September 21, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

McDonalds in Ukraine has reopened three of its restaurants in Kyiv for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion in late February.

The restaurants opened on Tuesday for delivery only.

McDonalds will open seven more restaurants sometime later this month, and dine-in and drive-through services are set to resume in October, according to Alesya Mudzyri, head of corporate communications at McDonalds in Ukraine.

“Restaurants will be open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and will close during the air raid alarm to allow employees and patrons to evacuate to the nearest shelter,” Mudzyri said on Facebook.

“At the same time, the team quickly issues already paid orders while stopping production processes and turning off equipment before closing.”

In August, the company announced a "phrased plan" to reopen some restaurants in the capital and western Ukraine.

Latvia will not offer shelter to Russians fleeing President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization of citizens in the war in Ukraine, a top government official has said.

“For security reasons, Latvia will not issue humanitarian or other visas to Russian citizens who are evading mobilization, nor will it change the border crossing restrictions imposed since 19 September on Russian citizens with Schengen visas,” Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, Edgars Rinkēvičs, tweeted.

Rinkēvičs' announcement comes days after his country joined other Baltic states in beginning to enforce a ban on some Russian tourists, in a move to bolster restrictions in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland, reached an agreement earlier this month to limit issuing Schengen Area visas due to “a serious threat” to security posed by an influx of Russians.

The Schengen Area comprises 26 mostly EU countries that allow unrestricted movement within the zone's borders.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a partial mobilization of his country's citizens is a sign of “panic” over the situation in Ukraine.

“You see that Ukraine is increasingly able to turn the tide, has conquered big chunks,” Rutte told reporters in The Hague on Wednesday.

"You also see that Western support is starting to work, so our help with weapons systems and other things. We need to really continue with that.”

When asked whether he thought that partial mobilization would lead to escalated military activity, Rutte said: “I think it really shows that Russian leadership does not have the situation under control.”

He added that he would not “worry too much” about the Kremlin's threats of conflict with the West, saying that such rhetoric had been heard before.

“We are not at war with Russia. But we are supporting Ukraine in their justified struggle against the Russian aggression.”

Some background: Rutte joins a chorus of top government officials who have condemned Putin's national address early on Wednesday.

The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget A. Brink, dismissed his announcement and tweeted that "sham referenda and mobilization are signs of weakness."

She also pledged the United States would remain a staunch ally in Ukraine's resistance against Russian aggression.

Germany's economy minister, Robert Habeck, denounced the Kremlin's move as a "bad and wrong development," while British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Putin's address was "an admission that his invasion is failing."

Pope Francis lamented what he called the “terrible situation” in “battered Ukraine," on Wednesday morning.

Speaking at the end of his general audience in St. Peter's Square, the Pope related a conversation with Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Vatican aid envoy who has been visiting Ukraine.

“There he told me about the pain of the people, the savageness, the monstrosities, the tortured corpses they find. Let us join these noble and martyred people.”

According to Reuters, Vatican media reported that Krajewski had to run for cover after coming under light gunfire last week while delivering aid in Ukraine. It also said that the Polish cardinal had visited mass graves discovered near the northeastern city of Izium, after it was retaken from Russian forces.

The Pope has previously spoken out against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, he decried the "senseless and tragic war" during a three-day visit to Kazakhstan.

"I have come to echo the plea of all those who cry out for peace, which is the essential path to development for our globalized world," he said in an address to political leaders in the capital Nur-Sultan.

President Vladimir Putin has conceded that Ukraine attacked the regions of Belgorod and Kursk in southwestern Russia.

“Such terrorist attacks, including those using Western weapons, are already taking place in the border settlements of the Belgorod and Kursk regions,” Putin said during his address on Wednesday.

He added that “with its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has gone beyond the pale.”

Local Russian officials and the country's Ministry of Defense have previously accused Ukraine of carrying out attacks in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. But this is believed to be the first time Putin has discussed it – an admission that the war is hitting home.

Kyiv has not acknowledged those attacks, and says that it uses Western weapons only to strike Russian-held territory in Ukraine.

In the past, US President Joe Biden has said American weapons should not be used to attack Russia (as opposed to Russian-held territory in Ukraine), and Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexey Arestovych told CNN this May that his country would not use those weapons to attack Russian territory.

CNN's Katya Krebs and Matthew Chance contributed reporting.

President Vladimir Putin's announcement of the partial mobilization of Russian citizens is an acknowledgement that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine "is failing," a top UK official has claimed.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said that Putin's address on Wednesday, in which he declared increased military conscription and threatened nuclear deployment in the war, indicated that "Ukraine is winning."

“He and his Defence Minister have sent tens of thousands of their own citizens to their deaths, ill equipped and badly led,” Wallace added.

“No amount of threats and propaganda can hide the fact that Ukraine is winning this war, the international community are united and Russia is becoming a global pariah.”

During his speech Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin backed proposed referendums in several Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

Putin said Russia had been asked to support referendums by the two “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as by the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and had pledged to do “everything to ensure the safe conditions for people to express their will.”

Some context: Multiple Kremlin-backed authorities in occupied areas of eastern and southern Ukraine have announced they will hold referendums on formally joining Russia this week, in a move that threatens to redefine the parameters of the conflict.

In what appeared to be a coordinated announcement, Russian-appointed leaders in the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and the self-declared Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic all said they planned to hold "votes" beginning on September 23. 

Together the four regions that have announced their referendum plans make up around 18% of Ukraine's territory. Russia does not control any of the four in their entirety. 

The referendums could pave the way for Russian annexation of the areas, allowing Moscow to frame the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there as an attack on Russia itself, thereby providing Moscow with a pretext to escalate its military response. 

The latest developments follow a significant shift in Russia's position after a sudden and successful Ukrainian offensive through most of occupied Kharkiv this month, which has galvanized Ukraine's Western backers and led to recriminations in Moscow. 

Russia will call up 300,000 reservists as part of its partial mobilization, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Russian television Wednesday morning.

He also reiterated that no conscripts (who serve mandatory military service; not those in the reserves) would be sent to “the zone of a special military operation,” as the Russian government refers to its war in Ukraine. (The Ministry of Defense has in the past admitted that Russian conscripts have mistakenly, it claims, been sent to fight in Ukraine.)

“There is no question of any mobilization of university students and there will be none under (any) circumstances. No one will call them up.”

“Like those who serve under conscription, they are not subject to being sent to the zone of a special military operation; our conscripts continue to serve on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement on Wednesday of a partial mobilization appears to contradict his claim earlier this year that no more reservists would be called up.

Putin said Wednesday the "partial mobilization" would apply to "only those citizens who are in the reserve and, above all, those who served in the armed forces, have certain military specialties and relevant experience."

However, during a televised address in March, Putin had said "there will be no additional call-up of reservists."