UKRAINE Morning summary

 

2h ago

11.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/02/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-joe-biden-us-support-for-ukraine-speech-rishi-sunak-uk-instructors?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-651a92318f080714cd55f32a#block-651a92318f080714cd55f32a

 

Morning summary

• Russian shelling of Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson overnight killed at least one person and injured six, including two children, the regional governor said on Monday. Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that Russian forces had launched 71 attacks in the past 24 hours that were “aimed at the residential districts” as well as shops and medical infrastructure, among other establishments. Twenty of the air and land attacks targeted the city of Kherson, the region’s administrative district, the governor added. Authorities put out a fire caused by shelling early on Monday, he said.
• EU foreign ministers will consider Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace plan at a historic meeting in Kyiv this morning. The ministers, who rarely meet outside the confines of the territory of the EU, takes place amid concerns over cracks in US funding for the war and after a pro-Russian populist party won the most votes in an election in Slovakia on Saturday.
• Sources say the meeting will focus on all aspects of “EU support to Ukraine, with particular focus on continued military assistance, peace efforts and EU accession”. Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan has been discussed by national security representatives twice in the past year, but not at this level. Joe Biden vowed to stand by Ukraine after the passing of a stopgap bill on Saturday. The bill extended government funding for 45 days in order to avert a US government shutdown, but did not include aid for Kyiv.
• Joe Biden has called on congressional Republicans to back a deal to provide more aid to Ukraine, saying he was “sick and tired” of the political brinkmanship, and that US support for Ukraine could not be interrupted “under any circumstances”. A stopgap bill that extended government funding for more than a month and avoided a shutdown did not include any aid for Kyiv. “We cannot under any circumstances allow America’s support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” the US president said. “I fully expect the speaker to keep his commitment to secure the passage and support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression and brutality.”
• Ukraine’s top diplomat said Washington’s support for Kyiv was not weakening, and played down the significance of a stopgap funding bill passed by US Congress that omitted aid to Ukraine. US and other western military assistance has been vital for Ukraine to fight back against the full-scale invasion launched by Russia in February 2022. The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Kyiv was in talks with Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress, and that the drama around the stopgap bill that averted a government shutdown on Saturday was an “incident” rather than something systemic.
• Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, on Monday said a stopgap funding bill passed by the US Congress that omitted aid to Ukraine would change nothing, describing Washington’s decision as a “show for the public”, the RIA news agency reported. Ryabkov also said that US-produced missiles previously covered by the now defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty could appear in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Reuters reported.
• Russia is increasingly using combat jets to assert power over the western Black Sea, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence briefing. The MoD said more of its fleet activities were relocating to Novorossiysk in Russia “in the face of threats” to its Black Sea headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea.
• It seems likely that Moscow will launch a second missile campaign this winter, designed to cripple Ukraine’s energy grid again, the Guardian’s Luke Harding writes from Hostomel. Last Wednesday Ukrenergo, the state-owned electricity transmission system operator, said “enemy shelling” damaged a thermal power plant. More strikes are expected, after a summer in which Russia targeted Ukraine’s grain export facilities.
• Serbia’s troop deployment on Kosovo’s border is similar to Russia’s behaviour towards Ukraine before its invasion, the Kosovan foreign minister said, urging the EU to take action against Belgrade such as freezing its candidacy status. The warning comes after the US said on Friday it was monitoring a troubling Serbian military buildup along the Kosovo frontier that was destabilising the area, and after Nato said it was authorising additional peacekeeping forces for Kosovo, Reuters reported.
• The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said there were no immediate plans to deploy military instructors to Ukraine following comments by his defence minister, who had suggested troops could carry out training in the country. Rowing back on comments made by Grant Shapps, the prime minister said “there are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict”.
• Grant Shapps, Britain’s defence secretary, backed away from reports that the Royal Navy could help protect commercial ships carrying Ukrainian grain and other food exports in the Black Sea. Over the weekend, after an interview with the minister, the Sunday Telegraph reported that “British Royal Navy could play a role in defending commercial vessels from Russian attacks in the Black Sea”. This was picked up by some websites as a commitment the minister gave to Ukraine’s president Voldoymyr Zelenskiy when he visited Kyiv last week – but Shapps said on Monday this was not the case.
• Slovakia’s populist likely new prime minister, Robert Fico, who campaigned on a pledge to end military aid to Ukraine, has said his position “has not changed” after his party’s clear election win made him favourite to lead the country again. “People in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine,” the Smer party leader said.
• Ukraine marked Defenders Day, honouring veterans and remembering soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion. “Tough times have made us strong. And the strong bring the times of victory closer. Step by step. Today, tomorrow, every day, every minute,” the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a brief address on Telegram.
• Two purported Ukrainian drones struck Russian territory on Sunday, with social media footage showing one hitting a helicopter base in Sochi and another an aircraft factory in Smolensk. Possibly related to these attacks, Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan called today for “a nuclear ultimatum” after a drone fell right in front of her family home in Adler, about 38km from Sochi.
• Russian documents indicating a surge in military spending in 2024 suggest Moscow is preparing for “multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine”, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said papers apparently leaked from Russia’s finance ministry suggested the country’s defence spending was likely to rise to about 30% of total public expenditure in 2024.