Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured this Wednesday that his troops have reconquered Russian-occupied northeast locations, to which the UN attributed “credible accusations” of forced transfer of minors during the war.
“This week, we have good news from the Kharkiv region,” in the northeast, where there are “places where the Ukrainian flag has been flying again,” Zelensky said in his afternoon speech, without elaborating.
After more than a semester of resisting the invasion, the Ukrainian army launched counter-offensives in the northeast and south, in the Kherson region, which, according to experts, could disrupt the supply routes of Russian troops.
Still, the Kremlin maintains control over a wide swath of Ukrainian territory, around Kharkiv, in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the Donbass mining basin and on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
In these occupied areas, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, has proposed to organize annexation referendums on 4 November.
“The Russian world, currently divided by formal borders, will regain its integrity,” said the secretary of the party’s General Council, Andrei Turchak, referring to the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Donetsk and Lugansk have been largely controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. Before launching its offensive on February 24, the Russian government recognized their independence.
Forced transfer
At a Security Council meeting, the UN deputy secretary-general for human rights said there were “credible allegations” about the forced transfer of minors from Ukraine to Russia.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children who are not in the custody of their parents, and that these children are eligible for adoption by Russian families,” said Ilze Brands Kehris.
She also pointed out that Russia carries out security checks in the regions it occupies that violate numerous rights and that people close to the Ukrainian government or army were tortured and probably sent to detention centers.
Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya refuted the accusations, which he considered “baseless”, while saying that Ukrainians left their country “to save themselves from the criminal regime”, referring to the Kiev government.
Blue helmets in Zaporizhzhia?
The dispute over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, occupied by Russian forces and the subject of a recent inspection by the UN atomic surveillance body, also remains open.
Russia asked for “additional clarification” on Wednesday after the publication of the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission, which called for the establishment of a “safe zone” in Zaporizhzhia to prevent a nuclear accident.
Contrary to the IAEA report, Putin declared that Russia had not mobilized military equipment at this nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
Occupied in early March by Russian troops, the plant has been the target of bombing for weeks, which Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of.
Ukraine, in turn, supported the sending of UN peacekeepers to the central on Wednesday.
“It could be one of the means of creating the safety zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” said Petro Kotin, director of Energoatom, a Ukrainian state-owned nuclear operator.
Voltage on energy
In addition to thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, the war caused a global energy and grain supply crisis, of which Ukraine and Russia are major exporters.
With winter approaching, energy tensions are rising between Moscow and the European Union, which plans to set limits on Russian fuel prices.
“We have to cut Russia’s income, which Putin uses to finance his atrocious war against Ukraine,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
In such a scenario, Russia will completely suspend the supply of hydrocarbons to the EU, Putin warned. “No gas, no coal…. Nothing,” he said at an economic forum in Vladivostok, Russia’s far east.
The Kremlin leader also denied that he was using energy as a weapon and assured that the cut in gas supplies to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline was due to a shortage of parts, caused by Western sanctions.
At the same forum, Putin denounced that most of the cereal exported by Ukraine under a UN-sponsored agreement was destined for European countries and not for poor countries.
“This could lead to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
Ukraine has responded that these accusations are “lies” and its diplomatic chief, Dmitro Kuleba, has assured that two-thirds of the vessels go to Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
According to data from an Istanbul center that monitors the agreement, a third of the grain goes to European countries, 20% to Turkey and another 30% to the country.
