Ukraine

EU High Representative for foreign policy and security, Josep Borrell, said late last night in New York that the EU is considering new sanctions against Russia.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy has demanded that a special United Nations tribunal impose "just punishment" on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in a video address to the UN General Assembly just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden said Moscow "shamelessly violated the core tenets" of the UN Charter with its "brutal, needless war."

For Western and European officials, the challenge this week at the UN General Assembly will be to address Ukraine and their countries’ problems, while trying to counter the Russian narrative which has found fertile ground in some developing countries.

Three employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been imprisoned in eastern Ukraine.

The chief of the UN human rights mission in Ukraine has accused Russia of failing to allow access to prisoners of war (POWs) and said that it has evidence of ill-treatment and torture of Ukrainian prisoners that may constitute war crimes.

Nearly 5,800 people have been killed in the conflict in Ukraine and the situation of prisoners of war in Russian-held areas is “worrying”, the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country said on Friday. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have called for the establishment of a demilitarized zone around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

As the war in Ukraine “continues to rage,” the UN political and peacebuilding chief updated the Security Council, saying on Wednesday that 5,718 people have been killed, including 372 children.

A new draft media law voted on in the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday (30 August) could see the country take a step towards fulfilling conditions set out by Brussels for EU accession. 

The European Union’s defense ministers appeared divided on a plan to hold a major training mission for Ukrainian forces as they arrived for an informal meeting in Prague on Tuesday. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, co-hosting the meeting together with the Czech presidency of the bloc, proposed the training operation last week.