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French President Emmanuel Macron voiced his support for imprisoned Belarusian human rights activist and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Beliatski during a phone call on Sunday with Beliatski’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk, Agence France-Presse reported.
"He wanted to show his support for the (activist) and his relatives" while Ales Beliatski has been imprisoned again since July 2021, said the Elysée.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded on Friday to Ales Beliatski, the Russian NGO Memorial — hit by a dissolution order — and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which works to document "war crimes Russians" in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Macron then welcomed the awarding of the prize to "unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe."
People trying to leave Crimea are spending hours in kilometers-long (miles) traffic jams in the hope of reaching the Kerch bridge, linking the Russia-annexed peninsula with the mainland, The Associated Press reported.
"They say that you can spend almost twenty-four hours in this traffic jam," one driver waiting his turn told the AP on Sunday.
Car traffic has resumed along both road sections of the Kerch Bridge, Russia's deputy prime minister said on Sunday.
Marat Khusnullin, who also heads a government commission investigating the blast which tore through the bridge on Saturday, said in a Telegram post that previously, only one section was open to alternating traffic.
Khusnullin added that authorities continued their investigation of the damage.
Germany’s foreign minister has called on the European Union to slap new sanctions on Iran for what she described as Tehran’s brutal repression against anti-government protesters in several Iranian cities, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Sunday.
Annalena Baerbock was quoted on October 9 as telling the Bild Am Sonntag newspaper that “those who beat up women and girls on the street, carry off people who want nothing other than to live freely, arrest them arbitrarily, and sentence them to death stand on the wrong side of history.”
Baerbock said, without citing specific individuals, that “we will ensure that the EU imposes entry bans on those responsible for this brutal repression and freezes their assets in the EU."
Ukrainian Teams Clear Mines Around Liberated City of Lyman: Ukrainian authorities are working quickly to find, identify, and, when possible, remove mines and unexploded ordnance from the newly liberated area of Lyman as the town's residents struggle to get back to normal after being occupied by Russian forces. .
A Ukrainian mortar battery provides cover for their infantry on the front line in eastern Ukraine. They fire dozens of shells per day, including some captured from Russian forces. They aim at targets up to 7 kilometers away, the maximum range, as longer-range Russian artillery hits back at them.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke by phone on Sunday and agreed the Kremlin's latest nuclear threats were "irresponsible" and its partial mobilization "a serious mistake," according to a German government statement, which Reuters reported.
The nearly one-hour telephone call was focused on preparations for the upcoming Group of Seven and Group of 20 meetings that will address Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the consequences, the statement said.
The two leaders agreed never to accept Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territory, calling it a further escalation, the statement said.
They agreed Russia's partial mobilization showed the "bitter price" Russians were having to pay for the miscalculations of President Vladimir Putin.
"They criticized the latest nuclear threats of Moscow as irresponsible and agreed such a step would have exceptionally serious consequences for Russia," the statement said.
On the topic of the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, the two leaders agreed the sabotage of critical infrastructure would be dealt with decisively, it said.
An external power line to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the biggest in Europe — was repaired on Sunday after shelling disconnected the facility from the grid and forced it to resort to emergency diesel generators, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said, according to The Associated Press.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the 750-kilovolt line was reconnected to the plant on Sunday evening following repair work by Ukrainian engineers. That enabled the plant to start switching off the generators that had kicked in to provide it with power after the line — its last connection to the grid — was cut early Saturday.