6:05 p.m.: Rising ammunition prices hamper NATO efforts to strengthen security
NATOThe country’s top military official warned on Saturday that a drastic rise in the prices of weapons and munitions mean that higher defense spending by allies does not automatically translate into greater security.
“The prices of equipment and ammunition are skyrocketing. Right now we are paying more and more for exactly the same thing,” Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO’s military committee, said on Saturday .
“This means we cannot guarantee that increased defense spending actually leads to more security.”
4:33 p.m.: North Macedonia expels three Russian diplomats
North Macedonia ordered the expulsion of three additional Russian diplomats, the third such since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last year, the Foreign Ministry confirmed on Saturday.
The Russian Federation’s ambassador to Skopje, Sergei Bazdnikin, was summoned on September 12 and informed that three of his colleagues had been declared persona non grata and would have to leave the country, the ministry said in a statement.
“Such a decision was adopted after receiving information from relevant institutions about activities carried out in contravention of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the statement added.
The small Balkan country has expelled 11 Russian diplomats twice since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
3:42 p.m.: The first cargo ships sail to Ukraine after the failure of the grain deal, according to the Deputy Prime Minister
The first cargo ships sailed to Ukraine to load grain following the collapse of a deal with Russiaa kyiv official said on Saturday.
In August, Ukraine announced the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea to circumvent the Russian blockade. Since then, five ships have used this corridor to leave Ukrainian ports.
“The first civilian ships used the temporary corridor to enter Ukrainian ports,” Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a statement on Facebook.
3:19 p.m.: Poland extends grain ban in Ukraine under “electoral pressure”
Poland announced on Friday the extension of the embargo on Ukrainian grain, going against a European Commission decision taken earlier in the day to end the import ban.
This announcement, intended to appease voters, came before the parliamentary elections. elections expected next month, said Magdalena Chodownik, FRANCE 24 correspondent in Warsaw.
“The ruling party cannot afford to lose voters in the countryside, where many of its conservative voters are located,” Chodownik said. She highlighted the sensitive issue of Ukrainian grain imports, which are often cheaper than Polish grain.
Despite strong competition, she said, “Polish farmers cannot afford to lower their prices so much because they are subject to European regulations and very demanding grain controls, which are expensive.”
Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won a narrow parliamentary majority in 2019.
Please click on the video player below to watch the report.
1:54 p.m.: Russia denies that Ukraine took over the village of Andriivka near Bakhmut
Russia on Saturday denied Ukrainian claims that it had recaptured the devastated eastern village of Andriivka, a stepping stone on the road to the town of Bakhmut.
“The enemy has not abandoned its plan to capture the city of Artyomovsk from Donetsk People’s Republic and continued to carry out assault operations … in an unsuccessful attempt to drive Russian troops out of the population centers of Klishchiivka and Andriivka,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in its briefing. daily press.
Andriivka lies south of largely ruined Bakhmut, which Russian forces seized in May after the fiercest and longest battle since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on Friday a “partial success” near Klishchiivka, also south of Bakhmut.
FRANCE 24 was unable to verify reports from the battlefield.
1:47 p.m.: Poland will ban the entry of passenger cars registered in Russia from Sunday
Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said on Saturday that Poland would ban the entry of passenger cars registered in Russia from Sunday, Poland’s official PAP news agency reported.
The ban comes on top of sanctions imposed on Russia and its citizens over the war in Ukraine, PAP said, citing Kaminski.
1:12 p.m.: Russia claims to have shot down Ukrainian drones in three regions
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its air defense systems destroyed a drone launched from Ukraine over the border with the adjacent Belgorod region.
Previously, he said Russian air defenses had shot down two Ukrainian planes. drones on the Kaluga and Tver regions.
11:30 a.m.: Ukrainian minister promises new drone strikes on Russian ships
Ukraine will be able to carry out more attacks on Russian ships, a Ukrainian minister who played a key role in developing the country’s drone industry after a recent series of maritime raids told Reuters.
“There will be more drones, more attacks and fewer Russian ships. That’s for sure,” Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview on Friday, responding to a question about recent attacks near the Crimea.
This week, Ukraine launched several attacks using maritime drones and missiles against Russian territory. Black Sea fleet in and around the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In a sign of growing confidence, Ukraine recently claimed responsibility for attacks against Crimeahaving not previously directly confirmed its involvement in explosions against military targets.
Russia acknowledged a Ukrainian missile attack that damaged a warship and a submarine this week, but says it has repelled all maritime drone attacks.
10:30 a.m.: Crimean authorities installed by Russia to sell Ukrainian properties
Russian authorities in Crimea announced Saturday that they plan to sell around 100 Ukrainian properties, including one belonging to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Vladimir Konstantinov, speaker of Crimea’s parliament, said the nationalized properties would be sold “soon” and that authorities had held the first eight auctions for the properties of Ukrainian business figures.
The sales contracts amount to more than 815 million rubles ($8.51 million), Konstantinov said in a statement on messaging app Telegram.
6:14 a.m.: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un inspects Russian nuclear-capable bombers during visit to Russian Far East
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected Russian nuclear-capable bombers and other combat aircraft in Russiain the Far East on Saturday as he continued a trip that sparked Western concerns about an arms alliance that could fuel the Russian president Vladimir PoutineIt is war In Ukraine.
After arriving in Artyom by train, Kim traveled to an airport just outside the resort city of Vladivostok, where Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other senior military officials allowed him to closely observe Russian strategic bombers and other combat aircraft.
Apparently, all of the Russian warplanes presented to Kim on Saturday were among those actively used in the war in Ukraine, including the Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers that regularly launched cruise missiles .
Shoigu, who had met Kim during a rare visit to North Korea In July, he also showed Kim one of Russia’s latest missiles, the hypersonic Kinzhal carried by the MiG-31 fighter jet, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Kim’s visit to Russia, highlighted by a summit with Putin on Wednesday, comes amid military cooperation between the countries in which North Korea could potentially seek Russian technology to advance Kim’s military nuclear program in exchange for supplying Russia with badly needed munitions.
1:45 a.m.: Two Russians and an American reach the International Space Station
Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday after taking off amid high tensions between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine.
Earlier on Friday, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft.
The crew docked with the ISS three hours later, the Russian space agency said.
At the orbital station, the trio will join three Russians, two Americans, a Japanese astronaut and a representative of the European Space Agency.
The liftoff came after Russia’s first lunar mission in almost 50 years failed last month.
Main developments from Friday September 15:
UNESCO World heritage sites in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Lviv were placed on its “in danger” list on Friday, saying they are threatened by the war sparked by Russia’s invasion of the country. Although neither site was directly targeted and Lviv was largely spared from the fighting, Russia unleashed waves of strikes on Kiev and other cities, hitting residential areas and critical infrastructure with drones Iranian-made attack kit.
As part of a multi-front counter-offensive, Ukrainian forces have retaken a village in the east of the country after intense fighting with Russian troops, the Ukrainian army announced on Friday. The village of Andriivka – about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of the Russian-occupied town of Bakhmut in the east of the country. Donetsk region – is kyiv’s latest gain in a counter-offensive that has seen slow but steady gains by Ukrainian forces.
Read yesterday’s blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)