09/26/2022
Ukraine war in the live ticker
+++ 00:13 Slovakia against general visas for Russian conscientious objectors +++
Ukraine’s neighbor Slovakia rejects the general acceptance of Russian conscientious objectors. “Slovakia assesses each individual case individually,” explains foreign ministry spokesman Juraj Tomaga. In principle, Slovakia grants visas for humanitarian reasons, but there is no clear rule according to which conscientious objection is also a sufficient reason. Slovakia thus occupies a position similar to that of the Baltic states, the Czech Republic and Poland.
+++ 22:57 Zelenskyj: Russia’s mobilization threatens ethnic minorities +++
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Russian partial mobilization is hitting ethnic minorities particularly hard. “We see that people, especially in Dagestan, have started fighting for their lives,” says Zelenskyj in his evening video address. He refers to violent protests that had broken out hours earlier in the Muslim-dominated Russian republic of Dagestan. “I emphasize once again: There is no way out,” says Zelenskyj. “Flee. Or go into Ukrainian captivity at the first opportunity.” Dagestan is one of the regions of Russia from which, according to observers, a particularly large number of men are conscripted. Activists complain that members of ethnic minorities are particularly hard hit by the mobilization and are therefore sometimes even talking about “ethnic cleansing”.
+++ 22:16 Ministry: Seven grain ships set sail +++
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure, seven more grain ships are leaving ports in Odessa Oblast. The ships loaded more than 146,000 tons of grain. This means that almost 220 ships with a total of 4.8 million tons of grain have set sail from Ukrainian ports since Kyiv and Moscow agreed on the grain agreement in July, it is said. The agreement allows for the unblocking of Ukrainian grain exports across the Black Sea, which are urgently needed by poor countries in particular. Because of the war, ports on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast were blocked for months.
+++ 21:44 Brit reports on torture in Russian captivity +++
In an interview, a British man who was released through a prisoner exchange in the Ukraine war speaks of torture in Russian captivity. Aiden Aslin told the British newspaper The Sun that he was repeatedly beaten with a baton during interrogations and forced to sing the Russian national anthem. An officer also stabbed him in the back with a knife. Aslin is one of five Brits who were flown out of Russian captivity to Riyadh on Wednesday. The 28-year-old was living in Ukraine at the beginning of the war and served in the local military. He was captured in fighting around Kyiv and sentenced to death in June by pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk as a mercenary. Read more about this here.
+++ 21:18 Selenskyj excludes negotiations after annexation +++
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an annexation of Ukrainian territories by Russia would make negotiations with the Kremlin impossible. The government in Moscow could officially announce the conclusion of the voting and the results. “In any case, this would make it impossible to continue diplomatic negotiations with the President of the Russian Federation,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with CBS News, according to the transcript. Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin knows that very well. Since Friday, mock referendums have been held in the four Russian-occupied areas of Cherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia about joining Russia. It is expected that Putin could incorporate the areas into the Russian Federation as early as Friday.
+++ 20:53 Serbia does not want to recognize sham referendums +++
Despite Serbia’s good relations with Moscow, the government in Belgrade will not recognize the results of the sham referendums in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Recognizing these sham referendums “would be completely against our national and state interests, the preservation of sovereignty and territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” says Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic, according to media reports. In doing so, Selakovic refers to the parallels between Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the Kosovo problem from the perspective of Belgrade. The former Serbian province of Kosovo declared its independence in 2008. This is not recognized by Serbia, but by most other countries.
You can read earlier developments relating to the Ukraine war here.