Putin declares four areas of Ukraine as Russian in illegal annexation
Summary
- President Putin has announced the illegal seizure of four areas of Ukraine - saying they are now Russian territory
- In an angry speech decrying the West, he claimed people living in the regions had made their choice - but "referendums" held there have been labelled shams
- The territory being seized is in Russian-held Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions
- Ukraine has responded by asking Nato to speed up giving it membership of the US-led defence alliance
- In his response, President Zelensky vowed to oust the Russians from all of Ukraine
More now from President Zelensky, who's been speaking following an urgent meeting of Ukraine’s Security and Defence Council.
On Ukraine's fast-track application for Nato membership, the Ukrainian president says Finland and Sweden started [the procedure of] joining the alliance without taking part in the formal membership plan - and so it's fair for Ukraine to do the same, he says.
Appearing to refer to Vladimir Putin's earlier call for negotiations to resume between Ukraine and Russia, Zelensky says it was "our country that had always" tried to co-exist "on equal, honest, dignified and fair
Lawyers raise fears of Iranian repeat of violent 2019 protest crackdown
Fears that the Iranian regime may attempt a bloody repression of the kind that led to as many 1,500 deaths after protests in 2019 have been raised by a group of eminent British lawyers asked to investigate what happened three years ago.
The lawyers, led by Wayne Jordash KC, said their examination of 300 pages of evidence of what happened during the November 2019 protests over a sudden oil price increase showed “the Iranian government’s willingness time and time again to violate human rights to suppress legitimate grievances”.
The number of people identified as killed in the current protests has risen above 50. Amnesty International said it had seen documents dated 21 September instructing security forces “to severely confront the troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries”.
Burkina Faso: Gunfire heard near presidential palace
Heavy gunfire was heard around Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, early on Friday morning, sparking fears of a mutiny nine months after a coup d'etat overthrew the country's president.
Shots and a large blast were also heard around the presidential palace and the headquarters of its military junta.
Troops were stationed on the main crossroads of the city, especially in the Ouaga 2000 neighborhood, which is home to the presidential and junta offices.
Exiled for decades, Iranian Kurds in Iraq come under fresh fire
When Iranian strikes came crashing on northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, nurse Rezane Hassan rushed to the scene to help the victims, never imagining that her own fiance would be one of them.
"We left in an ambulance towards the affected sites," said the 22-year-old nurse, who works at a hospital in a refugee neighbourhood of the Iraqi city of Koysinjaq, where Iranian Kurds have lived for decades.
"We evacuated women and children to get them away from the bombed areas."
Amid war, Europeans support a more ‘geopolitical European Union’
The latest Transatlantic Trends survey finds that Europeans consider the EU equally important to NATO for safety.
A new survey of public opinion in European and North American countries shows faith in Europe’s geopolitical importance growing, as confidence in the United States’s long-term influence falters against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
While two-thirds of respondents in this year’s Transatlantic Trends survey see the US as the most influential actor in global affairs today, little more than a third see it as holding that position in five years time.
How a debate over textbooks closed 150 schools in East Jerusalem
On September 19, some 150 schools in East Jerusalem went on strike, keeping tens of thousands of students out of the classroom, to protest the introduction of Israeli textbooks.
The strike in East Jerusalem – an area populated mostly by Palestinians – is the latest flashpoint in a long-running aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: what and how children who live in Jerusalem should learn about the conflict in their textbooks.
Palestinian parents and activists say Israel is trying to erase their identity by pushing an Israeli narrative. Israeli authorities and activists allege many Palestinian textbooks incite hatred towards Jews and glorify violence.
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