Ukraine

Ukraine on Thursday appointed a new defense minister with a mandate to strengthen the army, as the country remains locked in conflict with pro-Russia separatists.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has defended the use of a Turkish-supplied armed drone to strike Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, saying the military acted in self-defense and did not violate any agreements.

Russian-backed separatists on Saturday called off a protest outside a hotel in eastern Ukraine housing international conflict monitors, ending a blockade sparked by the capture of a separatist officer by Ukrainian government forces.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation on Europe has suspended its monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine following protests near its headquarters in separatist-controlled Donetsk, the chief monitor said on Sunday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron had phone calls on Monday with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia to discuss the conflict in Ukraine, and agreed their foreign ministers should meet, the German government said.

The European Union is considering a training mission for Ukrainian officers due to the "ongoing military activities" of Russia, according to an internal EU document. With tensions between Kyiv and Moscow running high, some members of the bloc want Brussels to set up an independent training program called the EU Military Advisory and Training Mission Ukraine (EUATM), Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported on October 3, citing an EU policy paper it obtained.

Official says the attack was part of a ‘militant campaign’ against President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s bid to take on oligarchs.

The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde, expressed regret that no consensus could be reached on the extension of the mandate of the Observer Mission at the Russian checkpoints Gukovo and Donetsk on the Russian-Ukrainian border, an important component of the OSCE’s response to the crisis in and around Ukraine.

[…] “The United States deeply regrets that the Russian Federation has indicated that it will not join consensus to extend the mission’s mandate and financing arrangement at the end of September,” Courtney Austrian, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said in a September 2 statement.

Washington is promising Kyiv up to $60 million in military aid ahead of scheduled talks at the White House between U.S. President Joe Biden and his visiting Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.