Summary
Russia has 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.
In relation to Russia’s claims about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry said: “Kyiv is continuing to ‘play with fire’ and is carrying out criminal and irresponsible provocations.”
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.
An 81-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man were killed by Russian shelling in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region on Thursday, local authorities said.
Mike Johnson, the US Republican House of Representatives speaker, has said that a bill pairing Ukraine aid with border security “will come next”, after the body’s vote on a standalone Israel aid measure.
The Biden administration today added 12 Russian companies to a trade blacklist for supplying Russia’s military with drones that could be used to aid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the commerce department said in a statement.
Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said on Thursday she was confident that the European Union next month would advance Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc at a summit seen as a key milestone in Kyiv’s efforts to integrate with the west.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Gen Valery Zaluzhny, has said the war in Ukraine is “at a stalemate” and there is likely to be “no deep and beautiful breakthrough” soon in the counteroffensive against Russia.
Ukraine’s army should have been able to push back at a pace of 18 miles a day as it breached Russian defensive lines, the general said.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has issued its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine as of today, saying Russian air defence has suffered significant losses.
Russia is preparing to attack Ukraine’s critical infrastructure once the temperatures drop, according to Ukraine’s national security and defence council secretary, Oleksiy Danilov.
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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.
Reuters reports:
The protest, planned to start on November 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.
“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.
According to Sokol, prior to Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian transport companies were granted 160,000-180,000 permits per year for specific shipments requiring entrance or transit through Poland, but not for shipments within the country.
“Now these companies are doing whatever they want. There is a complete, uncontrolled influx, just like with grain.”
The blockade is just an opportunity to block the border for Ukrainian competitor truckers, Ukraine’s Deputy Infrastructure Minister Serhiy Derkach was quoted by local media as saying. They account for 85% of those who cross the Ukrainian-Polish border to bring goods into Ukraine or export goods, he added.
According to the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry, an average of 40,000-50,000 trucks cross the border with Poland per month via eight existing crossings, twice as many as before the war. Most of the goods are carried by Ukraine’s transport fleet.
An owner of a Polish haulage company and head of a driver association in the eastern Polish city of Siedlce told Reuters the protest was a grassroots initiative and reflected a wider issue of Polish transport companies losing markets east of Poland, due to Russian counter-sanctions since the February 2022 invasion.
“This is actually the result of the despair of the (Polish) carriers, those who have actually lost these mainly eastern markets. I mean Ukraine and Belarus, Russia and all other countries to which Russia transits,” Karol Rychlicki said.
“These are usually small family companies, not some large businesses… In trying to find alternative jobs, they are destabilising the transport services market by running below costs.”Rychlicki said Polish truckers had first issued their demands to the government in July, but a response from the likely outgoing government only came in late October and was unsatisfactory.
“These carriers have taken matters into their own hands and are trying to demand justice,” he said of the planned protest.
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