Ukraine latest updates: No plans to expand mobilisation – Putin

The G7 is still working on setting a price cap on Russian oil but enrolling more nations in the scheme is not necessary for it to succeed, US Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen has said.

Australia recently joined the Group of Seven wealthy democracies and the European Union in backing the move aimed at depriving Moscow of a key source of cash for its war in Ukraine, as well as cooling soaring energy prices.

Yellen said a broader coalition was not needed as the cap would be set by requiring Western financial services and insurance firms to abide by a maximum price in contracts for Russian oil shipments.

“We are not trying to sign up additional countries to a coalition,” Yellen told a news conference at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings, in Washington, DC.

The United States will extend its rotation of a heavy tank battalion in Lithuania, which sees no reduction in the threat from Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuanian officials have said.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said the battalion, in the town of Pabrade since 2019, will stay at least until the start of 2026.

In a statement after meeting US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Brussels, Anusauskas said the decision implements “one of the most essential objectives put forward by the sitting government: We have a persistent military US presence in Lithuania”.

Ukrainian investigators have completed the exhumation of soldiers in one of two mass graves discovered after Russian troops retreated from the town of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region, police have said.

“Police have removed the bodies of 34 Ukrainian defenders from the mass grave,” Donetsk regional police said in a statement. “Work continues at a second location where more than 120 civilians are buried. The fate of each person who died will be determined.”

The soldiers’ bodies have all been transferred to a morgue and will be returned to their relatives for burial once identification has taken place and the cause of death is determined, the police said.

Since September 29, Donetsk police said they have found the bodies of 144 people, 85 of them civilians, with 108 exhumed from makeshift graves and the rest found in buildings or on the streets.

The families and comrades of Ukrainian servicemen killed in battle gathered at a cemetery outside the eastern city of Kharkiv for a ceremony to honour the defenders of the nation.

The family of 38-year-old soldier Ruslan Mamedov mourned by his grave.

The Ukrainian soldier was killed by a mine during a combat mission in the Luhansk region, his mother Lyubov Mamedova said.

“He was sure that Ukraine would win and everything would be in our hands,” she said.

An Orthodox priest prayed for the dead as families and servicemen stood in silence by the graves.

Soldiers with rifles gave a 15-shot salute, while others placed flowers on the graves.

Sweden has rejected plans to set up a formal joint investigation team with Denmark and Germany to look into the recent ruptures of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, a Swedish prosecutor investigating the leaks has said.

Mats Ljungqvist, who is investigating the leaks in the Swedish economic zone, said Sweden was already co-operating with Denmark and Germany on the matter.

He said Sweden had rejected the proposal for a Joint Investigation Team, from judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, because such an investigation would include legal agreements under which Sweden would have to share information it deemed confidential.

“This is because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security,” Ljungqvist told Reuters.

Some of oilfield service firm Schlumberger’s more than 9,000 Russian employees have begun receiving military draft notices through work, and the company is not authorising remote employment to escape mobilisation, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents.

Schlumberger’s cooperation with authorities by delivering the military call-ups and its refusal to allow Russian staff to work outside the country has caused a backlash, according to the sources. They view the actions as tacit support for the war in Ukraine by Schlumberger.

Human rights groups are watching how the company responds to the concerns.

Russian law requires companies to assist with delivering a summons to employees and to conduct a military registration if at least one of its employees is liable for service, according to advocacy group Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, which tracks corporate performance on human rights issues.

An electric substation in the Russian town of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, was set on fire by a Ukrainian attack, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said.

“An electric substation … caught fire after a strike on Belgorod,” Gladkov said on Telegram, adding it would take “up to four hours” to activate a backup system and restore power.

He did not specify how many people had lost power in the city of 330,000, which until now has rarely been hit by Ukrainian fire, unlike the surrounding Belgorod region.

“We’re going to try to repair all the damage as soon as possible,” said Gladkov.

Images posted on social media showed the moment of the impact, with the facility in flames.

The fire was brought under control around 17:00 GMT.

BREAKING: Power is out in a number of places in Belgorod, Russia after Ukraine attacked the city's thermal power plant pic.twitter.com/uTn8iy5xH7

— Faytuks News Δ (@Faytuks) October 14, 2022

Ukraine’s central bank chief has said he plans to ask the global financial crime watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to expel Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Andrii Pyshnyi, the newly appointed chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, said on Facebook that he would make the request on behalf of the bank in a letter to the FATF before the organisation’s plenary session on October 18.

Russia is a member of FATF but Ukraine is not.

Pyshnyi accused Russia of “creating serious threats to the security and integrity of the world’s financial system” and demanded Moscow be made to “feel the price” for its invasion of Ukraine.

KEEP READING:

• Lithuanians remain calm, but prepare for potential conflict
• Belarus warns against pushing nuclear-armed Russia ‘into corner’
• Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine’s Starlink ‘indefinitely’

Kyiv will find a solution to keep the Starlink internet service working in Ukraine, the presidential adviser has said.

“Let’s be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war. Business has the right to its own strategies,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

“Ukraine will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”

Let's be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war. Business has the right to its own strategies. 🇺🇦 will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) October 14, 2022

After Russia launched a series of missile attacks on Ukraine this week, is the conflict entering a new phase of the war?

Elon Musk has said his space exploration company SpaceX cannot indefinitely fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, which has helped the country’s civilians and military stay online during the war against Russia.

“SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Friday.

“We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder.”

Musk’s Twitter comments came after a media report that said SpaceX had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations of Starlink. Pentagon said the Department of Defense “continues to work with industry to explore solutions for Ukraine’s armed forces as they repel Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression”.

Belarus says Russian troops would soon be arriving to participate in a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders.

“Troops from the Russian component of the Regional Grouping of Forces will start arriving in Belarus in the next few days,” the Minsk defence ministry said.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said earlier this week that his troops would deploy with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, citing what he said were threats from Ukraine and the West.

Putin says Germany is unlikely to accept Russian gas from the one remaining undamaged line of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, two days after Berlin rejected his initial offer.

“A decision has not been made, and it’s unlikely to be made, but that’s no longer our business; it’s the business of our partners,” Putin said.

The Nord Stream pipelines, intended to carry gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, suffered unexplained damage which European countries have called sabotage.

But while Putin said on Wednesday that Russian gas could still be supplied to Europe through the one remaining intact line of the uncommissioned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a German government spokesman ruled this out.

“They have to decide what is more important for them: fulfilling some kind of alliance commitment, as they see it, or safeguarding their national interests,” Putin said.

Some in Vištytis, a small Lithuanian town neighbouring the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, say co-existence is possible and that talk about the Suwalki Gap being the world’s most dangerous place is “fear-mongering”.

But officials in Lithuania and Poland are worried they might be dragged into the Ukraine war.

More here on the Lithuanians preparing for possible war and those carrying on as usual.

Hungary has published a national consultation survey asking citizens to agree or disagree with the government’s opposition to EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

“We believe that the sanctions are destroying us,” reads a statement on the government’s Facebook page, where the taxpayer-funded survey comprising seven questions is published.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during an interview: “We always ask people the most important questions … have always tried to create a national consensus on certain issues.”

Orban also slammed “the European elite” on Friday for deciding on the sanctions, which all EU members have approved.

But Orban argues they are hurting Europe more than Russia by endangering energy supplies and price stability.

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday would not take any decisions on additional Iran sanctions after reports of drones delivered from Tehran to Moscow, Reuters has reported, citing an unnamed senior EU official.

The official added that the 27-nation bloc is still trying to find independent evidence for the alleged use of Iranian drones by Russia in Ukraine.

Iran, which blames NATO as the root of the Ukraine conflict, has denied supplying arms to Russia.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has by no means supplied any side with arms to be used in the war in Ukraine, and its policy is to oppose arming either side with the aim of ending the war,” Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, told his Polish counterpart on Sunday.

Humanitarian corridors for Ukrainian grain exports should be closed if it emerges they are being used for “acts of terror”, Putin has said.

Russia has been increasingly critical in recent months of a Turkish-brokered deal it signed in July to unblock food exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which Russia had blockaded.

Putin says Russia is not planning more “massive” strikes against Ukraine “for now” and the Kremlin is not aiming to “destroy” the country.

“There is no need now for massive strikes. There are other tasks. For now. And then it will be clear,” Putin told reporters following a summit of ex-Soviet nations in Kazakhstan.

“We do not set ourselves the task of destroying Ukraine,” he added.

Putin says any direct clash of NATO troops with Russia would lead to a “global catastrophe.”

“I hope that those who are saying this are smart enough not to take such steps,” Putin said at a news conference in Astana.

When asked if he had regrets about the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said “No”.

He added that Russia was doing the right thing.