Monday, October 9, 2023
2110 GMT — Top United Nations trade official Rebeca Grynspan met with Russian officials in Moscow for talks aimed at enabling the "unimpeded access" to global markets for grain and fertiliser from Russia and Ukraine, a UN spokesperson has said.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths also attended the meetings virtually, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres "continues in his determination to facilitate the unimpeded access to global markets for food products and fertilisers from both Ukraine and the Russian Federation," Dujarric said.
He added that Grynspan and Griffiths' consultations with Russia "are taking place with this goal in mind."
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1213 GMT — Ukraine's president replaces Territorial Defence Forces commander
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has replaced the commander of Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces, which have played an important role in helping defend the country since Russia's attack.
A presidential order was published that announced the appointment of Major General Anatoliy Barhylevych as the new commander.
A separate order announced the removal of General Ihor Tantsyura, who had been in the post since May 2022.
No reason was given for the decisions.
1132 GMT — UN alarmed by Russia's 'mass' passports move in Ukraine
The United Nations voiced deep concern over Moscow's "mass conferral" of Russian passports in Ukrainian territory it controls and denying essential services to people who refuse them.
The UN human rights office, OHCHR, said residents who do not take up Russian citizenship were being denied access to essential public services and were at greater risk of arbitrary detention.
"One and a half years after the Russian Federation's full-scale armed attack on Ukraine, we continue to bear witness to blatant and unabated violations of human rights," said UN deputy human rights chief Nada Al Nashif.
1115 GMT — UN should accept upsetting facts after Ukraine's spy chief admitted attacks on nuclear plant: Russia
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the UN should acknowledge the uncomfortable truth about who attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP) after the revelation by Ukraine's intelligence chief.
Commenting on Kyrylo Budanov's interview with the NV media outlet, in which he admitted that special forces from Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence made three attempts to attack and capture the nuclear facility, Zakharova reminded that UN representatives "have been saying for all these months that they cannot determine the direction of the strike on the station."
"Budanov's confession should bring out of hypnotic sleep the population of NATO countries, who were inspired by the NATO regimes that Russia was creating threats to nuclear facilities and threatening to use nuclear weapons," she said.
Zakharova noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly said that Kiev uses the nuclear facility as a "dirty nuclear weapon" and "blackmails the Europeans with it."
0908 GMT — Ukraine races to make more war drone components at home
As Ukraine seeks the upper hand against Russia's far larger military with tens of thousands of cheap attack drones, producers and officials are working to have more components made locally to avoid exposure to shifting geopolitics.
The FPV (first-person-view) drone sector, a rapidly expanding part of Ukraine's defence effort, relies on complex supply lines to get commercially available electronic components, made mostly in China, to Ukrainian startups.
A month ago, Beijing introduced new export controls covering drones and their components. Five Ukrainians involved in the manufacture or supply of FPV drones said they had not yet choked off supplies, but highlighted the need to ramp up local output.
0905 GMT — Denmark seeks to boost F-16 jet deliveries to Ukraine
Denmark is working to "expand and deepen" a coalition of countries committed to delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the NATO parliamentary assembly's annual session in Copenhagen.
"As long as the Ukrainians are ready to fight this war for our freedom, let us decide that war fatigue will not take place in our transatlantic community," Frederiksen said.
The Netherlands and Denmark have led a push to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s and later deliver fighter jets to Ukraine to help counter Russia's air superiority.
2148 GMT —Russian shelling kills at least two in Kherson: Ukraine
Russian forces shelled southern Kherson region and other parts of Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least two people and injuring a dozen more, Ukrainian officials said.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said troops had beaten back attacks on five sectors of the 1,000-km long (600-mile) front.
Russian accounts said its forces had repelled attacks near the eastern front's focal point, Bakhmut, and farther north.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said a man had died in Russian shelling in the northern part of the region.
Prokudin had earlier reported that a dozen people were wounded in attacks on different localities.
1148 GMT — "Blatant and unabated violations of human rights" continue in Ukraine as the country's war with Russia continues, the UN's deputy high commissioner for human rights said.
Nada al Nashif's remarks came during an interactive dialogue about the OHCHR's findings of the periodic reports on Ukraine by the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The 36th report on the human rights situation in Ukraine revealed that within a span of just six months from Feb.1 to July 31, another 4,621 civilians became victims of the conflict, with 1,028 killed and 3,593 injured, Nashif said.
She noted that most of these casualties occurred in territory controlled by Ukraine, adding that the actual figures are likely higher.
"Between February and July 2023, we also documented that the pattern of arbitrary detention and incommunicado detention of civilians continued in Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine, with a recorded 35 men and eight women arbitrarily detained by Russian armed forces," she said.
For our live updates from Sunday (October 8), click here.
