Putin’s troops ‘trying to regroup’ after heavy losses – Ukraine-Russia war live

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s office has expressed “regret” that she fell prey to a prank call that induced her to acknowledge “fatigue” over the war in Ukraine.

Meloni, believing she was speaking with officials of the African Union, told a pair of Russian pranksters that “there is a lot of fatigue, I have to say the truth, from all the sides.

We are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out.”

“The problem is to find a way out which can be acceptable for both, without destroying the international law,” she said.

Audio of the call was released Wednesday and replayed by Italian media. The call by Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus was made in September.

The office of Meloni’s diplomatic advisor said it “regrets having been misled by an imposter who posed as the president of the African Union commission.”

The call occurred on Sept. 18, in the run-up to the U.N. General Assembly, where Meloni had meetings with African leaders.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, a Meloni ally, said Thursday that such episodes cannot be repeated. “There was certainly superficiality by whoever organized the phone call,” Tajani told state RAI radio.

The timing could not be worse. Just as Ukraine is fighting to repel one of the fiercest Russian onslaughts since the war began, so fears emerge that US support to Kyiv could be severely undermined by Republicans loyal to the former president.

Polish truckers will block several border crossings with Ukraine starting next week in protest at what they say is Ukrainian hauliers’ free rein in Poland that is hurting their business, a co-organiser of the protest told Reuters.

The protest, planned to start on Nov. 6, comes amid an economic slowdown in Europe and a relaxation of regulations for Ukrainian transport companies in 2022 by the European Union to ease the transport of goods to and out of the country invaded by Russia.

The protesters plan to stop trucks travelling at three border crossings, letting through one truck per hour, but exempting shipments of equipment for Ukraine‘s army and vehicles transporting livestock, according to a protest notification seen by Reuters.

Protesters’ demands include reimposing restrictions on the number of Ukraine-registered trucks entering Poland and a ban on transport companies with capital from outside the European Union, among others, according to the notification.

“Ukrainian transport companies are … entering without restrictions and carrying out transport operations they have no right to perform,” said Jacek Sokol, protest co-organizer and deputy head of the Committee to Protect Transporters and Transport Employers.

He said the protest measures would affect traffic in both directions at crossings in Dorohusk and Hrebenne-Rawa Ruska, as well as outbound traffic through Korczowa.

The United States on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on 130 firms and people from Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates in an effort to choke off Russia’s access to tools and equipment that support its invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control target third-party firms and people alleged to assist Moscow in procuring equipment needed on the battlefield, including suppliers and shippers.

In addition, the State Department imposed diplomatic sanctions targeting Russian energy production and its metals and mining sector.

Thursday’s sanctions targets include Turkish national Berk Turken and his firms, which are alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence.

The Treasury Department said Mr Turken’s network arranged payments and shipping details designed to bypass sanctions and move goods from Turkey to Russia.

A series of United Arab Emirates firms alleged to have shipped aviation equipment, machines for data reception and more also were sanctioned.

And UAE-based ARX Financial Engineering Ltd was sanctioned for allegedly being involved in finding ways for Russian rubles to be sent from sanctioned Russian bank VTB Bank and converted to US dollars.

Mr Turken and a representative from ARX were not available for comment on Thursday.

Around 174,000sq km of Ukraine, making up about a third of its territory, has been potentially strewn with mines or dangerous war detritus, estimates from Kyiv officials showed.

The 571 injuries have occurred in more than 560 incidents that involve mines or explosive objects left behind in the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops, the country’s General Staff of the Armed Forces said on its official Telegram channel on Wednesday.

Almost a quarter of these incidents have happened in fields, the military official said.

Russian shelling killed an 81-year-old woman in the yard of her home and a 60-year-old man in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region Thursday, local authorities said. The deaths were the latest civilian casualties in Moscow’s recent ramped-up bombardment of the front-line area.

Kherson is a strategic military region located on the Dnieper River near the mouth of the Black Sea. Unconfirmed reports say attacking Ukrainian troops have gained a foothold on the Russian-held side of the river during Kyiv’s monthslong counteroffensive.

The two civilians died when Russian artillery targeted Kherson region villages, according to Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin. Four others were injured in the strikes, which also damaged residential and public buildings, authorities said.

On Wednesday, one person died in Russian shelling that caused extensive damage in the Kherson region’s capital city of the same name. Prokudin called it “an apocalyptic scene.”

A 91-year-old local woman was killed in her apartment last weekend in what Prokudin described as a “terrifying” nighttime barrage.

The Kherson region is a key gateway to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and is now home to a lot of Moscow’s war logistics operations and rear supply depots.

Russia on Thursday said Ukraine was risking a nuclear disaster after nine Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian forces near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station, Europe’s largest atomic power plant.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, which has been under Russian control since early March 2022, has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing Uranium 235.

Four of the reactors are shut down while two of the reactors – No. 4 and No. 5 – are in so-called ‘hot shutdown’ mode, according to the Russian operator of the plant.

Russia’s defence ministry said air defences had shot down nine Ukrainian drones near the Russian-held city of Enerhodar, where many workers for the plant live, in an attempt to disrupt the rotation of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff.

“Kyiv is continuing to ‘play with fire’ and is carrying out criminal and irresponsible provocations,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said of the drone attack.

Zakharova said the IAEA should look at a Russian proposal to rotate its staff monitoring the plant only through Russian-held territory. The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ukraine did not immediately comment.

The IAEA has repeatedly said that the world is fortunate that no nuclear accident has yet happened at the Zaporizhzhia plant where the Agency says nuclear safety remains extremely fragile.

Shortly after sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, Russian forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia station. Both Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of attacking the station.

The withdrawal of Russia’s ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests is a step in the wrong direction and will serve to set back confidence in the international arms control regime, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday.

“We are deeply concerned by Russia’s planned action to withdraw its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),” Blinken said in a statement released by the State Department.

“Unfortunately, it represents a significant step in the wrong direction, taking us further from, not closer to, entry into force,” Blinken said.

New US Speaker Mike Johnson has told Republican senators a fresh Ukraine aid package will come as soon as lawmakers wrap up the $14.5 billion Israel aid package that is heading for passage later this week.

Johnson, who has been on the job a week, made the trip across the Capitol to speak privately with GOP senators to outline the agenda ahead.

“Look, we all like the new speaker we want him to be successful,” said Senator JD Vance, Republican for Ohio, who opposes more aid to Ukraine.

Johnson was greeted with applause at the start of the lunch meeting, a get-to-know-you session for the new GOP speaker that many senators had never met — or even heard of — until he won a longshot race for House speaker to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy.

The new speaker told the senators Ukraine needs U.S. aid as it battles Russia, but that there was no way President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion supplemental funding request that included Israel could be passed through the House.

“‘We want to take up Ukraine,’” was his message, said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican for Missouri, who opposes more funding for the overseas war.

Hawley said Johnson told the Republican senators the “next order of business” after the Israel package would be the Ukraine-U.S. border package.

The Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the House’s Israel-only approach was dead on arrival in the Senate.

A top ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Poland on Thursday that the NATO member state was now considered a “dangerous enemy” by Russia and could end up losing its statehood if it continued on its current course.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comments in an 8,000-word article on Russian-Polish relations, saying Moscow now had a “dangerous enemy” in Poland.

“We will treat it (Poland) precisely as a historical enemy,” Medvedev said. “If there is no hope for reconciliation with the enemy, Russia should have only one and a very tough attitude regarding its fate.”

“History has more than once delivered a merciless verdict to the presumptuous Poles: no matter how ambitious the revanchist plans may be, their collapse could lead to the death of Polish statehood in its entirety.”

There was no immediate response to his comments from Poland.