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Scoop of the day: sanctions on Belarus, new Covid-19 daily peak

Scoop of the day: sanctions on Belarus, new Covid-19 daily peak

Foreign policy

Ukraine plans to align itself with EU sanctions on Belarus, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said. "Ukraine believes that in this situation it is important to act as one front. We will do everything we can to help the people of Belarus in this difficult situation," he told the BBC Ukrainian.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not provide military assistance to any country and calls on Azerbaijan and Armenia to de-escalate the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Commenting on his Servant of the People party MP Lyudmyla Marchenko's remarks on military assistance to Azerbaijan, Zelenskyy said that "personal expressions of an MP should not be confused" with official policies. "They all in our Rada say things which should not end up in the media, it seems to me. This is a personal remark, we live in a free country," he added.

Donbas

An exchange of prisoners with Donbas separatists has stalled because they have not provided their list, according to President Zelenskyy. He noted that Red Cross representatives were expected to get access to the occupied part and this may push things forward.

Since midnight, Russia-backed militants have violated the ceasefire three times by firing grenade launchers near Avdiivka and small arms near Vodyane.

An-26 crash

Exclusive: Cadet Vyacheslav Zolochevskyy, the only survivor of the military An-26 crash on 25 September, has told LB.ua that there was no panic onboard before the crash. He also said that the aircraft was checked before the flight and was fully functional.

According to the initial reading of communications between the flight commander and the crew commander, there was around a minute between the report that the plane was ready to land and the crash.

Coronavirus

Ukraine has registered 4,633 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily increase so far. The case total has now reached 217,661, including 116 809 active ones.

Ukraine has signed a contract to buy the first batch of 100 lung ventilators worth 42m hryvnyas, the Health Ministry has said.

Exclusive: The Servant of the People party will have its MPs checked for the coronavirus after its head Oleksandr Korniyenko got infected, LB.ua has learned from its sources.

The CEO of the national oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrayiny, Andriy Kobolyev, got infected with the coronavirus. He is self-isolating and working from home.

Media

The National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine plans to endorse a mechanism for taking stock of users of the Russian social network VKontakte during the next six months.

Crime

The Kyiv court of appeal has left unchanged the verdict handed down on fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovych by Kyiv's Obolonskyy district court. The court then found him guilty of high treason and abetting aggressive war and sentenced him to 13 years in prison.

There was an explosion in the courtyard of the High Anticorruption Court in Kyiv in the early hours of 1 October. No-one was hurt but the blast damaged the façade. The court condemned the incident as an interference in its work.

Economy

Microsoft and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine have signed an agreement under which the company will invest around 500m dollars in the construction of two data centres in Ukraine.

The State Property Fund has dismissed the acting board chairman of the United Mining and Chemical Company, Peter Davis, over suspicious contracts.

IKEA has said that its independent investigation into the allegations of selling beech chairs made from wood which was illegally felled in the forests of the Ukrainian Carpathians, which were levelled by British Earthsight, proved that they were groundless.

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