Ukraine/Russia Update 1,315…..Europe “is not at War … But no Longer at Peace” with Russia.

• German chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that Europe “is not at war … but no longer at peace” with Russia. “Let me put it in a sentence that may be a little shocking at first glance … we are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either,” Merz said at a media event in Duesseldorf. Russia’s war is “a war against our democracy and a war against our freedom,” Merz said, adding that Moscow’s intention was to undermine unity in the bloc. He also referred to his recent endorsement of an EU plan to unlock frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s war effort, saying the move could provide military support for Ukraine for three to five years.

• Separately, German defence minister Boris Pistorius said Germany was ready to protect the Baltic region and would respond to Russia’s threats in a united and responsible manner. Pistorius, speaking at the opening of a Permanent Logistics Support Area in Rukla in Lithuania, said Germany was committed to strengthening deterrence, with roughly 2,000 troops to serve in Lithuania by mid-2026.

• Hungary’s Viktor Orbán said on Monday that Ukraine was not a sovereign country, as he hit back at accusations that Hungarian reconnaissance drones violated its airspace. “Ukraine is not at war with Hungary; it is at war with Russia. It should be concerned with the drones on its eastern border,” the Hungarian prime minister said during an interview on a right-wing podcast popular with his supporters. “I believe my ministers, but let’s say it would have actually flown a few metres there, so what? Ukraine is not an independent country. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, Ukraine is financed by us, the West gives it funds, weapons,” Orban said. On Friday, Zelenskiy said that reconnaissance drones that violated Ukraine’s airspace could have flown from Hungary to check the industrial potential of western border areas.

• Ukraine has proposed building a joint air defence shield with allies to protect against threats from Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, after a series of airspace incursions that caused alarm on Nato’s eastern flank. “Ukraine proposes to Poland and all our partners to build a joint, fully reliable shield against Russian aerial threats,” he said in an address to the Warsaw Security Forum delivered via video link. “Ukraine can counter all kinds of Russian drones and missiles and if we act together in the region we will have enough weapons and production capacity.”

• The UK, France, Germany and Sweden said on Monday they would help Denmark increase its anti-drone security during two European summits in Copenhagen this week. Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said the scale of the recent drone incursions was such that “the entire western, transatlantic community” needed to realise “this is war”.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russian forces are prevailing in what he said was a “righteous battle” in Ukraine. “Our fighters and commanders go on the attack, and the entire country, all of Russia, is waging this righteous battle and working hard,” Putin said in a video published on the Kremlin’s website. “Together we are defending our love for the motherland and the unity of our historical destiny, we are fighting and we are prevailing.”

• Separately Putin on Monday called up 135,000 men for routine military service, the country’s biggest autumn conscription drive since 2016. Russia calls up men aged between 18 and 30 for compulsory military service each spring and autumn. Conscripts are expected to serve for a year at a military base inside Russia, not to fight in Ukraine, although there have been reports of conscripted men being sent to the frontline. Russia’s annual conscription campaigns are unrelated to mobilisation, in which Russian men are drafted to fight during wartime.

• Also on Monday Putin signed a law to pull Russia out of a European anti-torture convention. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe, an international human-rights monitor, in March 2022, though it had technically remained a party to its European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. The landmark agreement aims to strengthen the rights of persons deprived of their liberty and empowers monitors to visit prisons and detention centres.

• The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has now been without offsite power for six days, the UN atomic watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday. The plant in southeastern Ukraine has been under Russian control since the early weeks of the war, and each side has repeatedly accused the other of shelling it and jeopardising nuclear safety. The IAEA said the external power lines supplying the plant came down last week for the 10th time in the conflict and emergency diesel generators were brought into service.

• The Council of Europe on Monday awarded its 2025 rights prize to Ukrainian journalist and rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who was released last year after being captured by Russian forces. Butkevych, co-founder of the independent Hromadske radio station and ZMINA human rights centre in Kyiv, joined the Ukrainian army in March 2022, then was detained in June and convicted of war crimes by a court in Luhansk in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine in March 2023. He was sentenced to a 13-year prison term on charges of wounding two civilians while firing an anti-tank grenade launcher in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, but he was released during an October 2024 prisoner exchange….

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ISW…Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 29, 2029