October 6, 2022 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 06.10.2022, 19:54

EPC The EU unity can be consolidated if Romania, Bulgaria
and Croatia are becoming part of the Schengen area, Romanian president Klaus
Iohannis said in Prague on Thursday. Leaders of 42 countries have convened in
the Czech capital for a first meeting of the European Political Community (EPC)
a new structure proposed by French president Emmanuel Macron in response to the
war Russia is presently waging on Ukraine. The Russian invasion has caused a
total geopolitical rethinking and the EPC wants to be a cooperation platform on
security issues between the EU countries and its partners on the continent, candidates
or non-candidates to accession. During the informal meeting of the European
Council, due in Prague on Friday, the EU leaders are expected to be tackling
the situation in Ukraine from the angle of the response to Russia’s escalating
the conflict as well as providing financial, political, military and
humanitarian support to Ukraine. The situation on the energy market will also
be high on the agenda from the viewpoint of the impact of the latest price
hikes and energy security.

NOBEL French writer Annie Ernaux has
reaped the Nobel Prize in literature this year. According to the Swedish
Academy in Stockholm, Ernaux has been awarded the prize for the courage and
clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective
restrains of personal memory. Last year the Nobel prize in literature went to Tanzanian-born
British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah.

REFUGEES The Border Police
General Inspectorate (IGPF) informs that on Wednesday, 71,642 people, including
8,486 Ukrainian citizens, entered Romania through border points throughout the
country, an increase of about 10% compared to the previous day. According to a
communiqué sent on Thursday, starting on February 10, 2022, two weeks before
the Russian army invaded Ukraine, 2,508,047 Ukrainian citizens have entered
Romania. Most of them continued their journey to Western European countries,
but, according to the Romanian Interior Ministry, more than 4,300 applied for
and received asylum in Romania and benefit from all the rights provided by the
national legislation. About 70 thousand others have residence permits, for the
beneficiaries of temporary protection.

IAEA The head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, will try to talk with officials in Kyiv and
Moscow about the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the occupied
southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, which the Russians have taken hold of
as part of the so-called annexation of the region. For weeks on end, the plant
has been the target of intense bombing, for which Moscow and Kyiv have blamed
each other, and which fueled fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Russian President
Vladimir Putin has said the military situation will stabilize in
the annexed Ukrainian territories, where his forces are suffering a series of
setbacks against Kiev’s army. Ukraine had announced that it had again gained
ground in the Luhansk region (east), after the successes in Kherson (south) and
Kharkov (northeast). In what analysts call a sign of confusion in Russia, the
army’s failures prompted a senior parliamentary official, deputy Andrei
Kartapolov, a former military commander, to ask defense ministry chiefs to
stop lying about the defeats.

WAR Ukraine has announced its forces have recaptured
several localities in the southern region of Kherson, one of the four regions
partly occupied and illegally annexed by Russia. The Ukrainian counteroffensive
continues, president Zelensky has said. On Wednesday, Russian president
Vladimir Putin signed the documents for the annexation of the regions of
Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, in spite of the failures his army
is facing on the ground. Putin has also signed a decree to make official the capturing
by his forces of the nuclear power plant of Zaporizhzhia. The plant, which is the
biggest of this kind in Europe is still being exploited by Ukrainian employees.
Russia and Ukraine have been accusing each other of shelling its neighbourhood.

(bill)