Zelenskiy meets no officials during Polish visit
Volodymyr Zelenskiy awarded two Polish volunteers state awards during the Ukrainian president’s stopover on Saturday, but did not meet any officials as relations between the two countries are strained over grain imports.
Poland decided last week to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain imports, shaking Kyiv’s relationship with a neighbour that has been one of its staunchest allies during the Russian invasion.
Reuters also reports that Poland’s prime minister told Zelenskiy on Friday not to “insult” Poles, maintaining harsh rhetoric towards Kyiv ahead of elections on 15 October. The ruling Law and Justice party has been criticised by the far right for what it says is the government’s subservient attitude to Ukraine.
Zelenskiy angered his neighbours when he told the UN general assembly in New York that Kyiv was working to preserve land routes for grain exports, but that the “political theatre” around imports was only helping Moscow.
On Saturday, on his way back home, he handed awards to Bianka Zalewska, a journalist who helped transport wounded children to Polish hospitals, and Damian Duda, who gathered a medical team to help wounded soldiers near the front line.
Zelenskiy thanked all Poles who “from the first days opened their families, their homes, opened themselves up and helped”.
I believe that any challenges on our common path are nothing compared to the fact that there is such strength between our people.
Duda told Reuters that Zelenskiy was very informal at the meeting, like an old friend.
The head of the Polish president’s International Policy Office, Marcin Przydacz, told Onet.pl website his office did not receive any proposal for a meeting during Zelenskiy’s stay in Poland.
Key events
Opening summary
Welcome back to our continuing coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton and here’s a snapshot of the latest to bring you up to speed.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy handed awards to two Polish volunteers during a stopover in Poland on Saturday but did not meet any officials amid strained relations between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain imports.
Poland’s prime minister told the Ukrainian president on Friday not to “insult” Poles, after Zelenskiy angered his neighbours when he told the UN general assembly in New York that Kyiv was working to preserve land routes for grain exports but that the “political theatre” around imports was only helping Moscow.
More on that story shortly. In other news as it turns 9am in Kyiv:
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The United States has decided to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), an important boost to Kyiv’s capacity to target Russian military logistics at long range distances as the country prepares for a second winter at war. President Joe Biden told the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a private meeting that a small number of the weapons would be transferred, NBC reported, citing US officials. Ukraine has been asking for ATACMS for months.
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Ukraine has reported breaking through Russian defence lines in the Zaporizhzhia area in the country’s south, with a general leading the counteroffensive there saying the advance is still under way. “On the left flank [near the village of Verbove] we have a breakthrough and we continue to advance further,” Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy told CNN. He said progress was “not as fast as it was expected, not like in the movies about the second world war”, but it was important “not to lose this initiative”.
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Nine people were killed and 16 injured, among them two generals, in a Ukrainian airstrike on Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters in Crimea, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence. Kyrylo Budanov told the Voice of America that “among the wounded is the commander of the group, Col Gen [Alexander] Romanchuk, in a very serious condition. The chief of staff, Lt Gen [Oleg] Tsekov, is unconscious.” A Ukrainian missile hit the headquarters in Sevastopol on Friday. Russia’s defence ministry said one military serviceman was missing as a result.
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Human rights lawyers working with Ukraine’s public prosecutor are preparing a war crimes dossier to submit to the international criminal court accusing Russia of deliberately causing starvation during the conflict. The aim is to document instances where the Russian invaders used hunger as a weapon of war, providing evidence for the ICC to launch the first prosecution of its kind that could indict the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
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Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said a peace plan proposed by Ukraine is “completely not feasible” and that the war will be resolved on the battlefield if Kyiv and the west stick to the plan as a basis for negotiations. Lavrov accused western powers of directly fighting Russia, in comments at the United Nations.
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Lavrov said Russia left the Black Sea grain deal because promises to Moscow had not been met. On the latest proposals by the UN secretary general to revive the deal, Lavrov said: “We don’t reject them, they are simply not realistic.”
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Lavrov said he would go to Pyongyang next month for more negotiations following agreements reached by Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
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Russian spies are using hackers to target computer systems at law enforcement agencies in Ukraine in a bid to identify and obtain evidence related to alleged Russian war crimes, according to Ukraine’s cyber-defence chief.
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Norwegian police have arrested a former commander of the Wagner mercenary group on suspicion that he attempted to illegally re-enter Russia after seeking asylum in Norway earlier this year, the lawyer for Andrei Medvedev said.
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Three successive commanders of one of Russia’s most prestigious airborne regiments have either resigned or been killed since its invasion of Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. That highlighted the “extreme attrition and high turnover in Russia’s deployed military, even amongst relatively senior ranks”, it said in its intelligence update.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy held an impromptu meeting with the head of the Sudanese sovereign council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, where they discussed Russia-funded armed groups. The meeting took place at Shannon airport in Ireland.
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Azerbaijani soldiers and Russian peacekeepers are working jointly to disarm separatist fighters in the ethnically Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani army spokesman has said.
