🔴 Live: Zelensky visits Babyn Yar site to mark 82nd anniversary of Jewish massacre

4:50pm: Norway bans entry of Russia-registered passenger cars

Norway joined Finland, the Baltic states and Poland in banning entry of Russian-registered passenger cars from October 3, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

The move is a part of Western measures aimed at stripping Russia of income to finance its invasion of Ukraine.

“It is important that the sanctions are effective so that we prevent as much as possible income that the Russian state needs to finance the war,” Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said in a statement.

4:06pm: Russia’s Putin signs decree on autumn military conscription

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree calling up 130,000 citizens for statutory military service, a document posted on the government website showed on Friday.

The president, who signed an order in March calling up 147,000 people for the spring campaign, said this month he was bracing for a long war in Ukraine.

All men in Russia are required to do a year-long military service between the ages of 18 and 27, or equivalent training while in higher education.

In July Russia’s lower house of parliament voted to raise the maximum age at which men can be conscripted to 30 from 27.  The new legislation comes into effect on January 1, 2024.

Last year, Russia announced a plan to boost its professional and conscripted combat personnel by more than 30% to 1.5 million, an ambitious task made harder by its heavy but undisclosed casualties in Ukraine.

3:31pm: Costs of Russian war in Ukraine ‘enormous’, says FRANCE 24’s Rob Parsons

Russia said Thursday that it plans to raise defence spending by almost 70 percent next year, funnelling massive resources into its Ukraine offensive to fight what it calls a “hybrid war” unleashed by the West.

“It is one-third of the total budget of Russia or putting it another way, 6 percent of GDP,” says FRANCE 24’s chief foreign editor Rob Parsons.

“Those are enormous figures and make it clear just what sort of cost Russia is having to pay for its military effort over the last 20 months”.

2:47pm: Zelensky visits site of Jewish massacre on WWII anniversary

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday visited the site of the Babyn Yar massacre to mark the 82nd anniversary of one of the largest mass murders of Jews in the Holocaust.

Zelensky, dressed in his usual olive-green attire, placed a candle at the historic site and said Ukraine would “never” forget the tragedy perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

“No matter how many years have passed, humanity will remember the lives taken by Nazism,” Zelensky, who is of Jewish descent, said in a statement on social media.

On September 29-30, 1941, around 34,000 adults and children, most of them Jews, were killed at the Babyn Yar ravine outside Nazi-occupied Kyiv.

Babyn Yar, also called Babi Yar, was the scene of mass executions until 1943. Up to 100,000 people were killed there, including Jews, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war.

2:03pm: Seven countries order ammunition under EU scheme to aid Ukraine

Seven EU countries have ordered ammunition under a landmark European Union procurement scheme to get urgently needed artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted Western stocks, according to the European Defence Agency (EDA).

The orders – placed under contracts negotiated by the EDA – are for 155mm artillery rounds, one of the most important munitions used in the war to date. 

“Seven Member States have already placed orders for 155mm ammunition through the EDA’s fast-track procedure,” the agency said in an email in response to questions from reporters, without disclosing the names of the countries or the value of the contract.

1:13pm: Russian athletes to compete at Paris Paralympics after IPC votes against full ban

Russian athletes will be able to compete as full participants or neutral athletes at next year’s Paris Paralympics after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) members voted against a full ban of Russia on Friday.

The decision clears the way for Russians, whose athletes are currently banned from any Paralympic competition, to be in Paris and what the IPC will decide later on Friday is whether they will do so in full national team gear or if they will compete as neutrals, without national emblems, flags or anthem.

“At the IPC General Assembly in Bahrain, IPC members voted 74-65 (13 abstentions) against a motion to fully suspend NPC (National Paralympic Committee) Russia for breaches of its constitutional membership obligations,” the IPC said.

The decision comes two weeks before the International Olympic Committee session in Mumbai where it will also discuss Russia’s and Belarus’ participation at the Paris Olympics next year.

12:13pm: UK sanctions officials in annexed regions of Ukraine

The British government on Friday imposed an asset freeze and travel bans on officials in the annexed Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Crimea as part of its broader sanctions against Russia.

Britain also added Russia’s emergencies minister Alexander Kurenkov and the secretary of the Russian Central Election Commission Natalya Alekseevna Budarina to the sanctions list.

7:48am: Putin tasks ex-Wagner commander Troshev with overseeing volunteer fighters 

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said on Friday.

“At the last meeting we talked about you overseeing the formation of volunteer units that can carry out various tasks, first and foremost of course in the zone of the special military operation,” Putin was quoted as saying, using Moscow’s official term for the war in Ukraine.

Troshev, also known by the nom de guerre “Sedoi”, or “grey hair” in Russian, is now working for Russia’s defence ministry, RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday.

The meeting underscored the Kremlin’s attempt to show that the state had now gained control over the mercenary group after a failed June mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August.

During the Syrian civil war, Troshev was directly involved in the Wagner Group’s military operations, particularly in the Deir ez-Zor area, according to EU sanctions documents.

6:47am: Russia says it downed 11 Ukrainian drones overnight

Russian air defences downed 10 Ukrainian drones over the Kursk region and one over the Kaluga region overnight, the TASS news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying on Friday.

6:33am: Ukrainian drone hits Russian power substation, says governor

A Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on a substation in a Russian village close to the border on Friday, cutting off the power supply to a hospital, the regional governor said.

In Belaya, less than 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the border, “a Ukrainian drone dropped two explosive devices on a substation”, Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoyt said on the messaging platform Telegram.

“One of the transformers caught fire. Five settlements and a hospital were cut off from power supply. Fire crews rushed to the scene,” he added.

“Power will be restored as soon as it is safe to do so.”

Key developments from Thursday, September 28:

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukrainian forces are “gradually gaining ground” in their counteroffensive against Russia during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Thursday. The Western alliance chief also said that Ukraine is “closer to NATO than ever before”.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said an escalating grain exports dispute between Kyiv and Warsaw was detrimental to both his country and Poland in an interview published Thursday.

Russia is set to hike defence spending by almost 70 percent in 2024, a finance ministry document published Thursday showed, as Moscow pours resources into its war in Ukraine. 

Read yesterday’s live blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP, and Reuters)