Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling this weekend with a few tweets that caught our eye overnight:
That ends the live blog for today. See you again tomorrow.
Latest from our news desk:
Volunteer Battalions Hand In Their Weapons In Eastern Ukraine
KYIV -- Three volunteer battalions that for years fought for Kyiv against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have handed over their weapons to law enforcement.
The Sheikh Mansur battalion, the battalion of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and the 8th battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army voluntarily surrendered their arms to the National Police in the Donetsk region on September 11, according to a police statement.
Photographs published by the National Police showed artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades, boxes of bullets, and crates of explosives that were turned in.
National Police First Deputy Chairman Vyacheslav Abroskin oversaw the transfer along with members of the military and the country’s security services.
The battalions were among the last units comprised purely of volunteer soldiers fighting in the 5-year war that has killed more than 13,000 people. Most of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions were incorporated into military and police structures in 2014 and 2015.
The Ukrainian military, neglected for years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was caught flat-footed when Russia sent soldiers to Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backed separatists fighting Kyiv in eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014. Kyiv relied heavily on volunteer fighters funded by powerful businessmen to slow the advance of the separatists.
As the Ukrainian military expanded its ranks, its forces fought alongside the volunteers. Many of the volunteers eventually enlisted in the military.
The Sheikh Mansur battalion, named after the Chechen military leader who led forces against Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, was comprised of Chechen fighters who opposed Moscow. Many of its members fought in one or both of Chechnya’s wars with Russia.
Right-wing nationalists filled out the ranks of the OUN battalion and the 8th battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army.
Another item from our news desk:
Kremlin Says It Does Not Rule Out New Prisoner Swap With Ukraine
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Moscow is not ruling out a new prisoner swap with Ukraine following the recent one when 70 people held in both countries were released.
Talking to journalists in Moscow on September 13, Peskov said that the process might be drawn out.
"It will require the start of a new process, an exchange of opinions, and most likely will take an extended amount of time and work," Peskov said, adding that "nobody excludes, a priori, the possibility and expediency of such a process."
Peskov's statement came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said at the opening of the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) meeting in Kyiv that his government is working to prepare a new list of Ukrainian citizens held in Russia for a possible swap.
"We are now talking about the next stage after our political prisoners [were released from Russia]... I tell you sincerely, we are in the process of the preparation of other lists [of prisoners] and expect the next stage of the prisoner swap process," Zelenskiy said.
On September 7, Kyiv and Moscow exchanged a total of 70 prisoners in the first major prisoner swap between the two since 2017.
Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been tense since 2014, when Russia took control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and began backing separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has left more than 13,000 people dead.
Based on reporting by Interfax, TASS, RIA Novosti, UNIAN, and Ukrayinska Pravda