Russian troops have pulled out of the town of the strategic city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine “due to the risk to be encircled” and moved to “more advantageous frontiers”, Russia’s ministry of defence said via Telegram on Saturday.
Ukraine forces encircled Russian forces in the eastern town earlier on Saturday where Russia’s forces at Lyman totalled about 5,000 to 5,500 soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers were later seen raising the nation’s flag before the entrance sign to the city.
The retreat comes a day after Vladimir Putin signed “accession treaties” formalising Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine, marking the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since the second world war.
Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, previously said:
Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important.
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.”
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.
Nord Stream 2 pipeline no longer leaking, says spokesperson
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, Agence France-Presse reports.
“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.
“The conclusion is that there is still gas in the pipeline,” he added.
When asked how much gas was believed to be in the pipeline, Lissek said: “That is the one-million-dollar question.”
Information on the status of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline leak, which was significantly larger, was not immediately available.
While the pipelines are not currently in operation, they both still contained gas before they fell victim to apparent sabotage, producing four leaks.
A picture released by ImageSat International on 30 September shows an image from an intelligence report on the Nord Stream gas pipeline leaks in the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea. Photograph: ImageSat International /AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday 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.
On Russia’s failure to win enough votes for re-election to the United Nations’ aviation agency’s governing council, 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.
It took Alina three goes at the local conscription centre to get her husband out of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
She knew the local officials managing the mobilisation in her town south of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, she said. So when her husband, who has health problems because of his weight and served in the army more than 15 years ago, was called up, she began hassling them to review his case.
“I told them: ‘What war?’ Have they gone crazy?’ And the top [official] just gave me this sad look,” she said.
But as protests broke out last week in Dagestan and anger grew over the conscription, she said, something changed. Suddenly, they told her that her husband’s call-up was a mistake.
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, along with the G7, China, Brazil and Australia, held spots as “states of chief importance in air transport” on ICAO’s 36-member council.
“We’d like to express regret regarding the outcome of the voting,” the Russian representative said.
“We view this as a purely political step and has nothing to do with Russia’s position in the field of civil aviation.”
Russia closed its airspace to airlines from 36 countries, including all 27 members of the European Union, in response to Ukraine-related sanctions targeting its aviation sector following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s minister for foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has thanked the US for its latest assistance package.
In today’s call with @SecBlinken, I thanked the U.S. for its unfaltering support, including the latest $12.35 bln in new security and budgetary assistance. Secretary assured that regardless of any Putin’s illegal steps, the U.S. will keep supporting Ukraine in our just struggle.
Here is some more background on Ramzan Kadyrov’s comments that Moscow should consider using a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after a major new defeat on the battlefield.
Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenal, including low-yield tactical nuclear weapons that are designed to be deployed against opposing armies.
Other top Putin allies, including former president Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested that Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit, Reuters reports.
The influential ruler of the Caucasus region of Chechnya has been a vocal champion of the war in Ukraine, with Chechen forces forming part of the vanguard of the Russian army there. Kadyrov is widely believed to be personally close to Putin, who appointed him to govern restive Chechnya in 2007.
In his message, Kadyrov described Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, commander of the Russian forces fighting at Lyman, as a “mediocrity”, and suggested that he should be demoted to private and stripped of his medals.
“Due to a lack of elementary military logistics, today we have abandoned several settlements and a large piece of territory,” he said.
Kadyrov said that two weeks before he had raised the possibility of a defeat at Lyman with Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s general staff, but that Gerasimov had dismissed the idea.
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”.
The UK prime minister was updated on developments in the situation unfolding in the Baltic Sea as she engaged in talks with her Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, in Downing Street on Saturday.
Suspicions have been rising in western capitals that the explosions on the pipelines were attacks carried out by Russia as a means of intensifying pressure in western governments over energy supplies. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has dismissed any such claims and said in a speech on Friday that “Anglo Saxons” were responsible.
Volunteers carry the body a person from a civilian convoy, which Ukrainian State Security Service say was hit by a shelling from Russian troops amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the village of Kurylivka in Kharkiv region. Photograph: Reuters
A boat with Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. officials heads to inspect cargo ships coming from Ukraine loaded with grain, in the Marmara Sea in Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP
Chechnya head : Moscow should consider low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine
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”.
Kadyrov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions - including Donetsk, where Lyman is located - and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, saying Moscow would defend the lands it had seized “with all our strength and all our means”, Reuters reports.
