From Reuters:
POLAND'S PM KOPACZ SAYS CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE DOES NOT MEAN POLAND AND EUROPE CAN ACCEPT DIVISION OF UKRAINE
From our newsroom:
Young men from Chechnya are being drafted into Russia's armed forces for the first time in 20 years.
Some 500 men aged 18-27 will be drafted this autumn.
Officials at Russia's Southern Military District said on October 1 that drafting commissions had started working in Chechnya's 17 districts and that the first group of conscripts will be sent to military units in 10 days.
Mandatory military service in Russia is 12 months.
Chechen youth stopped being drafted to the Russian Army in late 1994, when the Kremlin sent the military into Chechnya to try to crush its separatist leadership.
Government forces drove separatists from power in a second war and Moscow announced in 2009 that its "counter-terrorist" operation in Chechnya was over.
Chechen separatist fighters gradually turned into Islamic insurgency and spread to other parts of Russia's volatile North Caucasus region.
Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS
From a France 24 journalist:
Paul Goble on some of the fact and fiction in the minds of Russians regarding the historical roots of an independent Ukraine.
The European Union reacts to the apparent seizure by Russian forces in mid-September of a Lithuanian fishing vessel on the high seas, which it has raised with Moscow's envoy to Brussels.
Recall that Russia and Estonia are embroiled in what has become a tit-for-tat row that started when Russia seemingly duped or simply abducted Estonian intelligence agent Eston Kohver in early September. (He's still in custody and faces serious jail time in the Russian court system.) Then two Russian nationals, purportedly former KGB agents, were said to have been detained a few days ago for an allegedly crossing the border, apparently while fishing.
We are wrapping up the live blog for Tuesday, September 30, 2014. Please check back here in the morning for our continuing coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
EU Neighborhood and Enlargement Commissioner-designate Johannes Hahn, speaking today during his confirmation hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels:
"For us as Europeans, there is no 'in-between' -- until the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine is reestablished, we cannot yield to Russia [regarding sanctions for its actions in Ukraine]."