Here is the situation on Monday, September 25, 2023.
Fighting
- At least three people were killed and eight injured after Russian shelling and air attacks on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson. The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia also attacked the Black Sea region of Odesa and other regions in southern Ukraine.
- A second shipment of Ukrainian wheat reached Turkey via the Black Sea, according to maritime traffic monitoring sites, despite Russian threats to attack boats heading to or from Ukraine after its July withdrawal from the United Nations-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative.
- Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of the Russian-annexed Ukrainian region of Donetsk imposed a curfew, from 11pm until 4am from Monday to Friday. The decree outlaws any kind of public assembly or mass event without official military approval and includes “military censorship of postal mail and messages transmitted via telecommunications systems as well as control of telephone conversations”.
Diplomacy
- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Ukraine’s proposed peace plan and the latest UN proposals to revive the Black Sea grain deal were “not realistic“.
- Polish President Andrzej Duda said Poland remained ready to help Ukrainian grain reach countries outside Europe despite an ongoing dispute over access to the Polish market. Duda said special transport corridors could be used to move grain from neighbouring Ukraine to ports.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he met leading US entrepreneurs and financiers during his visit to the United States. Zelenskyy said the businessmen, who included Michael Bloomberg, Larry Fink and Bill Ackman, were prepared to make significant investments in rebuilding Ukraine.
- Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Siberia and placed in a tiny “punishment cell”, his lawyer said. The 42-year-old was convicted of treason for publicly condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Weapons
- Pope Francis suggested that some countries were “playing games” with Ukraine by first providing weapons and then considering backing out of their commitments. “A process is starting in which the martyr certainly will be the Ukrainian people and that is an ugly thing,” the pope told reporters on his way back from a visit to Marseilles.