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Norway on Thursday said that Russian fishing vessels can call at only three Arctic ports — Kirkenes, Tromsø and Båtsfjord — and that all Russian vessels arriving at these ports will be checked, The Associated Press reported.
“The recent serious developments with Russia’s unacceptable annexation of Ukraine, the attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea and increased drone activity, means that the government has further tightened preparedness," Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said.
“This will make it more difficult to use Russian fishing vessels for illegal activities, for example by circumventing export regulations,” Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl added.
In April, the European Union, of which Norway is not a member, banned Russian vessels from entering EU ports. Norway followed suit with the exception of fishing boats, which led to criticism from the Norwegian opposition.
Authorities in Norway, a major oil and gas producer, have reported several drone sightings near offshore installations in the North Sea.
The European Union on Thursday froze the assets of 37 more people and entities tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine, bringing the total of EU blacklist targets to 1,351, The Associated Press reported.
The newly sanctioned people include officials involved in last week’s illegal Russian annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The latest sanctions, published in the EU’s Official Journal, also widen trade bans against Russia and lay the ground for a price cap on Russian oil being prepared with other G-7 members. The new commercial curbs hit an estimated $6.9 billion of EU imports of Russian goods including steel, plastics, textiles and non-gold jewelry.
The wider EU prohibition on exports to Russia covers such products as coal, electronics used in Russian weapons and aircraft components.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked parliament on Thursday to approve banker Andriy Pyshnyi, who has helped advise the government on implementing sanctions against Russia, as the new central bank chief, Reuters reported.
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, which invaded Ukraine in February, and against Moscow's ally Belarus.
The head of Ukraine’s human rights commission says Russian authorities detained hundreds of Ukrainians as they neared Russia's border with Estonia, The Associated Press reported.
Dmytro Lubinets wrote in a post on his Facebook page on Thursday that Russians “took them away on trucks to an unknown destination” a day earlier. He cited information from Estonia’s Interior Ministry about the transfers.
Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, most of those Ukrainians had fled their country through Russia and Crimea and were seeking ways to enter the European Union — Estonia is a member state — or find a way to return home, Lubinets wrote.
Lubinets noted that a mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which counts both Russia and Ukraine as members, was expected to meet next week with Ukrainians who had been processed through Russian “filtration camps.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday did not rule out meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit next month in Asia, Agence France-Presse reported.
"That remains to be seen," the U.S. leader told reporters when asked if he'd use the G-20 gathering in Bali, Indonesia, as an opportunity to talk directly with Putin.
Travel plans for both men remain unconfirmed, and the White House has said that if Putin attends the G-20 summit, then Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, should also participate, even if Ukraine is not a member of the group.
Biden has previously indicated he would be "sure" to see his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping if he is at the summit scheduled for November 15 and 16.
Ukrainian forces have retaken 400 square kilometers of territory in the southern Kherson region so far this month as they continue to push Russian troops back in the south and east, Ukraine’s southern military command says, according to The Associated Press.