overall, the results indicate that if an increase in support occurred for far-right parties, it happened several years ago.
The Sweden Democrats’ first surge happened after the 2014 election, when the party grew from around 10 percent to 20 percent, the same one-fifth share of the vote they received in this year’s election. The far-right Alternative for Germany AfD in Germany grew fast in 2015 and 2016 reaching 14 percent in POLITICO’s polling tracker. In Italy, the Northern League overtook Forza Italia for the first time in early 2015, and peaked in 2019 at 37 percent before starting a downward trend ending on 9 percent in last month’s election. In the Italian election, voters mostly switched between rival right-wing camps.
The far-right has moved from the fringes of politics into the mainstream, not only influencing the political center but also entering the arena of power.
“There is a normalization of far-right parties as an integral part of the political landscape,” said Cathrine Thorleifsson, who researches extremism at the University of Oslo. “They have been accepted by the electorate and also by other, conventional parties.”
Cooperation between the center-right and the extreme-right has become less taboo.
“The rise of far-right parties is only part of the story. The facilitating and mainstreaming of far-right parties as well as the adoption of far-right frames and positions by other parties is at least as important,” tweeted Cas Mudde, a leading scholar on the issue.
This may risk destabilizing Europe even more than winning a couple of percentage points in the polls.
Italy’s far-right firebrand Giorgia Meloni is a clear-cut example. While her party draws its origin from groups founded by former fascists, she’ll now lead the EU’s third-largest economy.
Leader of Italian far-right party “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy), Giorgia Meloni | Pitro Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images
In Sweden, the center-right party has started coalition talks for a minority government which would have to draw on opposition support, most likely from the far-right Swedish Democrats. Far-right parties have also entered governments in Austria, Finland, Estonia and Italy. Other countries are likely to follow.
George Simion, the leader of Romania’s far-right party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), celebrated Meloni’s win in Italy, saying his party is likely to follow in their footsteps.
Spain heads to the ballot box next year and socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez may have a tough time winning re-election. The conservative People’s Party is between five and seven points ahead of the Spanish socialists in all the published polls, but it is unlikely to garner enough votes to secure a governing majority outright.
That means it may have to come to an agreement with far-right party Vox, whose leader, Santiago Abascal, is an ally of Meloni’s. While the People’s Party previously refused to govern with Vox, last spring its newly elected leader, Alberto Núnez-Feijóo, greenlit a coalition agreement with the ultranationalist group in Spain’s central Castilla y León region.
Tom Van Grieken, the right-wing Belgian politician, also pointed to Spain as the next likely example, especially because of the possible cooperation with the PP. “All over Europe, we see conservative parties who are considering breaking the cordon sanitaire,” he said, referring to the refusal of other parties to work with the far-right. “They are tired of compromising with their ideological counterparts, the parties at the left end of the spectrum.”
Chairman of Vlaams Belang party Tom Van Grieken | Stephanie Le Coqc/EFE via EPA
This didn’t happen overnight. The far-right worked hard to shrug off their extremist, neo-Nazi image.
“In some of the reporting on the Swedish Democrats, you’d think they’ll deport people on trains as soon as they’re in power. Come on, these parties have changed,” said one EU official with right-wing affiliations.
The far-right invested in “image adjustment and trying to tread carefully with some issues, while unashamedly catering to others,” said Nina Wiesehomeier, a political scientist at the IE University of Madrid. “This is particularly obvious in Italy right now, with Meloni sticking to the slogan of ‘God, homeland, family,’ as a continuation, while having tried to purge the party from more radical elements.”
In Belgium’s northern region of Flanders, the right-wing Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) explicitly dismisses the label “extreme-right.” Just like his counterparts in Italy, Sweden and France, Van Grieken, the party’s president, denounced the more extremist positions of his group’s founding fathers and moderated his political message to make voting for the far-right socially acceptable.
Overt racism is taboo. Instead, the rhetoric changes to criticizing an open-door migration policy. By carefully catering to centrist voters, the far-right aims for a bigger slice of the cake, while still riding on the anti-establishment discontent.
“There is a clear fault line between the winners of globalization and the nationalists,” Van Grieken told POLITICO. “This comes on top on the concerns about mass migration, whether it’s in Malmö, Rome or other European cities.”
Perfect storm
Now, the time is right to capitalize on that transformation.
As Europe is battling record inflation and Europeans fear exorbitant heating bills, governments warn about the political implications of a “winter of discontent.”
“It’s a massive drainage of European prosperity,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO recently. “In the current situation, it’s hard to believe in progress, it’s very hard to make progress. So there’s a very pessimistic feeling.”
The current war in Ukraine is the latest in a succession of crises — in global finance, migration and the pandemic. Experts argue that this is key to understanding the rising support for the far-right.
“Such existential crises have a destabilizing effect and lead to fear,” said Carl Devos, a professor in political science at Ghent University. “Fear is the breeding ground for the far-right. People tend to translate that fear and outrage into radical voting behaviour.”
Migration and identity politics are less prominent in the media because of the Ukraine war and rising energy prices, but they’re still key issues in right-wing debate.
In Austria, the coalition parties fought over whether or not asylum seekers should receive climate bonuses. In the Netherlands, the death of a baby at the asylum center Ter Apel led to a renewed debate over the overcrowded migration centers.
The combination of those issues is likely to feed into more right-wing wins across the continent. “The far-right offers nationalist, protectionist solutions to the globalized crises, said Thorleifsson. “We see how the migration issue was momentarily off the agenda during the pandemic, but now it’s back.”
Aitor Hernández-Morales, Camille Gijs and Ana Fota contributed reporting.
The recapture of Lyman city in the east – in territory recently annexed by Moscow – raises questions about how Russia can hold surrounding areas with supply routes severed.
Questions about Russia’s faltering military operation in Ukraine continue to be raised as Kyiv announced it was in full control of the key eastern city of Lyman after Moscow’s troops pulled back.
It is Kyiv’s most significant battlefield gain in weeks, providing a potential staging post for increased attacks to the east while heaping further pressure on the Kremlin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday that his forces had taken over Lyman after encircling it the day before.
“As of 12:30pm (09:30 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors,” he said in a video address.
Russia’s military did not comment on Lyman on Sunday after announcing the previous day it was withdrawing its forces there to move to “more favourable positions”.
‘Sort of a dilemma’
The loss of Lyman is a significant blow to Russian forces, who have used the city for months as a crucial logistics and rail hub in the Donetsk region to move military equipment, troops, and other necessary supplies.
“Without those routes, it will be more difficult so it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
Lyman, which Ukraine recaptured by encircling Russian troops, is in the Donetsk region near the border with the Luhansk region. These are two of the four regions or oblasts that Russia annexed on Friday after people there voted in referendums, which Ukraine and the West called illegitimate.
The Institute for the Study of War, a United States-based think-tank, said the fall of Lyman suggested Russia was “deprioritizing defending Luhansk” to hold occupied territory in southern Ukraine.
“Ukrainian and Russian sources consistently indicate that Russian forces continued to reinforce Russian positions in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts, despite the recent collapse of the Kharkiv-Izyum front and even as the Russian positions around Lyman collapsed,” it said.
‘Courage, bravery, skills’
In a daily intelligence briefing on Sunday, the United Kingdom’s military described the recapture of Lyman as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push farther into Russian-occupied territory.
Ukraine’s capture of a city within territory of President Vladimir Putin’s declared annexation demonstrates that Ukrainians are able to push back Russian forces, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday.
“We have seen that they have been able to take a new town, Lyman, and that demonstrates that the Ukrainians are making progress, are able to push back the Russian forces because of the courage, because of their bravery, their skills, but of course also because of the advanced weapons that the United States and other allies are providing,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with American broadcaster NBC.
Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks that has embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted rare domestic criticism of Putin’s war.
A pomp-filled Kremlin annexation ceremony on Friday has failed to stem a wave of criticism within Russia of how its “special military operation” is being handled.
Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, on Saturday called for a change of strategy “right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons”.
Other hawkish Russian figures criticised Russian generals and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on social media for overseeing the setbacks, but stopped short of attacking Putin.
The presidents of nine NATO countries in central and eastern Europe declared on Sunday that they would never recognize the annexation by Russia of several Ukrainian regions. Hungary and Bulgaria were conspicuously absent from the signatories.
In a joint statement, the leaders also supported a path to NATO membership for Ukraine.
The nine leaders demanded that “Russia immediately withdraw from all occupied territories” and encouraged “all allies to substantially increase their military aid to Ukraine,” according to the statement.
“We reiterate our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” they wrote.
The statement comes two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared he was annexing four Ukrainian regions, a move the West has described as an illegal land-grab. It was signed by the presidents of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
The signatories also wrote that they “firmly stand behind” a NATO decision in 2008 over Ukraine’s future membership to the alliance. At the time, NATO allies pledged that Ukraine would eventually become a member. But as that process stalled over the years, it seemed increasingly unlikely that Ukraine’s bid would become a reality.
In the wake of the annexations, Ukraine formally applied for a fast-track accession to NATO, with hopes to jump-start its membership bid.
On Sunday, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that 10 NATO countries supported Ukraine’s membership to the alliance — including many countries that used to belong to the former Soviet bloc.
NATO countries however have hesitated at including a new member that is at war — and by treaty they would be forced to defend. In recent months, NATO has also welcomed the application of two new countries in Europe – Finland and Sweden, spurred by security concerns after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets Sunday with suicide drones, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.
Russia’s loss of the eastern city of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening threats to use nuclear force.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s land grab has threatened to push the conflict to a dangerous new level. It also prompted Ukraine to formally apply for NATO membership, a bid that won backing Sunday from nine central and eastern European NATO members fearful that Russia’s aggression could eventually target them, too.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that his forces now control Lyman: “As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors,” he said in a video address.
Russia’s military didn’t comment on the situation in Lyman on Sunday, after announcing Saturday that it was withdrawing its forces there to more favorable positions.
The British military described the recapture of Lyman as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push farther into Russian-occupied territory.
In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s hometown of Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that destroyed two stories of a school early Sunday, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia in recent weeks has begun using Iranian-made suicide drones to attack targets in Ukraine. In southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.
A car carrying four men who wanted to forage for mushrooms in a forest in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region struck a mine, exploding the vehicle and killing all those inside, local authorities said Sunday.
Russian attacks also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. And Ukraine’s military said Sunday it carried out strikes on multiple Russian command posts, ammunition depots and two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.
The reports of military activity couldn’t be immediately verified.
Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks that has embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted rare domestic criticism of Putin’s war.
Lyman, which Ukraine recaptured by encircling Russian troops, is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing what was left of the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.
In his nightly address Saturday, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”
In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”
The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.
AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town, including a deep pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.
Russian officials release limited information about military activity in what the Kremlin still refuses to call a war. They routinely claim that Russia exclusively targets Ukrainian military forces, the foreigners supporting them or Western-supplied weaponry.
Putin frames the Ukrainian gains as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Recent developments have raised fears of all-out conflict between Russia and the West.
The leaders of Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint statement backing a path to NATO membership for Ukraine, and calling on all 30 members of the U.S.-led security bloc to ramp up military aid for Kyiv.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, meanwhile, on Sunday announced the delivery of 16 wheeled armored howitzers produced in Slovakia to Ukraine next year. The weapons will be financed jointly with Denmark, Norway and Germany,
Russia on Sunday moved ahead with steps meant to make its land grab look like a legal process aimed at helping people persecuted by Ukraine, with rubber-stamp approval by the Constitutional Court and draft laws being pushed through the Kremlin-friendly parliament. Outside Russia, the annexation has been widely denounced as violating international law.
Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting about the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director for alleged questioning.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is in one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians have continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.
Pope Francis on Sunday decried Russia’s nuclear threats and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
More people are buying electric vehicles than ever before, with monthly sales nearly triple what they were four years ago. But finding a place to charge your EV when you’re away from home can be a problem depending on where you live. So, before you head out on any long road trips, take a look at these maps first.
Here’s what else you need to know to Start Your Week Smart.
• At least 67 people were killed by Hurricane Ian in Florida as it swallowed homes in its furious rushing waters, obliterated roadways and ripped down power lines. Four people were also killed in storm-related incidents in North Carolina, officials say.
• Polls opened in Brazil earlier today in a presidential election marred by an unprecedented climate of tension and violence. Two household names – former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and current leader Jair Bolsonaro – are battling to become the country’s next president.
• Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in eastern Ukraine, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday – just one day after Moscow’s annexation of the region.
• The National Archives has told the House Oversight Committee that certain presidential records from the Trump administration remain outstanding, citing information that some White House staff used non-official electronic systems to conduct official business.
Monday
It’s the first Monday in October, and that means the Supreme Court will begin its 2022-23 term following the formal investiture ceremony late last week for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the bench. Jackson has been on the job since June and has already cast votes on emergency applications, but she has yet to sit for oral arguments.
Tuesday
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown. Yom Kippur is considered the most important and sacred of Jewish religious holidays and is a day of fasting, repentance and worship.
October 4 is also National Taco Day, which – as luck would have it – falls on a Tuesday this year. And yes, Choco Tacos are acceptable if you happen to find one in the back of your freezer…
Wednesday
October 5 is World Teachers’ Day. It’s a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education, but also to reflect on the support they need to fully deploy their talents, and rethink the way ahead for the profession globally.
Friday
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 will be announced in Oslo, Norway. Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov won the prize in 2021 for their longstanding efforts to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.
Hear more on how Hurricane Ian got so strong, so fast.
In this week’s One Thing podcast, CNN’s chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins us from Punta Gorda, Florida, after Hurricane Ian ripped through as a Category 4 storm – leaving multiple people dead and millions without power. We examine how residents are approaching rebuilding and why climate change is likely responsible for the storm’s rapid intensification. Listen here.
“Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire” premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+. CNN’s Brian Lowry says the new series is a significant improvement upon the 1994 film – it ambitiously updates the story, introduces a racial component and serves up plenty of sex and gore.
CBS is resurrecting a hit TV series from the ’70s and ‘80s as a reality dating show. “The Real Love Boat” is something of a reboot (re-boat?) of ABC’s “The Love Boat” that will chronicle the adventures of real-life singles brought together for a Mediterranean voyage – complete with its own captain, bartender and cruise director. The show sets sail Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.
Season 19 of “Grey’s Anatomy” arrives Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. Star Ellen Pompeo is expected to be scaling back her role and will appear in only eight episodes while continuing as an executive producer on the long-running medical drama.
In theaters
Set in the 1930s, “Amsterdam” stars Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington as three friends who witness a murder, are framed for it, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history. Other notable names in the cast include Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro. “Amsterdam” opens on Friday.
Football
If you are reading this edition of 5 Things early enough this Sunday, you’ll have time to watch the Minnesota Vikings play the New Orleans Saints in London (yes, you read that right…) at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The kickoff is set for 9:30 a.m. ET on the NFL Network and NFL+. It’s the first of two NFL matchups being played in London. The New York Giants will square off against the Green Bay Packers next Sunday.
Baseball
The 2022 MLB playoffs begin on Friday. Several teams have already punched their tickets to the postseason, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves – the reigning World Series champions.
Take CNN’s weekly news quiz to see how much you remember from the week that was! So far, 30% of fellow quiz fans have gotten eight or more questions right. How will you fare?
‘Centerfield’
Consider this your warmup music for the start of the baseball playoffs on Friday. (Click here to view)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a cease-fire, imploring him to “stop this spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine and denouncing the “absurd” risk of the “uncontrollable” consequences of nuclear attack as tensions sharply escalate over the war.
Francis uttered his strongest plea yet about the seventh-month-old conflict, which he denounced as an “error and a horror.”
It was the first time in public that he cited Putin’s role in the war. The pontiff also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “be open” to serious peace proposals.
Francis told the public, gathered in St. Peter’s Square, that he was abandoning his usual religious theme for his Sunday noon remarks to concentrate his reflection on Ukraine.
“How the war is going in Ukraine has become so grave, devastating and threatening that it sparks great worry,” Francis said.
“In fact, this terrible, inconceivable wound of humanity, instead of shrinking, continues to bleed even more, threatening to spread,” the pope said.
“I deplore strongly the grave situation created in the last days, with further actions contrary to the principles of international law,” Francis said, in a clear reference to Putin’s illegal annexation of a large swath of eastern Ukraine. ”It, in fact, increases the risk of a nuclear escalation, to the point of fearing uncontrollable and catastrophic consequences on the world level.”
“Rivers of blood and tears spilled these months torment me,” the pope said. ”I am pained by the thousands of victims, in particular among the children, and by so much destruction, that leaves many persons and families homeless and threatens vast territories with cold and hunger,” he said.
“Certain actions can never be justified, never,” the pope said. He didn’t elaborate. But Putin sought to justify launching the invasion saying he needed to protect his country from what he called “Nazi” elements in Ukraine.
“It’s anguishing that the world is learning the geography of Ukraine through names like Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Izium, Zaporizhizhia and other places, that have become places of indescribable sufferings and fears,” Francis said.
“And what to say about the fact that humanity finds itself again faced with atomic threat? It’s absurd,” Francis said, who then called for an immediate cease-fire.
“My appeal is directed above all to the president of the Russian Federation, imploring him to stop, also for the love of his people, this spiral of violence and death,” Francis said. ”On the other side, pained by the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people following the aggression undergone, I direct a similarly trusting appeal to the president of Ukraine to be open to serious proposals of peace,” Francis said.
It is rare for the pope to single out leaders in his frequent appeals for an end to violent conflicts. In doing so, Francis signaled his extreme worry over the deteriorating situation.
“May arms cease and conditions be searched for to start negotiations able to lead to solutions not imposed by force but agreed upon, just and stable,” Francis said. ”And they will be thus if they are based on respect for the sacrosanct value of human life, as well as on the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of every country, as well as the rights of minorities and of legitimate concerns.”
Invoking God’s name and the “sense of humanity that lodges in every heart,” he renewed his many pleas for an immediate cease-fire.
Without elaborating, Francis also called for the “recourse to all diplomatic instruments, including those so far possibly not utilized, to end this immense tragedy.”
“The war itself is an error and a horror,” the pontiff lamented.
Throughout the war, Francis has denounced the recourse to arms. But recently, he stressed Ukraine’s right to defend itself from aggression. Logistics complications have frustrated his oft-stated hope to make a pilgrimage to Ukraine to encourage peace efforts.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets with suicide drones on Sunday, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.
Russia’s loss of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening its threats to use nuclear force. Ukraine’s recent gains have embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and prompted rare domestic criticism.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday his forces now control Lyman, after Russia’s military announced Saturday its retreat.
“As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors,” Zelenskyy said in a video address.
In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s hometown Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that struck a school early Sunday and destroyed two stories of it, said Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia in recent weeks has begun using Iranian-made suicide drones to attack targets in Ukraine. In southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.
Meanwhile, Russian attacks also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. And Ukraine’s military said Sunday it carried out strikes on multiple Russian command posts, ammunition depots and two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.
The reports of military activity couldn’t be immediately verified.
Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks.
In the latest major development, Ukrainian forces encircled Russian troops holding the hub of Lyman in the east, forcing the Russians to withdraw in what the British military described as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push farther into territory Russia has occupied.
Lyman had been an important link in the Russian front line for ground communications and logistics. Lyman is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in battling to hold Lyman, but said outnumbered Russian troops were withdrawn to more favorable positions.
In his nightly address Saturday, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”
In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”
The British said they believed that the city had been held by “undermanned elements” prior to the Russian withdrawal, which prompted immediate criticism from some Russian officials.
“Further losses of territory in illegally occupied territories will almost certainly lead to an intensification of this public criticism and increase the pressure on senior commanders,” the British military briefing said.
The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.
AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the Ukrainian town, including a deep sunless pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.
Russian officials release limited information about military activity in what the Kremlin still refuses to call a war. Putin frames the Ukrainian gains as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Pope Francis on Sunday decried the nuclear threats, and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”
Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting about the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.
The plant is in an area of Ukraine controlled by Russia and within one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to recapture more territory in eastern Ukraine after Kyiv’s forces pushed Russia out of the key city of Lyman.
“Now a Ukrainian flag is there” in Lyman, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday. “During this week, there were more Ukrainian flags in Donbas. It will be even more in a week.”
Ukraine pushed Moscow’s forces out of Lyman on Saturday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the annexation of Donetsk, which includes the strategic city. The Defense Ministry in Moscow on Saturday cited “a threat of encirclement” in withdrawing its troops from Lyman “to more advantageous lines,” it said in a Telegram post.
The retreat from Lyman represents a big setback for Putin, as Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion makes further advances in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian push has seen the recapture of a vast amount of Russian-occupied territory as Moscow’s soldiers have abandoned the front lines.
“Operationally, Lyman is important because it commands a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.
“Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman also represents a significant political setback” after Putin’s proclamation of the annexation of the region on Friday, the ministry said. Putin hailed the annexation of Donetsk and three other regions following referendums that Western countries declared a “sham.”
“Russia has staged a farce in Donbas. An absolute farce, which it wanted to present as an alleged referendum,” Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
“Ukraine will return its own,” the president pledged. “Both in the east and in the south. And what they tried to annex now, and Crimea, which has been called annexed since 2014.”
“Our flag will be everywhere,” he said.
Lyman has been a key supply and logistics hub for Russian troops fighting in eastern Ukraine. The loss of the city will further hamper Moscow’s supply lines and impede Russia’s ability to maneuver against a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east that also has pushed Russian forces from the Kharkiv area.
The recapture of Lyman is “significant” for Ukraine, as it creates more problems for Russia’s military on its supply routes, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “And without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward,” Austin told reporters in Hawaii on Saturday, Reuters reported.
“And we think the Ukrainians have done great work to get there and to begin to occupy the city,” Austin said.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas,” Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said on Saturday. “It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” he said.
Lviv, Ukraine – Four-year-old Teona sits in a room filled with purple beanbags and other sensory toys, patting an inflated balloon vigorously with both her hands. She seems cheerful and vivacious, occasionally crying out in joy. Speaking to her in a kindly, measured tone is a play therapist, Sofia. Her job is to help Teona improve her social skills. Watching the two interact, it’s hard to imagine that the last few months have been intensely traumatic for Teona in ways that she cannot articulate.
For now, she is safe at the Dzherelo Children’s Rehabilitation Centre, an NGO offering rehabilitation services and treatment for young people with disabilities in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The journey was not easy, though. She and her mother, Viktoria Plyush, 33, fled by train, waiting fearfully at dangerous checkpoints before arriving on July 9, just over four months after Russian forces captured their hometown of Hola Prystan in the southern region of Kherson.
Teona has non-verbal autism, and before the Russians overran Hola Prystan she had been attending a kindergarten that provided play and speech therapy. For months, her mother clung to the hope that Ukrainian forces would liberate the area. Teona had been confined to their home for several months, unable to go to school or see any of her classmates, who had all gone to Poland or Romania with their families. She grew agitated, covering her ears and screaming constantly.
“All the facilities for children with developmental disabilities shut down because they refused to cooperate with the Russian occupiers, which we think is the honourable thing to do,” Plyush says. A mild-mannered woman with a determined gaze, she sits ramrod straight in her chair as she speaks, occasionally glancing at Teona as she plays with Sofia.
The family lived in fear. “Rockets were flying everywhere and there were no air raid sirens to warn us,” she recalls. The only times she left the house were to dash out to the market to buy food. The last straw came when she heard about the Russian army kidnapping civilians or fighters with Ukrainian loyalties.
Teona wailed throughout the arduous two-day journey from Hola Prystan into Lviv.
Now, Plyush, her husband and Teona live with her sister in Lviv. Plyush is relieved that Teona can resume the therapy she needs, and not be isolated any longer.
Despite her sunny disposition and the friends she’s made at Dzherelo, Teona is still on edge following her ordeal. After months at home with Plyush in Hola Prystan, she also has separation anxiety, screaming if her mother is out of sight for more than a few minutes.
But it’s not just Teona who has needed extra care after all the stress she has endured. Yaroslava Nikashin, 35, an easy-going and warm social worker at Dzherelo, says that her work in recent months has focused on supporting parents and ramping up psychological help and counselling for caregivers. “Some of the parents like her [Plyush] seem calm, but on the inside, they’re also really scared and sad,” she says.
Despite worries that financing for NGOs like Dzherelo will dwindle as the war drags on and most financial aid is diverted to the armed services, Nikashin has made up her mind to continue her work. “We have to try and maintain both the quality and quantity of the services we offer and give as much as we can,” she says.
The Dzherelo centre, in a suburb of Lviv, offers treatment and rehabilitation services for disabled young people [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Challenges accessing support
As the Russian invasion grinds into its eighth month, Ukrainians with intellectual and physical disabilities – as well as their carers – continue to encounter huge challenges in accessing the support they need.
According to two Brussels-based NGOs, the European Disability Forum and Inclusion Europe, some 2.7 million people with disabilities are registered in Ukraine. Of these, an estimated 261,000 have intellectual disabilities. Both organisations have documented a drastic deterioration in the quality of life for Ukrainians with disabilities.
Some are unable to access medication or food, while those with developmental disabilities have seizures or become aggressive while frightened by shelling. In addition, wheelchair users or those with mobility issues are not able to access bomb shelters, so people with physical disabilities have no choice but to remain at home, leaving them at a disproportionate risk of death. Thousands more are believed to be trapped in care homes or poorly-maintained institutions, cut off from their communities and languishing in neglect.
Since the end of June, Dzherelo has been working with UNICEF and the Ukrainian government on an emergency intervention, dispatching mobile teams of medical experts to seven regions of western Ukraine, focusing on remote areas where children with physical impediments and developmental difficulties might struggle to receive the assistance they need. In total, Dzherelo has supported more than 750 families through this scheme and their Lviv facility.
Zoreslava Liulchak, the director of Dzherelo, says that in the early days of the war, the centre met people at the train station in Lviv who had carried their children for the entire journey from the east to western Ukraine, as they were not able to bring wheelchairs from home. “There’s also a big problem with leaving itself,” she adds. “The Russians often do not release people from the occupied territory.”
She cites the example of a rehabilitation specialist from Kherson who is now working at Dzherelo. Along with his two nephews who have cerebral palsy, he had to escape through Russian-controlled Crimea, as they were not permitted to leave via any other route. These stories are commonplace, Liulchak says, and such stressful journeys can “provoke complications in physical and psychological conditions” already experienced by children with disabilities.
A trampoline at the Dzherelo centre, which has helped more than 750 families through a joint emergency programme focusing on remote areas which started in late June [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Gruelling, expensive work
Some 735km (575 miles) away in Galway, Ireland, 40-year-old Ukrainian disability rights activist Yuliia Sachuk is all too familiar with the frustrations faced by people with disabilities who are trying to evacuate to safety – whether to western Ukraine or abroad. As the chair and co-founder of Fight for Right, a female-led Ukrainian NGO for disability rights, Sachuk and her team of nearly 30 have been overworked arranging the delivery of essential medications, financial support and legal advice for more than 4,100 individuals in the disabled community since the end of February.
Sachuk was studying for a master’s in disability law in Galway when she returned home in early 2022 as tensions were rising in eastern Ukraine. She fled the country in the late hours of February 24, following the invasion, with her 17-year-old son and sister after hearing about a bombing near a medical facility for people with disabilities. Their train from Kyiv kept stopping amid explosions and she frantically texted other activists in neighbouring countries for help. One of her contacts helped the family get to Romania, and eventually to Ireland. Her husband has remained in Ukraine and is volunteering with the Territorial Defence Forces.
Sachuk says her work has been non-stop, gruelling and expensive. Arranging a medical evacuation for a person with disabilities, especially from the worst-affected cities, can cost the equivalent of $5,100 to $10,300 – in part due to the equipment needed.
The group started a GoFundMe online crowdfunding campaign to help with evacuations and support those who cannot leave with food and medicine. As of late September, it has raised 481,096 euros ($464,188) of its 700,000-euro ($675,390) goal. According to Sachuk, requests for help from people with disabilities continue to stream in.
Aside from receiving initial guidance from two US-based organisations – the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and the World Institute on Disability – on how to set up Fight For Right’s response strategy, Sachuk says they were let down by other international disability charities.
“In the first months of the war, all these organisations were not helpful at all when it comes to direct support. Nobody worked with us,” Sachuk says. “If [we’re talking about] getting a person here and now to help a disabled person to their car, or to buy some food or medicine, all of these organisations have failed.” Ukrainian disability organisations were left on their own to save people, she says.
With sadness, she recalls the first few months of the war when she received goodbye calls and messages from people with disabilities in occupied regions. “They were stuck in their houses and they didn’t have the possibility of evacuation,” she says.
Sachuk knows intimately what it means to live with a disability. Born in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk with severe congenital visual impairment, she was in and out of hospital throughout her childhood as she underwent multiple eye surgeries. Her sight is still poor today but she says she manages to get by with the aid of magnifying glasses and enlarged letters on computer screens. “When you have lived with this for all your life, you get used to it, and stop thinking of it as a problem,” she says.
She credits her parents for fighting for her to attend a state-run school, instead of one of the boarding schools for children with disabilities that are infamous for rampant abuse and mistreatment. At school, she was bullied by classmates.
She remembers hearing stories about children with disabilities who were confined to their homes as some parents were ashamed of them. “It was just not talked about so much in the past,” she says.
Sachuk is proud of how Fight for Right has brought people with disabilities safety and comfort. She recalls how, in June, her team helped organise the delivery of a prosthetic breast from Germany to a woman in the northeastern city of Kharkiv in Ukraine. The woman had had a mastectomy following a breast cancer diagnosis and was also suffering from mobility problems. “She was just so, so happy. She couldn’t believe it was possible,” Sachuk remembers.
Routine is critical
One formidable task for NGOs working with people with developmental disabilities is the pressure to provide stability amidst the turmoil of war. Routine is especially important for children with autism; disarray can jeopardise any progress that comes with therapy.
Anna Perekatiy, founder of the Start Centre in Lviv, an NGO that supports children with developmental disabilities, says 35 displaced families from regions in eastern Ukraine that were shelled intensely by the Russians, such as Kherson, Donetsk and Mykolaiv, have come to her for help since the start of the war. They have children with a range of physical, developmental and learning disabilities. Some 90 percent of them have autism.
“These children need stability, they need permanent therapy to help them develop crucial skills,” says Perekatiy, who has a 12-year-old son with autism. She stresses that children’s development deteriorates quickly when pedagogical therapy is put on pause.
Olha Chermayina, left, and her daughter Alisa, who has non-verbal autism, play at the Start Centre. When their city of Berdyansk was occupied in late February, Alisa’s speech therapy was disrupted [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Two-year-old Alisa has non-verbal autism – a diagnosis that she only formally received upon arriving in Lviv from her home in Berdyansk in southeastern Ukraine. Her mother, 37-year-old Olha Chermayina, cries as she describes how Alisa’s behaviour changed when the Russian occupation began. “She stopped making eye contact and shut down completely,” Chermayina recalls. As doctors fled the city, there was no proper medical care for children, and Alisa had no access to speech therapy.
When the family began to feel the impact of food shortages, they decided to flee. Upon arriving in Lviv, Chermayina and her husband Shota took Alisa to a children’s hospital, where a doctor confirmed she had autism. “He said we would have to start her treatment right from the beginning,” Chermayina says. “We’re taking a risk in staying here, but … we don’t know if she’ll get the care she needs if we go abroad, and there’s no guarantee that she can get used to it there.” Today, Alisa goes to the Start Centre five times a week.
Many children with disabilities were deprived of educational opportunities once the war started, as they could not partake in the online learning offered in mainstream schools. Perekatiy is also frustrated by the lack of governmental support, with the majority of rehabilitative services provided by NGOs like hers. She says the “old Soviet education system”, where the learning needs of people with disabilities were largely ignored, has meant that those who need support still feel stigmatised. Though she is optimistic that attitudes are changing, she worries that recognition of these needs won’t come quite fast enough for those most affected by the war.
Nine-year-old Milena, her hair in braids, who is from Bilytske in Donetsk, enjoys a play session at the Dzherelo centre [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Structured environment
Even for children with intellectual disabilities who may not have outwardly shown signs of trauma, a structured environment is just as important for their development. In Dzherelo’s spacious garden, with its trampoline and playground, Olena Filippova watches her daughter, nine-year-old Milena, play with other children.
At the beginning of April, Filippova travelled with Milena, who has Down’s Syndrome, westward from their home city of Bilytske in Donetsk. Unable to get on a bus to Poland, she decided to stay in Lviv and enrol Milena at Dzherelo for play therapy five days a week. For the time being, the pair lives in an overcrowded dormitory for internally displaced people where the conditions are dismal. But Filippova, 49, a secondary school teacher, hopes to secure a teaching job in the autumn.
Milena, who has limited speech and communicates predominantly with gestures, is curious and observant, having picked up new words in Ukrainian simply by listening to other people. Since she grew up speaking Russian, the linguistic switch is particularly remarkable. “But she’s very mischievous,” Filippova laughs. “Once she knows a new word, she’ll say it once but refuse to repeat it. It’s like she’s making fun of me.”
For Milena, it was only after the war started that she began receiving specialist care. In Bilytske, Milena attended a regular kindergarten where Filippova says the teachers “made sure to be very inclusive” and had similar play therapy but for only two hours a week, which her mother felt wasn’t sufficient.
“My daughter was born at a time when rehabilitation centres [for children with learning disabilities] were just starting to open,” she says. As the field opens up and improves, she hopes that “with this change of circumstances, Milena will start talking to me”.
From left to right, Volodymyr, Ivanka, and Danylo, long-term residents of the Emmaus Centre, are shown with two of the centre’s assistants, including Tetiana, standing, in the building’s lounge [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
A glimmer of hope
At the Emmaus Centre, a home for adults with intellectual disabilities on the grounds of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, residents offer fellow members of the disabled community a glimmer of hope by showing how stability and opportunities can facilitate social integration.
Emmaus provides individualised care – its four assistants live on site and support its five permanent residents – aged between 25 and 45 – with all aspects of their lives, from vocational training to employment to daily tasks such as shopping for groceries. At Emmaus’s request, the residents interviewed are referred to by their first names only.
The atmosphere in the home is relaxed and inviting, the residents chatting and laughing with each other. Sitting at the dining table in a cosy room lit by the afternoon sun, 32-year-old Ivanka speaks enthusiastically about her experiences with the 500-odd displaced people with disabilities who have over six months sought refuge at Emmaus and its surrounding dormitories for a few days at a time. Emmaus supported their subsequent evacuation to other countries in Europe.
Ivanka, who has a developmental disability, attended a boarding school for years, only coming to live in Emmaus in September 2017. “It was good when the refugees came because I was able to volunteer as a nanny for some of their children,” she says. In particular, she misses a pair of twin boys who were five months old and had mobility issues. Prior to the war, she had been regularly attending a workshop where she learned to craft origami and artwork for sale. “I stopped going because it was not safe. There was no bomb shelter near the place where the workshop was held. But I hope to go back soon,” she says with a smile.
Ivanka and Danylo are among the five permanent residents at the Emmaus Centre [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Two of her other housemates found their lives severely disrupted when the war began. One, 33-year-old Volodymyr, who has Down’s Syndrome, lost his job as a cleaner in a tech company several months ago. Having immensely enjoyed it, it was he who first suggested that other residents of the house would benefit from working.
“We are hoping to find him something else in the meantime,” says Tetiana Chul, one of the assistants at Emmaus.
“But it is still important to help out,” Volodymyr interjects. With not much on his plate at the moment, he spends his days cooking and cleaning for his roommates, and often volunteers to do chores on behalf of the staff. In his free time, he watches TV programmes from the 1990s and dreams of visiting Turkey, where one of his favourite soap operas is set.
Another resident, 25-year-old Danylo, who also has Down’s Syndrome, was taken by his family to Poland at the start of the war. “They felt I would be safer there. It was fun and I enjoyed going to school in Poland, but the language barrier was difficult for me,” he confesses. He ended up missing his friends in Lviv so much that his family agreed that he should return – and now he is back at Emmaus.
Danylo thumbs through a photo album to show Al Jazeera photos of his time in Poland. Suddenly, he recalls his mother, who died a few years ago and whom he calls his best friend. “Her lifelong dream was for me to live in a place like this, where I could be independent, and loved. I miss her very much,” he says, choking up with tears.
As Ivanka pats him on the shoulder, Chul holds out her hand to comfort him, and he kisses it. “Because of you, I am happy now,” he tells them.
Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in the east, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that’s been declared illegal by the West.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.
Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal was because “the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from North Atlantic alliance countries.”
The retreat marks Ukraine’s most significant gain since its successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Russia’s announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had encircled Russian troops in the city, which is located in the Kramatorsk district of Donetsk.
Ukrainian forces said earlier Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.
“The Russian group in the area of Lyman is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky are liberated. Stabilization measures are ongoing there,” Cherevatyi said in a televised press conference on Saturday morning.
“[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.
Cherevatyi said the Ukrainian troops actions are setting the tone to “break the course of these hostilities.”
He added that there had been “many killed and wounded,” but could not provide any further details.
The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday also revealed Saturday further details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting Russian forces had offered to retreat, but to no avail from the Ukrainian side.
“Occupiers asked [their command] for possibility to retreat, and they have been refused. Accordingly, they have two options. No, they actually have three options. Try to break through, surrender, or everyone there will die,” Hayday said.
“There are several thousand of them. Yes, about 5,000. There is no exact number yet. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has never been such a large group in the encirclement before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.
Yurii Mysiagin, Ukrainian member of Parliament and deputy head of the parliament’s committee on national security, referenced the move into Stavky on Saturday by publishing a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving up the road with a clear sign indicating the region of Stavky. CNN could not independently verify the original source or the date.
A video posted on social media, and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing on a military vehicle attaching the flag with tape to a large sign with the word “Lyman.”
“We are unfurling our country’s flag and planting it on our land. On Lyman. Everything will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers says to the camera.
Meanwhile, pressure appears to be growing on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement slamming Russian generals in the wake of the withdrawal from Lyman, said it was time for the Kremlin to make use of every weapon at his disposal.
“In my personal opinion we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “There is no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”
Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s President between 2008 and 2012, discussed nuclear weapons use on his Telegram channel, saying it was permitted if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by conventional forces.
“If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat limit, we will have to respond … this is certainly not a bluff,” he wrote.
Concerns have risen sharply that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons use after Putin’s proclamation on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens “forever.”
The announcement was dismissed as illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is the Kremlin might argue that attacks on those territories now constitute attacks on Russia.
In his speech in the Kremlin, the Russian leader made only passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting the United States was the only country to have used them on the battlefield.
“By the way, they created a precedent,” he added.
Also on Saturday, the director-general of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of state nuclear company Energoatom.
Director-General Ihor Murashov was in his vehicle on his way from the plant when he was “stopped … taken out of the car, and with his eyes blindfolded he was driven in an unknown direction. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s Petro Kotin said in a statement.
“Murashov is a licensed person and bears main and exclusive responsibility for the nuclear and radiation safety of the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Kotin said, adding, that his detention “jeopardizes the safety of operation of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
Kotin called for Murashov’s release, and urged the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate actions to urgently free” him.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly” condemned Murashov’s “illegal detention,” calling it a “another manifestation of state terrorism from the side of Russia and a gross violation of international law.”
“We call on the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive measures to this end,” the ministry said in a statement.
Overnight, Russia hit Zaporizhzhia with four S300 missiles, according to the head of the regional administration Oleksandr Starukh.
And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found following Russian shelling on a convoy of cars near the eastern town of Kupiansk.
The cars were shot by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate,” it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and police had “discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot dead near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district,” on Friday, Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
The SBU confirmed on Telegram they would be investigating a “war crime” where at least 20 people died in “a brutal attack.”
CNN could not independently verify the allegations. There has been no official Russian response to the claims made.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a rally to celebrate the annexation of portions of Ukraine. However, none of the territories are under full Russian military control, and Putin’s forces have been retreating. Charlie D’Agata has more.
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Time is running out for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he knows it.
Meanwhile his bombast continues: announcing the annexation of Ukrainian territories on Friday, Putin declared Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will become part of Russia “forever.” He is rushing to claim a victory and cement slender gains and sue for peace, running a dangerous political tab, regardless of the fanfare in Moscow.
He called on Ukraine to “cease fire” immediately and “sit down at the negotiating table,” but added: “We will not negotiate the choice of the people. It has been made. Russia will not betray it.”
He is doing his best to hide it, but he is losing his war in Ukraine. The writing is on the wall.
Andrey Kortunov, who runs the Kremlin-backed Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow, sees it, too. “President Putin wants to end this whole thing as fast as possible,” he told CNN.
Putin’s recent heavy-handed conscription drive for 300,000 troops won’t reverse his battlefield losses any time soon, and is backfiring at home, running him up a dangerous political tab.
According to official data from the EU, Georgia and Kazakhstan, around 220,000 Russians have fled across their borders since the “partial mobilization” was announced. The EU said its numbers – nearly 66,000 – represented a more than 30% increase from the previous week.
Ex-oligarch says Putin made a dangerous move and is risking his life
Independent Russian media quoting Russia’s revamped KGB, the FSB, put the total exodus even higher. They say more military age men have fled the country since conscription – 261,000 – than have so far fought in the war – an estimated 160,000 to 190,000.
CNN is unable to verify the Russian figures, but the 40 kilometers (around 25 miles) traffic tailbacks at the border with Georgia, and the long lines at crossings into Kazakhstan and Finland, speak to the backlash and the strengthening perception that Putin is losing his fabled touch at reading Russia’s mood.
The clock ticks loudly for Putin because his back is against the wall.
Kortunov says he doesn’t know what goes on in the Kremlin but that he understands the public mood over the huge costs and loss of life in the war. “Many people would start asking questions, why did we get into this mess? Why, you know, we lost so many people.”
Putin’s logical option, Kortunov says, is to declare victory and get out on his own terms. But for this he needs a significant achievement on the ground. “Russia cannot simply get to where it was, on the 24 February of this year, say, okay, you know, that’s fine. Our mission is accomplished. So we go home… …There should be something that can be presented to the public as a victory.”
And this is the logic Putin appears to be following, rubber-stamping the sham referendums in Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and declaring them part of Russia.
He used the same playbook annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and now, like then, threatens potential nuclear strikes should Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, try to take the annexed territories back.
Western leaders are in a battle of brinksmanship with Putin. Last Sunday US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Washington would respond decisively if Russia deployed nuclear weapons against Ukraine and has made clear to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face.
Leaders have also vowed not to recognize the regions as part of Russian territory.
US President Joe Biden said Moscow’s actions have “no legitimacy,” adding that Washington will continue to “always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.” The European Union said it “will never” recognize the Kremlin’s “illegal annexation,” and described the move as a “further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Hear what worries Sen. Rubio more than a Russian nuclear attack
There is little new in what Putin does, which, if nothing else, is making his moves more predictable, and therefore more readily analyzed.
Kurt Volker, who was US ambassador to NATO and US special representative to Ukraine under former President Donald Trump, believes Putin maybe gearing up for peace. “I think what he must be striving for, is to brandish the nuclear weapons, make all kinds of threats to Europe, and then say, okay, so let’s negotiate a settlement. And let me keep what I have already taken.”
Fiona Hill, who has advised three US Presidents on national security about Russia, also thinks Putin may be attempting an end game. “He feels a sense of acute urgency that he was losing momentum, and he’s now trying to exit the war in the same way that he entered it. With him being the person in charge and him framing the whole terms of any kind of negotiation. “
Both Danish and Swedish seismologists recorded explosive shockwaves from close to the seabed: the first, at around 2 a.m. local time, hitting 2.3 magnitude, then again, at around 7 p.m., registering 2.1.
Within hours, roiling patches of sea were discovered, the Danes and the Germans sent warships to secure the area, and Norway increased security around its oil and gas facilities.
So far, at least four leaks in Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines 1 and 2 have been discovered, each at the surface resembling a boiling cauldron, the largest one kilometer across, and together spewing industrial quantities of toxic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Sabotage suspected in Nord Stream pipeline leaks
Russian naval vessels were seen by European security officials in the area in the days prior, Western intelligence sources have said. NATO’s North Atlantic Council has described the damage as a “deliberate, reckless and irresponsible act of sabotage.”
Russia denies responsibility and says it has launched its own investigation. But former CIA chief John Brennan said Russia has the expertise to inflict this type of damage “all the signs point to some type of sabotage that these pipelines are only in about 200 feet or so of water and Russia does have an undersea capability to that will easily lay explosive devices by those pipelines.”
Brennan’s analysis is that Russia is the most likely culprit for the sabotage, and that Putin is likely trying to send a message: “It’s a signal to Europe that Russia can reach beyond Ukraine’s borders. So who knows what he might be planning next.”
Nord Stream 2 was never operational, and Nord Stream 1 had been throttled back by Putin as Europe raced to replenish gas reserves ahead of winter, while dialling back demands for Russian supplies and searching for replacement providers.
The Nord Stream pipeline sabotage could, according to Hill, be a last roll of the dice by Putin, so that “there’s no kind of turning back on the gas issues. And it’s not going to be possible for Europe to continue to build up its gas reserves for the winter. So what Putin is doing is throwing absolutely everything at this right now.”
Another factor accelerating Putin’s thinking may be the approach of winter. Napoleon and Hitler both failed to take Moscow as supply lines running through Ukraine were too long and arduous in winter. Volker says that what historically saved Russia is now pressing down on Putin: “This time, it’s Russia that has to supply lines, trying to sustain its forces in Ukraine. That’s going to be very hard this winter. So all of a sudden, for all these factors, Putin’s timeline has moved up.”
The bottom line, said Hill, is that “this is the result of Ukraine gaining momentum on the ground on the battlefield and of Putin himself losing it, so he’s trying to adapt to the circumstances and basically take charge and get every advantage.”
No one knows what’s really going on in Putin’s mind. Kortunov doubts Putin will be willing to compromise beyond his own terms for peace, “not on the terms that are offered by President Zelensky, not on the terms which are offered by the West… .[though] he should be ready to exercise a degree of flexibility. But we don’t know what these degrees [are] likely to be.”
According to Hill, Putin wants his negotiations to be with Biden and allies, not Ukraine: “He’s basically saying now you will have to negotiate with me and sue for peace. And that means recognizing what we have done on the ground in Ukraine.”
Having failed in the face of Western military unity backing Ukraine, Putin appears set to test Western resolve diplomatically, by trying to divide Western allies over terms for peace.
Volker expects Putin to pitch France and Germany first “to say, we need to end this war, we’re going to protect our territories at all costs, using any means necessary, and you need to put pressure on the Ukrainians to settle.”
If this is Putin’s plan, it could turn into his biggest strategic miscalculation yet. There is little Western appetite to see him stay in power – US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said as much in the summer – and even less to let down Ukraine after all its suffering.
Putin knows he is in a corner, but doesn’t seem to realize how small a space he has, and that of course is what’s most worrying – would he really make good on his nuclear threats?
The war in Ukraine may have entered a new phase, and Putin may have his back against the wall, but an end to the conflict could still be a very long way off.
After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled troops out from the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman – the latest victory for Kyiv’s counteroffensive that has humiliated and angered Moscow.
The announcement on Saturday came a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony condemned by Kyiv and the West as an illegitimate farce.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” Russia’s defence ministry said, using the Russian name of the city.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said in a video address although the Ukrainian flag was flying in the city, “fighting is still going on there”.
He also indicated Ukrainian troops had taken the village of Torske, on the main road out of Lyman to the east.
The Russian statement ended hours of official silence after Ukraine first said it surrounded thousands of Russian troops in the area and then that its forces were inside the city.
Ukraine’s defence ministry wrote on Twitter that “almost all” the Russian troops in Lyman had either been captured or killed.
‘Drastic measures’
Located 160km (100 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Lyman is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two regions that Russia annexed on Friday.
“The Russian grouping in the area of Lyman is surrounded,” said Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces.
Russia has used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture would be Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since a counterattack in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
The recent Ukrainian successes have infuriated Putin allies such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, who said he felt compelled to speak out.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
Other top Putin allies, including former President Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions claimed by Moscow.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons and has spelled out to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face.
‘Psychologically very important’
Two Ukrainian soldiers taped the yellow-and-blue national flag to the Lyman welcome sign at an entrance to the city, a video posted by the president’s chief of staff showed.
“October 1. We’re unfurling our state flag and establishing it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers said.
Ukraine said controlling Lyman would allow Kyiv to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” Cherevatyi said.
Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the wider Donbas region that has been a major focus for Russia since soon after the start of Moscow’s invasion on February 24 in what it calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour.
Putin proclaimed the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia to be Russian land on Friday – a swath of territory equal to about 18 percent of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies branded Russia’s move as illegal. Kyiv promised to continue liberating its land from Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Putin remained president.
Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield, and said ammunition on board had caught fire.
In other developments, in an apparent attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ihor Murashov.
Russian forces on Saturday shelled a civilian evacuation convoy in the country’s northeast, killing 20 people, s senior Ukrainian official says. Bombardments have intensified as Moscow illegally annexed a swath of Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of the war.
Kharkiv region Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said the convoy was struck in the Kupiansy district, calling the attack on people who were trying to flee the area to avoid being shelled “сruelty that can’t be justified.”
Russian forces have not acknowledged or commented on the attack, apparently the second in two days to hit a humanitarian convoy. Russian troops have retreated from much of the Kharkiv region after a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive last month but continued to shell the area
The attack comes at a pivotal moment in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war. Facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Putin this week heightened threats of nuclear force and used his most aggressive, anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military vowed to keep fighting to liberate the annexed regions and other Russian-occupied areas.
Artillery craters are seen in the field from an arial view in the recently liberated area of Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Sept. 30, 2022.
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Ukrainian officials said Saturday that their forces had surrounded thousands of Russian forces holding the strategic eastern city of Lyman, which is located in one of the four incorporated areas. Zelenskyy formally applied Friday for Ukraine to join NATO, increasing pressure on Western allies to help defend the country.
Also Saturday Ukraine’s nuclear power provider said that Russian forces blindfolded and detained the head of Europe’s largest nuclear plant. It appeared to be an attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory.
Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, around 4 p.m. Friday, Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom said. That was just hours after Putin signed treaties to absorb Moscow-controlled Ukrainian territory into Russia, including the area around the nuclear plant.
Energoatom said Russian troops stopped Murashov’s car, blindfolded him and then took him to an undisclosed location.
Russia did not immediately acknowledge seizing the plant director. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has staff at the plant, said it was aware of the reports of Murashov’s capture, and had contacted Russian authorities for clarification on what happened.
“His detention by (Russia) jeopardizes the safety of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant,” said Energoatom President Petro Kotin said, demanding the director’s immediate release.
The power plant repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian technicians continued running it after Russian troops seized the power station, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure amid ongoing shelling nearby.
Amid growing international sanctions and condemnation of Russia, a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has embarrassed the Kremlin appeared on the verge of retaking more ground.
A Ukrainian official said Saturday that the Russian-occupied city of Lyman was surrounded, with some 5,000 Russian forces trapped there. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai claimed that all routes to resupply Russian forces in Lyman were blocked.
“The occupiers asked their leadership for the opportunity to leave, which they refused,” Haidai said in a television interview. “Now they have three options: to try to break through, to surrender or to die together.”
His claims could not immediately be verified. Russia has not confirmed its forces were cut off, and Russian analysts had said Moscow was sending more troops to the area.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Ukraine likely will retake Lyman in the coming days.
PARIS — A giant, glowing crystal rock upon a sand-colored carpet evoked a glamorous alien planet for Hermes’ champagne-sipping VIP guests.
Earthen hues like browns, reds and yellows — colors long-associated with the heritage brand — were used at Saturday’s show to create Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s utilitarian, low-key yet luxuriant universe for spring.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s top fashion designers used the platform of Paris Fashion Week to promote their war-battered industry.
Here are some highlights of the day’s spring-summer 2023 collections in Paris:
HERMES’ SUBTLE STRINGS
It was a Vanhee-Cybulski minimalist take on the 80s.
The lone pulsating crystal that glowed color from the center of the runway established the collection’s key idea: Simplicity is powerful.
As the show took off, the odd utilitarian features — such as toggles and the strange, perplexing box platform shoes that stomped throughout — were used with subtlety but aplomb.
It gave a sporty and outer-space feel to the collection’s stylish, almost empty, restraint — a mood that now defines the talented 44-year-old French designer’s repertoire.
Tan suede tunic minidresses sported beautiful, braided leather hems — showcased without jewelry on a makeup-less model. While, exposed midriffs latticed with cords and toggles came on otherwise unfussy slim silhouettes.
UKRAINE’S “GOOD SIX” DESIGNERS SHOW UNITED FRONT
Last season in Paris, the Ukrainian designers trade fair event took place just two days before Russia’s invasion amid stories of some artists fleeing the country so rapidly they had only their children and their collection in hand.
This season sees no improvement back home for the industry: It’s been battered by increased financial strains as designers try hard to maintain employed staff despite little money, a decrease in demand and ravished supply chains.
A collective of these designer-survivors is showing in Paris beginning Saturday until Oct.6.
Jen Sidary, the collective’s head, said “in my 30 years of working in the fashion industry, I have never witnessed the resilience of a country and its people as they began to focus on keeping their businesses alive, days into the war, from bomb shelters to designing new collections amidst constant air raid sirens.”
The six making up the Paris Fashion Week event — Frolov, Kachorovska, Chereshnivska, Litkovska, My Sleeping Gypsy and Oliz — are showcasing unisex apparel, footwear and scarves. It’s a bid to keep their ravaged industry alive, and form of resistance against the Russian bombs decimating their homeland.
Many of their colleagues back home in Ukraine have had to repurpose their operations to help the war effort, relocating within the country, according to Sidary.
The courage of the Ukraine fashion industry has drawn international attention.
USAID Project Manager Natalia Petrova spoke of the “remarkable resilience, commitment and awareness” of Ukrainian businesses since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Disruptions on the domestic market caused by decrease in demand by population and broken supply chains, are pushing companies to explore export opportunities to diversify their sales,” she added.
ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Kink mated with art in the typically quirky fare from Kronthaler — a staple show where a fashion surprise is all but expected.
With his usual encyclopedic flair, Kronthaler wove an aesthetic from yesteryear — medieval and renaissance nobles and peasants — into his drape-heavy silhouettes. Guests almost felt like they were at the theater.
Juliette sleeves mixed with black Renaissance tarbuds, decorated collars and even one wacky but stylish blue loose tuxedo look that could have been worn by the Bard himself. Of course, Kronthaler accessorized it anachronistically with pale blue striped rugby socks. Added to the creative cauldron were chunky Glam Rock boots and a Highlands kilt style with white trimming at the male model’s nether regions, making it look like they might have gotten a front bite.
The opening image of Irina Shayk, often voted among the most beautiful models in the world, in a shiny black bustier and silver-ring earrings riffing off S&M will surely be one picture few quickly forget.
ELIE SAAB REVISITS THE 60s
The late 1960s got a facelift on Saturday in a collection that featured babydoll dresses, miniskirts, psychedelia, crop-tops and jabot collars — but never lost that floaty, contemporary Saab touch.
The first look from Saab at his Paris fashion show fused a 1960s angelic-white crop top and a maxi skirt with an ethnic look, thanks to a construction of interlocking motifs. This fusion of different eras continued throughout the show, which sent out 68 items.
Lace detailing was a big theme and became the front of a baggy pale tracksuit top. In an anachronism that defined this Saab spring aesthetic, it was worn alongside a sheer 1990s’ tulle skirt. It had a great swag and could have very well been seen at a music festival in that decade.
Flashes of Barbie pink and citrus contrasted with psychedelic stripes on column silhouettes, sometimes making it feel like Saab was trying to put too much in the mix. The collection was ultimately hard to pin down.
The House of Representatives voted on Friday to approve a stopgap bill to fund the government through December 16, averting a shutdown just hours ahead of a midnight deadline when funding was set to expire.
Lawmakers had expressed confidence there wouldn’t be a shutdown, but it is typical of Congress in recent years to run right up against funding deadlines.
In part, that’s because the opposing parties find it easier to reach last-minute deals to stave off a shutdown under tight time pressure.
This time around, neither party wanted to be blamed for a shutdown – especially so close to the consequential November midterm elections where control of Congress is at stake and as Democrats and Republicans are both trying to make their case to voters that they should be in the majority. Lawmakers up for reelection are also eager to finish up work on Capitol Hill so they can return to their home states to campaign.
In addition to money to keep government agencies afloat, the short-term funding measure provides around $12 billion for Ukraine as it continues to counter Russia’s invasion of the country, and requires the Pentagon to report on how US dollars have been spent there. The aid to Ukraine is a bipartisan priority.
The continuing resolution also extends an expiring FDA user fee program for five years.
The $12 billion in additional funding for Ukraine provides money for the US to continue sending weapons to replenish US stocks that have been sent to the country over the past seven months during the ongoing conflict.
In order to continue providing Ukraine with weapons to counter Russia’s offensive, the bill allocates an additional $3 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This pot of money allows the US to procure and purchase weapons from industry and send them to the country, instead of drawing directly from US stockpiles of weapons.
The bill also authorizes an additional $3.7 billion in presidential drawdown authority funding, which allows the US to send weapons directly from US stockpiles, and $1.5 billion is included to “replenish US stocks of equipment” provided to Ukraine, a fact sheet from Senate Democrats about the bill states.
The bill designates $4.5 billion for the “economic support fund” to provide “support to maintain the operation of Ukraine’s national government,” the fact sheet states.
The US has provided Ukraine with significant economic and military support since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February, committing more than $16.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, since the Russian invasion began in February, a Department of Defense release stated on Wednesday.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s nuclear power provider accused Russia on Saturday of “kidnapping” the head of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, a facility now occupied by Russian troops and located in a region of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to annex illegally.
Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, around 4 p.m. Friday, Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom said. That was just hours after Putin, in a sharp escalation of his war, signed treaties to absorb Moscow-controlled Ukrainian territory into Russia.
Energoatom said Russian troops stopped Murashov’s car, blindfolded him and then took him to an undisclosed location.
“His detention by (Russia) jeopardizes the safety of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant,” said Energoatom President Petro Kotin said.
Kotin demanded that Russia immediately release Murashov.
Russia did not immediately acknowledge seizing the plant director. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has staff at the plant, did not immediately acknowledge Energoatom’s claim of Murashov’s capture.
The Zaporizhzhia plant repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian technicians continued running it after Russian troops seized the power station. The plant’s last reactor was shut down in September amid ongoing shelling near the facility.
On Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the war in Ukraine was at “a pivotal moment.” He called Putin’s decision to take over more territory – Russia now claims sovereignty over 15% of Ukraine – “the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, however, a Ukrainian counteroffensive that last month embarrassed the Kremlin by liberating a region bordering Russia was on the verge of retaking more ground, according to military analysts.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Ukraine likely will retake another key Russian-occupied city in the country’s east in the next few days. Ukrainian forces already have encircled the city of Lyman, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Citing Russian reports, the institute said it appeared Russian forces were retreating from Lyman. That corresponds to online videos purportedly showing some Russian forces falling back as a Ukrainian soldier said they had reached Lyman’s outskirts.
The Ukrainian military has yet to claim taking Lyman, and Russia-backed forces claimed they were sending more troops to the area.
Ukraine also is making “incremental” gains around Kupiansk and the eastern bank of the Oskil River, which became a key front line since the Ukrainian counteroffensive regained control of the Kharkiv region in September.
Ukraine’s military claimed Saturday that Russia would need to deploy cadets before they complete their training because of a lack of manpower in the war. Putin ordered a mass mobilization of Russian army reservists last week to supplement his troops in Ukraine, and thousands of men have fled the country to avoid the call-up.
The Ukrainian military’s general staff said cadets at the Tyumen Military School and at the Ryazan Airborne School would be sent to participate in Russia’s mobilization. It offered no details on how it gathered the information, though Kyiv has electronically intercepted mobile phone calls from Russian soldiers amid the conflict.
In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Defense Ministry highlighted an attack Friday in the city of Zaporizhzhia that killed 30 people and wounded 88 others.
The British military said the Russians “almost certainly” struck a humanitarian convoy there with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. Russia is increasingly using anti-aircraft missiles to conduct attacks on the ground likely due to a lack of munitions, the British said Saturday.
“Russia’s stock of such missiles is highly likely limited and is a high-value resource designed to shoot down modern aircraft and incoming missiles, rather than for use against ground targets,” the British said. “Its use in ground attack role has almost certainly been driven by overall munitions shortages, particularly longer-range precision missiles.”
The British briefing noted the attack came while Putin was preparing to sign the annexation treaties.
“Russia is expending strategically valuable military assets in attempts to achieve tactical advantage and in the process is killing civilians it now claims are its own citizens,” it said.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russia withdrew its troops from the strategic city of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraie, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said, as Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion made further gains.
The retreat by Russia comes a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of Donetsk, along with three other regions, following referendums that Western countries declared a “sham.”
Due to “a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn” from Lyman “to more advantageous lines,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday in a Telegram post.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry earlier Saturday said Ukrainian Air Assault Forces were entering Lyman. The Ukrainian army “has and will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums’,” the ministry said on Twitter, posting a video of what appear to be Ukrainian soldiers raising their country’s flag at the outskirts of the city.
Lyman has been an important logistics and supply hub for Russian forces fighting in eastern Ukraine. Its loss will further cripple Moscow’s supply lines just as Ukrainian troops are stepping up a counteroffensive in the east that has pushed Russian forces from the Kharkiv area.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas,” said Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces. “It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
The recapture of Lyman is the latest success in a Ukrainian counterassault that has seen Kyiv’s forces reclaim a vast amount of Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine as Moscow’s troops have abandoned the front lines. The surge by Ukraine prompted Putin to mobilize 300,000 reservists and threaten to deploy nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.
The BBC reported earlier that Russian military commentators were posting on Telegram channels on Saturday afternoon that the Ukrainian army has “already captured or, at a minimum, entered Lyman.”
HELSINKI — Polling stations opened Saturday in Latvia for a general election influenced by neighboring Russia’s attack on Ukraine, disintegration among the Baltic country’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority and the economy, particularly high energy prices.
Several polls showed the center-right New Unity party of Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins emerging as the top vote-getter with up to 20% support.
Karins, who became head of Latvia’s government in January 2019, currently leads a four-party minority coalition that along with New Unity includes the center-right National Alliance, the centrist Development/For!, and the Conservatives.
Support for parties catering to the ethnic-Russian minority that makes up over 25% of Latvia’s 1.9 million population is expected to be mixed; a share of part of loyal voters have abandoned them – for various reasons – since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
A total of 19 parties have over 1,800 candidates running in the election, but only around eight parties are expected to break through the 5% threshold required to secure a place in the 100-seat Saeima legislature.
Russian forces have abducted the head of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukrainian operator Energoatom said on Saturday.
Ihor Murashov, director general of the power plant, was arrested by Russian patrols on his way from the facility to a nearby town on Friday afternoon, according to Energoatom, a state enterprise operating all four nuclear power plants in the country.
“The vehicle of the Director General of the [Zaporizhzhia plant] was stopped, he was taken out of the car, and with his eyes blindfolded he was driven in an unknown direction. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s head, Petro Kotin, said in a statement.
Murashov’s detention “jeopardizes the safety of operation of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant,” Kotin said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has asked for clarification, Reuters reported.
Kotin believes that Russia is planning to transfer the Zaporizhzhia power plant to Rosatom, the Guardian reported. “They are trying to make our personnel just to sign the accurate deals for the work at Rosatom,” the news outlet quoted him as saying.
The power plant was in the spotlight earlier this month when it was taken off the electricity grid in response to Russian shelling. It is located in one of the areas that Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to annex.
