Ukraine Russia war latest: Kyiv strikes fuel depot supplying Putin’s army as Zelensky appeals to Pope Francis

Disney World, located in Orlando, Florida, announced they would close their theme parks amid rare measures ahead of the dangerous Hurricane Milton directly hitting the area, bringing with it strong winds, heavy rainfall and hazardous storm surge.

As Milton made landfall on Wednesday, all three Orlando-based parks, including Universal Orlando and SeaWorld alongside Disney, ground to a halt and shut down operations that would have usually welcomed tens of thousands of tourists.

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On 5 October, videos showed a drone flying near Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine before it was shot down by another jet briefly flying alongside it. Initial reports suggested it was either a Russian jet taken down by the Ukrainian air force or a Russian jet losing control and being shot down by Moscow.

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The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was taunted by prison guards who hid sweets in his pockets in a bid to ‘undermine’ his hunger strike, his prison diaries have revealed.

Defiant journal entries from the 47-year-old, who survived Novichok poisoning in 2020 before he was imprisoned in Russia, have laid bare his final years – including 24 days spent on hunger strike over his access to medical treatment.

He died in February inside a remote Russian penal colony north of the Arctic Circle known as Polar Wolf.

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Ukrainian military recruitment officers raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who were not in compliance, local media reported Saturday.

Officers reportedly descended on Kyiv’s Palace of Sports venue after a concert Friday night by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy. Video footage aired by local media outlets appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. In the footage, officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men.

Checks were also conducted at Goodwine, an upscale shopping center, and Avalon, a popular restaurant.

It is unusual for such raids to take place in the capital, and reflects Ukraine’s dire need for fresh recruits. All Ukrainian men aged 25-60 are eligible for conscription, and men aged 18-60 are not allowed to leave the country.

Local reports said raids were also conducted in clubs and restaurants across other Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv and Dnipro in eastern and central Ukraine.

Ukraine has intensified its mobilization drive this year. A new law came into effect this spring stipulating that those eligible for military service must input their information into an online system or face penalties.

The sanctioned leaders held an inaugural meeting on the sidelines of a regional summit in Ashgabat, the capital of the Central Asian country Turkmenistan, to discuss – among other topics – the ongoing situation in the Middle East.

“We are actively working together in the international arena and our assessments of events taking place in the world are often very close,” Putin said during the meeting, according to Russian state media outlet Tass.

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Social media ads promise young African women a free plane ticket, money and a faraway adventure in Europe. Just complete a computer game and a 100-word Russian vocabulary test.

But instead of a work-study program in fields like hospitality and catering, some of them learned only after arriving on the steppes of Russia’s Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.

In interviews with The Associated Press, some of the women complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching.

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Poland’s leader said Saturday that he plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of a new migration policy, pointing to its alleged abuse by eastern neighbor Belarus and Russia.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “the state must regain 100% of the control over who enters and leaves Poland,” and that a territorial suspension of the right to asylum will be part of a strategy that will be presented to a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Polish news agency PAP reported.

He didn’t give details, but said at a convention of his Civic Coalition that “we will reduce illegal migration in Poland to a minimum.”

Poland has struggled with migration pressures on its border with Belarus since 2021. Successive Polish governments have accused Belarus and Russia of luring migrants from the Middle East and Africa there to destabilize the West.

One person was killed when a Ukrainian drone struck the Russian village of Ustinka in the Belgorod region close to the border with Ukraine, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement on Saturday.