Russia has vowed not to allow any disruption to civil aviation after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that his country’s incoming drones had made Russian airspace dangerous to use. Zelensky said Ukraine's response to Russian attacks meant "the war started by Russia is closing its own skies" but his forces are not targeting civil aviation. Andrei Nikitin, Russia's transport minister, said the country “will not allow any significant disruption to civil aviation”.
"We are constantly improving flight safety and airport security requirements, and we have solutions for all of this,” he said, adding that the ministry of defence and the Russian National Guard have joined hands to work on threats from Kyiv. Zelensky on Tuesday warned airlines and insurance companies the presence of Ukrainian drones had made Russian skies dangerous to use. Flight tracking website Flightradar24 data showed disruptions yesterday at Moscow's main airport, while some airlines cancelled flights though they did not specify the reason for doing so.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said it can take Ukraine several years to start building Patriot air defence interceptors and doing so is not an immediate solution for Kyiv. Rubio said the US is negotiating with Ukraine over licensed production of Patriot missiles. Rubio said the “whole world is asking for more air interceptors” but the US needs to fulfill its requirements first.
Russian air attacks wounded 17 people and damaged a 21-storey residential building in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa in the early hours today, Serhiy Lysak, the head of the city's military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app. Of those injured, three are children, Lysak said in the post, which showed footage of a building with its windows blown out. In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, a witness reported an explosion on Wednesday evening, amid continued Russian air strikes.
Norway on Wednesday said it had seized a Russian vessel at the request of Ukrainian state firm Naftogaz, to ensure that the Russian Federation meets its outstanding obligations, confirming an earlier statement by Naftogaz. The Ukrainian company has been pursuing legal action against Russia since 2016 to seek compensation for Moscow's expropriation of Naftogaz property when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. A tribunal in The Hague in April 2023 ordered Russia to pay Naftogaz $4.22bn plus interest and legal costs to compensate for assets it seized in Crimea, but Moscow has not done so.
Naftogaz said the seizure was ordered by the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court on 31 August. It said the vessel, the professor Molchanov, was owned by Russia and used for commercial expedition cruises, including to the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard. "Russia cannot evade responsibility simply by refusing to comply with an international arbitral award," said Naftogaz acting CEO Sergii Fedorenko.
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