Russia-Ukraine war updates: N Korea’s Kim arrives, meets Kremlin officials

A Russian Su-24 front-line bomber has crashed in the southern Volgograd region during a training flight, Russian state-owned TASS news agency reported citing the defence ministry.

According to the ministry, the plane was flying without ammunition and crashed in a deserted area. TASS did not provide further details about the accident, including the fate of the crew.

The EU agriculture commissioner has said he believes the European Commission should extend a temporary ban on Ukraine imports into five neighouring EU states as the measure helped boost exports outside the bloc.

“The preventive measures were effective, efficient and stabilising the markets in the five member states and also helped increase exports via Solidarity Lanes,” Agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski told the European Parliament.

“This is the main argument for prolongation of the preventive measures which is my strong position.”

As a result, farmers in neighbouring states – Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia – have faced increased competition and bottlenecks in their own markets.

Days after Russia launched its war on Ukraine, Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela left his home in Warsaw, bought a van, and began transporting evacuees to safety.

Hamela’s documentary, In the Rearview, chronicles six months of journeys and hours of footage, giving a raw and intimate picture of the war in real-time.

Hosting its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday, Hamela hopes the audience can put themselves in the refugees’ shoes.

“I hope that this film will remind those who might think that the war is over or that it has become a never-ending stalemate … to reconsider,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the world is not yet united enough in opposing Russian war atrocities committed in his country.

Russia wants a policy of genocide to become the new normal, Zelenskyy said in a video address to Dutch students in The Hague, according to the ANP news agency.

“They want genocide to become something that plays in the background,” the Ukrainian leader said, referring to Russia. “They want to freeze the war and turn shocking scenes into something common.”

The European Union will not renew sanctions against three businessmen targeted over Russia’s war against Ukraine when the current punitive measures expire this week, four diplomatic sources have told Reuters news agency.

The trio poised to be delisted are Russian businessman Grigory Berezkin, billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov and the former head of Ozon, a Russian e-commerce firm, Alexander Shulgin. Russian military leader Georgy Shuvaev, who died last year, will also be removed, the sources said.

One of the four sources, all of whom work on sanctions and spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the listings were considered legally weak, meaning the EU was not certain they would stand up in court if challenged.

Pope Francis’s Ukraine peace envoy is on his way to China as part of a mission that has already brought him to Kyiv, Moscow and Washington, the Vatican has said.

The Vatican described Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s visit as a “further step in the mission desired by the pope to support humanitarian initiatives and the search for paths that can bring about a just peace”.

The main aim of the mission is to help return Ukrainian children taken to Russia after the invasion.

“The hope is to push and weave the difficult web of peace,” Zuppi told the broadcaster of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which he heads, before leaving.

Accompanied by an official from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, Zuppi will be in Beijing from Wednesday to Friday.

Denmark has decided to give Ukraine a further 5.8 billion kroner ($833m), largely to finance air defences, ammunition and tanks, the defence ministry has said.

“For Ukraine to be able to continue defending itself against Russia’s illegal invasion, it is essential that countries like Denmark maintain their military and economic support,” Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen added.

Prior to this new funding, Denmark’s total aid pledged to Ukraine was 13.6 billion kroner ($1.96bn).

“We are doing this today with the largest Danish financial contribution to date,” Poulsen said.

The Group of Seven (G7) bloc of nations, which includes some of the major industrialised countries, has condemned the staging of what it called “sham elections” by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories, in a statement published by the British government.

“We … unequivocally condemn the staging of sham ‘elections’ held by Russia on sovereign Ukrainian territory in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia oblasts and Crimea,” the statement said.

“These sham ‘elections’ will not alter our approach nor our support to Ukraine as it fights to reclaim its internationally-recognised territory.”

Poland’s government has called on the European Union to extend the embargo on imports of Ukrainian grain beyond an end-of-week deadline to protect Polish farmers.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he has requested that the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, extend the ban on the entry of Ukrainian corn, wheat, sunflower and rapeseed or else “we will do it ourselves because we cannot allow for a deregulation of the market”.

Earlier, the government’s spokesperson told local media that if the ban is not extended, then Warsaw could implement a ban at the national level.

Ukraine’s military’s strategic communications directorate has said the country’s troops have destroyed a Russian military base operating drones.

The directorate said the base is near Donetsk Oblast, but did not reveal if any Russian soldiers at the base, had also been killed.

The Vatican has said in a statement that papal envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, will be travelling to China from September 13-15, as part of a diplomatic effort towards peace in Ukraine.

Cardinal Zuppi is likely to meet “top institutional leaders” including Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday, La Repubblica daily reported.

The envoy already visited Kyiv and Moscow in June and travelled to Washington the following month as part of the Vatican’s efforts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said Berlin would encourage its partners to deliver available air defence systems to Ukraine for this winter, in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

“We need to stretch a winter air defence shield over Ukraine’s critical infrastructure,” Baerbock said following her visit to Kyiv on Monday, adding that the German government planned to expand its IRIS-T support in the coming months.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has reported that Russian attacks in the Donetsk region has killed two people and injured three civilians.

“One of the 152-mm projectiles hit a private house, where an 84-year-old woman and a 71-year-old man live. Another 70-year-old woman, who recently lived with them and helped in the household, was injured and has been hospitalised,” the general’s office said in a statement.

A criminal investigation into prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin has been extended until December 18, his supporters have said in their Telegram channel.

Girkin, who has strongly criticised the conduct of the Ukraine war, was detained in July on charges of inciting extremism. If convicted, the 52-year-old may face up to five years in jail.

He, who also goes by the name Igor Strelkov, is a former security services officer who helped to start the initial war in Ukraine in 2014, when a militia under his command seized the east Ukrainian city of Sloviansk.

A Russian state television correspondent on Tuesday has published a video clip of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un disembarking from his train in Russia and being greeted by Russian officials.

Separately, Russia’s natural resources minister said he had met Kim, according to a report by Russian state news agency RIA.

Kim is expected to have talks during his visit with President Vladimir Putin, who is currently visiting Russia’s Far East region.

Ukraine’s defence ministry has shared a video of how the country undertook a “unique operation” to recapture oil and gas rigs which had been controlled by Russia since 2015, near the coast of Crimea.

Watch:

A film about a unique operation of @DI_Ukraine.
russian special troops captured Ukrainian oil and gas drilling platforms in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea in 2014 and 2015. The occupiers have been utilizing them for military purposes ever since – in particular to… pic.twitter.com/txFAcdgpfE

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 11, 2023

The Swedish government will ask its armed forces to investigate the potential of sending its Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, according to a report by Swedish public radio (SR).

Citing unnamed sources, SR said the government wanted to know, among other things, how a handover would affect Sweden’s defence capabilities and how quickly Sweden could get new Gripen fighters.