Russia-Ukraine latest updates: Zelenskyy meets IAEA officials

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler speaking from Paris said the banning of Russian citizens from the EU was a “very contentious” issue as EU foreign ministers gathered in Prague expressed different points of view on the subject.

“On one side you have Nordic countries and some Eastern European countries who say that they want a full visa ban on Russian citizens travelling to the EU,” she said. “Some of them say look, it’s not fair that Russians are allowed to come and travel to the EU often for a holiday in the city or to be lying on the beach while Russia continues its war in Ukraine.”

“On the other side, you have countries like Germany and France who are calling for a more moderate approach. They say that a full ban would be counterproductive that it would feed into Putin’s anti-EU, anti-Western narrative and actually alienate many ordinary Russians,” Butler added.

However, Butler said in the end the countries are likely to come up with a compromise to settle the issue that “basically means not a full ban, but that’s making it much harder for Russians to enter the EU”. “So more administration, much more expensive visas, that kind of thing,” she added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met US Senators Rob Portman and Amy Klobuchar in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Zelenskyy said he believed the sanctions policy to be working, “but it has not yet worked to the full”, he said, adding that “it has a snowball effect and then will influence and hit the economy of the Russian Federation, a terrorist state.”

At the end of the meeting, the Ukrainian leader awarded the senators with Distinguished Service medals.

Russia’s Gazprom has said it would fully suspend gas deliveries to major European utility Engie from Thursday in a dispute over contracts, a move which will deepen concerns about Europe’s winter energy supply.

Europe is already on notice that Gazprom will shut off the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany from August 31 to September 2 for maintenance, and there is some concern that Moscow, which has cut the pipeline’s supply to just 20 percent of capacity, may step up pressure by delaying the restart.

In a statement, Gazprom said Engie had not paid in full for July deliveries of gas.

“In this regard, Gazprom Export notified Engie of the complete suspension of gas supplies starting from September 1, 2022, until the moment it receives full payment for the gas it has supplied,” it said.

The United States is concerned about India’s plans to participate in joint military exercises with Russia, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said.

Last month, Moscow announced plans to hold “Vostok” (East) exercises from August 30 to September 5, even as it wages a costly war in Ukraine. The military exercises are expected to include China, India, Belarus, Mongolia, Tajikistan and other countries, China’s defence ministry has said.

Asked about India’s participation, Jean-Pierre told reporters as President Joe Biden flew to Pennsylvania that the US was concerned about any country participating in military exercises with Russia while it is at war with Ukraine.

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Russian authorities are investigating Ilya Ponomaryov, a former lawmaker turned Ukraine-based Kremlin critic, for spreading “fakes” about the Russian army, TASS news agency cited a Moscow court as saying.

Ponomaryov has come under increased pressure in Russia since becoming the only lawmaker in the 450-strong lower chamber of parliament, the Duma, to vote against the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

France wants to look into building a pipeline from the Iberian Peninsula to the south of France in a bid to open up new energy sources in the absence of natural gas from Russia.

“Spain and Germany are two close partners of France; if they make a proposal, we will examine it,” French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said in Paris.

So far, France, which relies heavily on nuclear power, has been cautious about reviving the MidCat natural gas pipeline, which was shut down in 2017 as it was unprofitable. The MidCat pipeline is to run from Barcelona across the Pyrenees to a connecting point with the French grid in Barbairan in southern France.

The United Kingdom’s defence ministry has said in a memo that since the start of August, Russia had made “significant efforts” to reinforce troops on the western bank of the Dnieper River which splits Kherson city.

But “most of the units around Kherson are likely under-manned and are reliant upon fragile supply lines by ferry and pontoon bridges across the Dnipro [Dnieper],” it said.

It was “not yet possible to confirm the extent of Ukrainian advances,” it added.

Russian shells rained on the eastern Ukrainian town of Druzhkivka on Tuesday, destroying two schools and a sports facility, AP news agency reported

The schools were destroyed just two days before the beginning of the academic year in Ukraine. Classes have been moved online as a result of the war, now in its sixth month.

“Luckily, there was no one in the school. After the first strike [in the town] people left and then it [the school] was bombed. Unfortunately, the school was destroyed,” Oleksandr Mikheiev, director of one of the schools said, AP reported.

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has met a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of its long-awaited visit to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

“We want the IAEA mission … to reach the plant and do everything possible to avoid the dangers” of a nuclear disaster, Zelenskyy said of the site which has been targeted by repeated shelling, according to a video released by the presidency.

Government measures to ensure gas supplies during the winter have prepared Germany to deal with further curbs in Russian deliveries, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said, a day before Moscow is due to cut off gas delivery for three days.

Germany has set about weaning itself off Russian gas since the invasion of Ukraine, bringing mothballed coal power plants back online, launching a drive to save power and filling gas storage facilities ahead of the end of the year.

The government says it has made faster progress replenishing gas stocks than expected and should meet an October target early.

Ukraine will request the UN’s cultural watchdog to add the historic port of Odesa to its World Heritage List of protected sites as Russia’s invasion continues, the agency has said.

In late July, the city was struck by missiles just hours after Russia agreed to allow a shipment of Ukrainian grain exports from the port.

“On July 24, 2022, part of the glass canopy and windows of the Museum of Fine Arts, inaugurated in 1899, were destroyed” by the raids, the  UNESCO said after its Director-General Audrey Azoulay met Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko in Paris.

It said UNESCO experts already on the ground would provide technical assistance so that Odesa could be urgently added to both the World Heritage List and the list of heritage sites in danger.

Russian state prosecutors have requested a 24-year prison sentence for former journalist Ivan Safronov in his trial for treason, state news agency TASS quoted Moscow City Court as saying.

Safronov covered military affairs for the Vedomosti and Kommersant newspapers before becoming an aide to the head of Russia’s space agency two months before his arrest in July 2020.

He denies accusations of passing military secrets about Russian arms sales in the Middle East and Africa to the Czech Republic, a NATO member, while he worked as a reporter in 2017, calling them “a complete travesty of justice and common sense”.

A vessel carrying wheat from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has docked, the United Nations said, the first to make the journey since the Russian invasion six months ago.

The vessel Brave Commander is carrying 23,000 tonnes of grain and will soon be followed by another carrying 7,000 tonnes, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said.

The total shipment to be unloaded in Djibouti and transported to Ethiopia, is enough to feed 1.5 million people for a month, according to the WFP.

After 14 days at sea, the first ship carrying grain from Ukraine has arrived in Djibouti.

Much of the 23,000 tons of grain is destined for Ethiopia – where 20 million people are facing starvation ⤵️

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/TYZwAIurwS pic.twitter.com/qJbLxDQYSj

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 30, 2022

Germany and France have warned against a European Union ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying it would be counterproductive, highlighting divisions within the 27-nation bloc as foreign ministers prepared to discuss the measure.

Eastern and Nordic countries strongly back such a ban, saying travel to the EU is a privilege, not a right, and that allowing Russians to party on European beaches at a time when their country has invaded Ukraine is unacceptable.

The Kremlin has slammed the proposed ban as “irrational,” while Paris and Berlin argued that, six months into the war, the EU should avoid penalising Russians who might oppose their government’s actions and harbour pro-Western sympathies.

“We caution against far-reaching restrictions on our visa policy, in order to prevent feeding the Russian narrative and trigger unintended rallying-around the flag effects and/or estranging future generations,” France and Germany said in a joint memo seen by the Reuters news agency.

One EU diplomat said divisions on the issue meant an agreement at the two-day meeting of ministers in Prague, taking place this week, was unlikely.

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Russian state prosecutors have requested 24 years in prison for treason for former journalist Ivan Safronov, state-owned news agency TASS reported, citing Moscow City Court.

Safronov covered military affairs for the Vedomosti and Kommersant newspapers before becoming an aide to the head of Russia’s space agency two months before his arrest in July 2020.

He denies accusations of passing military secrets about Russian arms sales in the Middle East and Africa to the Czech Republic, a NATO member, while he worked as a reporter in 2017, calling them “a complete travesty of justice and common sense”.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned the demolition of Soviet-era monuments in the Baltic states as “Russophobic” and said that they would affect bilateral relations.

In a strongly worded statement, Moscow also accused Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia of xenophobia and discrimination, saying they were treating ethnic Russian minorities as “second-class people”.

“What is happening now in the Baltic states is unacceptable for us and will certainly affect the state of bilateral relations with these countries, which are already in complete decline,” the ministry said.

In July, Al Jazeera reported on Latvia’s Soviet-era monuments, memorials or plaques that are set to disappear from the public space in the coming months.

Employees of Ukraine’s state postal service first left to work from home when the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded.

Then, just as staff prepared to return, the Russian invasion began on February 24, forcing 20 percent of Ukrposhta workers to move.

Some fled Ukraine, others relocated to the relatively safer western areas of the country as Russian forces approached – hoping to seize the capital.

But the agency’s chief executive has remained at work in Kyiv, and the postal service continues, despite the risks.

Read more here.

Here are three maps, which Al Jazeera updates daily, charting the war:

European Union ministers on Tuesday debated ways to ramp up weapons production, boost military training for the Ukrainian armed forces and inflict a heavier toll on Russia.

“We are depleting our stocks. We are providing so many capacities to Ukraine that we have to refill our stocks,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in the Czech capital, Prague, where he is chairing two days of talks between the bloc’s defence and foreign ministers.

The aim among defence ministers is to work out how best to pool military material and resources and also to buy ammunition and weapons in bulk such as air defence systems which Ukraine continues to need.

They will also discuss what role the 27-nation bloc could play in training new Ukrainian recruits on European soil, as casualties mount and deplete the army of experienced soldiers who could otherwise providing training.

A surge in fighting on the southern front line and a Ukrainian claim of new attacks on Russian positions fed speculation on Tuesday that a long-expected counteroffensive to try to turn the tide of war has started.

Officials in Kyiv, though, warned against excessive optimism in a war that has seen similar expectations of changing fortunes before.

Even though independent verification of battlefield moves has been extremely tough, the British defence ministry said in an intelligence report that, as of early Monday, “several brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine.”

Attention centred on potential damage Ukraine might have inflicted on Russian positions around the port city of Kherson, a big economic hub close to the Black Sea and one of Moscow’s prized possessions since it started the invasion just over half a year ago.

Read more about the counterattack here.

New Russian raids in the northeast city of Kharkiv killed at least five people, as people were urged to stay indoors, according to local officials.

“The Russian occupiers shelled the central districts of Kharkiv,” governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram, referring to Ukraine’s second-biggest city.