Summary
It’s slightly past 11pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, her first since Russia’s invasion in February as Kyiv urges Berlin to send it battle tanks. Lambrecht visited the southern port city of Odesa, the German defence ministry said, without saying how long the trip had lasted. It added on Twitter that she had met her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is no longer leaking under the Baltic Sea because an equilibrium has been reached between the gas and water pressure. “The water pressure has more or less closed the pipeline so that the gas which is inside can’t go out,” Nord Stream 2 spokesman Ulrich Lissek told AFP.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said fighting was continuing in the key town of Lyman, which Russia said earlier in the day its troops had abandoned to avoid being trapped. “The Ukrainian flag is already in Lyman in the Donetsk region. Fighting is still going on there,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Belarus is preparing to receive Russian soldiers and equipment, the Kyiv Independent reports. There are currently around 1,000 Russian soldiers in the country.
Yuliya Kovaliv, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, said her country holds Russia to account for violating Ukraine’s sovereign airspace by bombing airports, which goes against the 1944 agreement that set out core principles for global aviation. “It is important that all the ICAO members addressed such a drastic breach of the Chicago Convention,” she told Reuters.
After Russia failed to win enough votes for re-election to the United Nation’s aviation agency’s governing council, the French representative told the assembly: “When we have votes in our countries, if we don’t like the result, we don’t ask for another vote.” Russia had a place on ICAO’s 36-member council as one of the “states of chief importance in air transport”. Other members include the G7 countries, China, Brazil and Australia.
Liz Truss has said a series of explosions that severely damaged Russia’s undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines were an act of sabotage. In a joint report delivered to the United Nations last week, the Danish and Swedish governments have claimed that the leaks in the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which can carry gas to Germany, were caused by blasts equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive.”
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s region of Chechnya, said Moscow should consider using a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after a major new defeat on the battlefield. In a message on Telegram addressing Russia’s loss of its stronghold of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Kadyrov wrote: “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.”
Updated
Germany’s defence minister Christine Lambrecht made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, her first since Russia’s invasion in February as Kyiv urges Berlin to send it battle tanks, Agence France-Presse reports.
Lambrecht visited the southern port city of Odesa, the German defence ministry said in a statement, without saying how long the trip had lasted. It added on Twitter that she had met her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov.
+++NEWS+++ Verteidigungsministerin Lambrecht traf heute in der Ukraine ihren Amtskollegen @oleksiireznikov. Wir unterstützen unsere Freunde solange es nötig ist. 🇩🇪🤝🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/wOBGgV2skS
— Verteidigungsministerium (@BMVg_Bundeswehr) October 1, 2022
So far, no Nato country has supplied western battle tanks to Kyiv, despite Ukraine repeatedly asking for Germany to supply it with Leopard battle tanks to assist in its counter-attack against Russia.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said he doesn’t want to go it alone on arms supplies and will only take decisions in consultation with his western allies. Berlin has instead struck deals with third countries, which transfer heavy weapons to Ukraine – in exchange for receiving supplies from Germany.
Lambrecht’s visit came a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, declared the annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
These annexations have been unanimously condemned by Ukraine’s allies.
Updated
