Russia-Ukraine war live: reports EU set to suspend visa travel agreement with Russia | Ukraine

Emma Graham-Harrison

Emma Graham-Harrison reports for us from Chernihiv:

The woods outside Chernihiv were quiet in late August when Anatoliy Pavelko scrambled into a 10-metre bomb crater with a trowel and an icebox full of sample jars. He wanted to find out what the Russian FAB-250 bomb left behind when it carved this gaping hole into the ground in the spring.

Four months earlier, the environmental lawyer was dug in on a frontline just a few kilometres away, shells crashing around him in the bitter fight to keep Russian forces out of Kyiv.

Now he has taken temporary leave from his unit of volunteers and returned to Chernihiv for a more familiar battle on a different front in the war against Moscow.

Russia’s invasion has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians and destroyed homes and entire cities. It is also devastating Ukraine’s environment, an “ecocide” that activists worry is going largely unrecorded amid the broader national tragedy.

Read more: Toxins in soil, blasted forests – Ukraine counts cost of Putin’s ‘ecocide’

The Financial Times is reporting that the EU is set to suspend its visa travel agreement with Russia this week.

The plan to freeze the 2007 deal will make it harder and more expensive for Russians to get Schengen-area documents, the FT reports.

It comes after some eastern member states threatened to unilaterally close their borders to Russian tourists, with other countries calling for collective action to stop ordinary Russians from travelling to the EU on tourist visas. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously called for a complete ban.

The FT reports:

As a first step, ministers plan to give political support to suspending the EU-Russia visa facilitation agreement at a two-day meeting in Prague that begins on Tuesday, three officials involved in the talks told the Financial Times.

A senior EU official involved in the talks said:

It is inappropriate for Russian tourists to stroll in our cities, on our marinas. We have to send a signal to the Russian population that this war is not OK, it is not acceptable.

Parts of the 2007 deal relating to free movement of government officials and businessmen were suspended in late February. A wider suspension would remove preferential treatment for Russians when applying for all EU visas, requiring more documents, making them more expensive and significantly increasing waiting times.

The senior EU official added that deeper changes could be introduced by the end of the year:

We are in an exceptional situation and it requires exceptional steps. We want to go beyond suspending the visa facilitation.

Russia claims it has hit workshops at the Motor Sich factory in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.

The facility is where helicopters for the Ukrainian air force are being repaired, the defence ministry said.

In an update on the conflict, Russia’s defence ministry said:

The high-precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the city of Zaporozhye, on the territory of the Motor Sich plant, hit the production shops, in which the helicopters of the Ukrainian Air Force were repaired.

They also claimed that Ukrainian forces have been shelling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant over the past two days.

As we reported earlier, Ukraine and Russia continue to accuse each other of shelling near Europe’s largest nuclear facility in what has become a dangerous flashpoint in the war amid concerns about the potential for a radiation leak.

Isobel Koshiw reports for us from Kyiv:

Ukrainians are likely to experience the coldest winter in decades, its gas chief has said, as the thermostats on its Soviet-era centralised heating systems are set to be switched on later and turned down.

Yurii Vitrenko, the head of the state gas company Naftogaz, said indoor temperatures would be set at between 17 and 18C, about four degrees lower than normal, and he advised people to stock up on blankets and warm clothes for when outdoor temperatures fall to and beyond the -10C winter average.

“Heating season”, the period when the central heating is on, will come later and end earlier, said Vitrenko.

The target depends on Ukraine’s international allies giving it the necessary funds to import 4bn cubic metres-worth of gas, as well as no wildcards playing out – such as Russia destroying gas infrastructure or further decreasing its gas supplies to Europe.

Read more: Ukraine braces for cold winter amid uncertainty over power supplies

It is just past 1pm in Ukraine. This is what you might have missed:

• It is unclear if Russia will try to fill its increase in armed forces members by recruiting more volunteer “contract” soldiers or by lifting annual targets for conscriptions, British intelligence says. President Vladimir Putin signed a decree this week to increase the size of the armed forces from 1.9 million to 2.04 million in the wake of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its sixth month. The latest UK Ministry of Defence briefing says that under the Russian legislation now in place, the decree is unlikely to make “substantive progress” towards increasing Russia’s combat power.

• Two people were killed in Russian firing on Bakhmut, the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Saturday. The eastern city is a significant target for Russian and separatist forces seeking to take control of the parts of Donetsk they don’t hold. Associated Press also reported local government officials as saying that in the Black Sea region of Mykolaiv, one person was killed and another wounded in Russian firing.

• On the opposite shore from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the towns of Nikopol and Marhanets were hit by shells on Saturday afternoon and evening, Nikopol’s mayor, Yevhen Yevtushenko, said on Telegram.

• Dell Technologies says it has ceased all Russian operations after closing its offices in mid-August, the latest in a growing list of western firms to exit Russia. Reuters reports that the US computer firm – a key supplier of servers in Russia – has joined others in curtailing operations since Moscow’s February invasion of Ukraine. Dell suspended sales in Ukraine and Russia in February, saying it would monitor the situation to determine next steps.

• Concern persists about the potential for a radiation leak at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s state energy operator has warned there are “risks of hydrogen leakage and sputtering of radioactive substances” at the Russian-occupied plant. Authorities were distributing iodine tablets to residents who live near the plant in case of radiation exposure.

• Russia and Ukraine traded fresh accusations of each other shelling the area around the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, on Saturday. Moscow’s troops have “repeatedly shelled” the site of the plant over the past day, the Ukrainian state nuclear company, Energoatom, said. Russia’s defence ministry has claimed Ukraine’s troops “shelled the territory of the station three times” in the past day.

• The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is trying to negotiate access to the plant for an urgent inspection mission “to help stabilise the nuclear safety and security situation there”. Energoatom head Petro Kotin told the Guardian a visit could come before the end of the month, but the Ukrainian energy minister, Lana Zerkal, told a local radio station she was not convinced Russia was negotiating in good faith.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has issued a statement marking Ukraine’s Aviation Day, in which he pledged that Kyiv’s troops would “destroy the occupiers’ potential step by step”. The Ukrainian president vowed that the Russian “invaders will die like dew on the sun”.

• Russia has probably increased the intensity of its attacks in the Donetsk area of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region over the past five days, according to British intelligence. Pro-Russia separatists have most likely made progress towards the centre of Pisky village, near Donetsk airport, but Russian forces overall have secured few territorial gains, the latest report from the UK Ministry of Defence says.

• Russia has blocked an agreement at the UN aimed at bolstering the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The failure to agree to a joint statement, due to Moscow’s objection to a clause about control over the Zaporizhzhia plant, is the latest blow to hopes of maintaining an arms control regime and keeping a lid on a rekindled arms race.

• Ukrainian sailors will be allowed to leave the country for work, Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers has said. The prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said men of draft age employed as crew members would be allowed to leave the country so long as they had permission from their local conscription offices to cross the border.

• Britain’s defence ministry has said it is giving six underwater drones to Ukraine to help clear its coastline of mines and make grain shipments safer. In addition, dozens of Ukrainian navy personnel will be taught to use the drones over the coming months, the ministry said.

• Kazakhstan, a neighbour and ally of Russia, has suspended all arms exports for a year, its government said, amid the conflict in Ukraine and western sanctions against Moscow.

• Poland and the Czech Republic have agreed to protect the airspace of their Nato ally Slovakia, as it upgrades its air force from legacy Soviet-made MiG-29 fighters to a new batch of F-16 jets from the US.