Ukraine updates: IAEA rejects Russian control of nuclear plant

French President Emmanuel Macron has said European countries would send Ukraine more military equipment to counter Russia, including more French Caesar-type howitzers.

“We are working indeed on several requests, with several members of the EU, including on new Caesars,” Macron said.

In this episode of The Stream, we discuss Russian reactions to the continuing war in Ukraine, the new conscription requirements and Russia’s next moves.

The US has accused Russian mercenaries of exploiting natural resources in the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere to help fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a charge Russia has rejected as “anti-Russian rage”.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the Wagner Group of mercenaries are exploiting natural resources and “these ill-gotten gains are used to fund Moscow’s war machine in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine”.

“Make no mistake: People across Africa are paying a heavy price for the Wagner Group’s exploitative practices and human rights violations,” Thomas-Greenfield told a UN Security Council meeting on the financing of armed groups through illicit trafficking of natural resources in Africa.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog says that the danger of a catastrophic accident at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has not been averted.

“We are continually saying what needs to be done, which is basically: avoid a nuclear accident at the plant which is still a very, very clear possibility,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said during a visit to Kyiv.

Grossi has been calling for a “safety and security zone” to be set around the nuclear plant, Europe’s biggest, which remains staffed by Ukrainian workers. He said that discussions with Kyiv and Moscow continued.

Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than 500sq km (195 square miles) of territory and dozens of settlements in the southern Kherson region alone since October 1, Zelenskyy has said.

In a video address, he also said there had been more military successes in the east.

The Kremlin has denounced comments by Zelenskyy in which he suggested NATO should launch preventive attacks to rule out any Russian use of nuclear weapons, RIA news agency has said.

“Such statements are nothing other than an appeal to start yet another world war with unpredictable, monstrous consequences,” RIA cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid compulsory military service have requested asylum in the US after landing on a remote Alaska island in the Bering Sea, Alaska US Senator Lisa Murkowski’s office has said.

Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Murkowski, said by email that the office has been in communication with the US Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.”

Alaska’s senators, Republicans Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, said the individuals landed at a beach near Gambell, an isolated community of about 600 people on St Lawrence Island.

Zelenskyy has called for more sanctions on Russia, further military support to Ukraine and for security guarantees until his country joins NATO.

He spoke at the first meeting of the European Political Community in Prague via video link.

“The day will come when Russian evil will lose,” Zelenskyy told his counterparts.

Is the Ukraine war at a turning point?

The Ukrainian army has been gaining territory quickly, while in Russia, there has been more unease about how the war is going – even on state TV.

Al Jazeera’s Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains the recent news from Ukraine and Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron has urged his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to push back against attempts to dodge sanctions imposed on Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Macron “underlined the importance of the European sanctions regimes in stopping Russia’s escalation, and called to fight any circumvention strategies”, the French presidency said after talks on the sidelines of a summit in Prague.

The Russian foreign ministry says it has summoned France’s ambassador to Moscow Pierre Levy over the military support offered to Ukraine by his country and Kyiv’s other Western allies.

“The Russian side pointed to the threats posed by the increased supply of weapons and equipment to the Kyiv regime, and by the scaling-up of training programmes for the Ukrainian military,” by France and other Western countries, a foreign ministry statement said.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi has said during a visit to Kyiv that it is “obvious” that the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant belongs to Ukraine.

“For us it is obvious that since it is a Ukrainian facility, the ownership is Energoatom,” Grossi said during a news conference, referring to the Ukrainian state nuclear agency, after Russia announced it had seized operational control of the facility.

Zelenskyy has asked parliament to approve banker Andriy Pyshnyi, who has helped advise the government on implementing sanctions against Russia, as the new central bank chief.

Pyshnyi is set to replace Kyrylo Shevchenko, who quit on Tuesday citing health reasons and said on Thursday he had been identified as a suspect in an investigation into “illegal activities” at a bank he led before his central bank role. Shevchenko issued a statement denying any wrongdoing.

Pyshnyi, 48, is the former head of Ukraine’s state-run Oschadbank and has helped advise the government on sanctions against Russia and against Moscow’s ally Belarus.

Russian oil export prices are to be capped in addition to extra trade restrictions and travel bans as part of an eighth sanctions package on Russia formally adopted by EU countries.

The new measures lay the groundwork for a price cap on Russian oil shipped to third countries, as it was previously agreed on by the G7 group of leading economies.

Under the cap, the transport of oil but also providing services for the shipments, including insurance and financial services, will be prohibited if the oil was sold above a certain threshold.

The level of the price cap still needs to be agreed on by the G7 group and unanimously approved by the EU’s 27 member states.

Russia is “most anti-European state in the world”, Zelenskyy has told leaders at the first meeting of the European Political Community in Prague.

Russia, now only has one policy, “war against Ukraine, against Europe, against the world”, Zelenskyy said, urging the assembled leaders to make every effort to end the war in his country.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi has said that the UN nuclear watchdog considers the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to be a Ukrainian facility.

Russia captured the plant in southern Ukraine in March, shortly after invading Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government on Wednesday to take control of it. The plant is Europe’s largest, and Ukrainian staff have continued to operate it.

“This is a matter that has to do with international law … we want the war to stop immediately, and of course, the position of the IAEA is that this facility is a Ukrainian facility,” Grossi told reporters in Kyiv.

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was jailed in April for denouncing the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive, has been charged with high treason, his lawyer told Russian news agencies.

“Our client has been charged after speaking out critically against the Russian authorities three times – at public events in Lisbon, Helsinki and Washington,” Kara-Murza’s lawyer Vadim Prokhorov told TASS state-run news agency.

“These speeches did not pose any threat. This was public, open criticism,” Prokhorov was quoted by TASS as saying.

Kara-Murza already had two criminal cases opened against him and faces 20 years behind bars for the treason charges.

The European Union has imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia, expanding import and export bans and blacklisting individuals over Moscow’s annexation of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions.

The measures came into force on Thursday with their publication in the bloc’s official administrative journal. The EU said the sanctions were in response to Russia’s “further aggression against Ukraine”.

Thirty individuals and seven entities were added to the EU blacklist, including singers Yulia Chicherina and Nikolay Rastorguev, among others deemed to be pro-war “propaganda” artists.

Other individuals and institutions listed included Russia’s electoral commission and its head, proxy Russian officials in Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk, and Russian defence officials and defence-affiliated companies.

Norway’s foreign minister has said it will limit access to its ports for Russian fishing vessels, marking the Nordic country’s latest tightening of security following last week’s discovery of major leaks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Russian trawlers will from now on only be allowed to visit three ports and must undergo security checks when they do so, Anniken Huitfeldt told a news conference.

“Russia’s unacceptable annexations in Ukraine, the attacks against gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea and increased drone activity has led the government to further tighten security,” she said.

Ukraine’s armed forces have advanced up to about 55km (34 miles) during the last two weeks in a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the northeastern Kharkiv region, a Ukrainian general has said.

Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov told a news briefing that Ukraine had taken back 93 settlements and liberated more than 2,400sq km (926sq miles) in the region since September 21.

Gromov added that Russian troops were fighting to slow a Ukrainian advance out of Kupiansk. He said the loss of the recently liberated railway hub town had significantly complicated Russia’s logistics in the area.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify Gromov’s claims. There was no immediate response from Russia.