Putin consolidates grip on Russia as 49 Ukraine war veterans elected to parliament
United Russia party’s record victory in tightly controlled vote likely to be used as evidence of support for war against UkraineRussia’s new parliament will include 49 deputies who have taken part in the war against Ukraine, officials have said after a landslide victory by the ruling United Russia party in widely criticised elections.The pro-Kremlin party won a record 355 seats in the country’s 450-seat Duma lower house of parliament, according to preliminary figures. The result further consolidates Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and gives United Russia a super-majority bigger than its previous 2016 record of 343 seats. Continue reading...
Ukraine war briefing: Sanctions must continue, EU’s top diplomat stresses, as Russian attacks kill five
Kaja Kallas says sanctions vital as bloc scrambles to reach deal on extension; UN sounds warning for civilians on both sides of war as winter approaches. What we know on day 1,672The EU’s top diplomat has urged member countries to maintain sanctions targeting Russia, as Moscow’s forces continued their attacks on Ukraine, killing at least five people. “Sanctions are a core pillar of our response to Russia’s war”, Kaja Kallas told reporters in New York after a meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers. Officials aimed to close talks on a rollover of Russia sanctions soon and have the extension take place swiftly, she said. “We need to have this stability,” with sanctions remaining in place for a longer time, Kallas added on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. She stressed the EU’s position has not changed: “That’s why we are also working on a new package of sanctions.”Discussions on the sanctions are ongoing as some EU member states sought to remove certain individuals from the bloc’s blacklist. EU countries failed on Monday to finalise a deal that involved lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman. Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiga denounced the move to remove them as “unacceptable” and said it would send Moscow the “wrong signal”. Negotiations are set to continue in Brussels in efforts to extend sanctions on almost 3,000 other individuals and entities over the war as the bloc scrambles to reach a deal ahead of late Tuesday’s deadline.Russian forces continued their attacks on different Ukrainian regions along the 1,200km frontline on Monday, killing at least five people, regional officials said. Prosecutors in north-eastern Kharkiv region said a drone strike on the town of Lozova killed one person and injured three. Farther south in Dnipropetrovsk region, a drone killed a car driver in Nikopol. In the Donetsk region, a Russian strike badly damaged an apartment building in the strategic Kramatorsk, killing one person, while another person was killed in a nearby village. A sustained attack on a village in Mykolaiv region killed a three-year-old child. The attacks could not be independently verified. Russian also bombarded Zaporizhzhia overnight to Monday, hitting apartment blocks, a university and a shopping mall, among other sites, and wounding five people, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.Donald Trump is expected to press the Ukrainian president on an energy ceasefire during a face-to-face meeting this week, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Andrew Roth reports. It comes as world diesel prices have soared due to the war in Iran as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine. Ukraine stepped up its attacks on Russia’s energy sector over the weekend, and the US president said the whole world was suffering due to an energy shortage he said was being exacerbated by the Ukraine war.Russia’s new parliament will include 49 deputies who have taken part in the war against Ukraine, officials said after a landslide victory by the ruling United Russia party in widely criticised elections. Luke Harding reports that the pro-Kremlin party won a record 355 seats in the country’s 450-seat Duma lower house of parliament, according to preliminary figures, further consolidating Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.Escalating infrastructure attacks by both Russia and Ukraine are leaving civilians increasingly vulnerable as winter approaches, UN investigators have warned, expressing fear of a repeat of last winter’s suffering. In a fresh update, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine warned the attacks raised concerns that already difficult living conditions could worsen dramatically with the arrival of winter, as was the case last year. Last winter, Russian forces “continued to launch systematic waves of attacks against Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure as temperatures plunged to minus 20C”, it said in a statement. “Millions of civilians endured prolonged power outages, shortages or lengthy absence of heating.” Continue reading...
