October 2, 2022 UPDATE

A news update

Newsroom, 02.10.2022, 18:39

Protests – Several thousand people gathered, on Sunday, in the University Square in the center of Bucharest and walked towards the Government headquarters, the line of protesters being led by the leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians AUR, George Simion, and MPs from this political party. The grievances of the protesters, who held the Romanian tricolors and placards and chanted anti-government slogans, are related, among other things, to the increase in electricity and natural gas prices. Law enforcement forces have mobilized in large numbers to prevent possible incidents.

Statement — Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis, along with seven other presidents of several NATO member states from Central and Eastern Europe, namely the presidents of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland and Slovakia, signed a joint statement reiterating their support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. “We firmly support the decision of the NATO Summit in Bucharest of 2008 regarding the future accession of Ukraine,” Klaus Iohannis said in a post on a social network. We remind you that on September 30, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, signed Ukraines request for an accelerated accession to NATO. The Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, stated that Ukraine has the right to apply for membership, but emphasized that, at the moment, the priority is providing aid to Kyiv. Support for Ukraines accession to NATO has already been expressed by the Baltic States and Canada.

Ukraine – In Moscow, the State Duma announced that on Monday it would ratify the annexation treaties signed with the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. These annexations come after seven months of Russian offensive in Ukraine and emergency “referendums” held in the occupied regions, which were denounced as “shams” by Kyiv and its allies. The news agencies write that the Russian authorities are following exactly the same steps they took when Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014. On Sunday, Pope Francis said that it was completely absurd that the world was currently facing a nuclear threat. The Sovereign Pontiff deeply deplored actions contrary to the principle of international law, referring to the annexation of Ukrainian territories by Moscow. The statement follows that of the Kremlin leader, namely that Russia could use nuclear weapons to defend what it considers to be its own territory, the BBC points out. In the following days, the Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, will travel to Kyiv and Moscow, the visit being part of ongoing efforts for “the implementation as soon as possible of a nuclear safety and security zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant”.

Energy – In Romania, the Law for the approval of the Emergency Ordinance that regulates prices on the energy market will be debated in the following days by the specialized committees of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making body in this case. The document drafted by the Government underwent important changes in the Senate, before receiving the vote of the plenum. Several fields of activity and categories of consumers have been introduced among those that will benefit from the capped energy price: public transportation, churches and medicine manufacturers and traders, as well as patients who use medical devices at home. Another significant change is related to the elimination of charging electricity consumption based on the monthly average of last year.

Football – The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) declared that the incident that took place on Saturday at the stadium in Malang, in East Java, Indonesia, is an unimaginable disaster and represents a black day for the entire world of sports. At least 125 people lost their lives in a stampede at the stadium after the match between a local team and a visiting team. The angry fans of the local team, which lost the match, invaded the pitch, and the police intervened with tear gas grenades to disperse the violent fans. Running for the exits to escape the tear gas, fans trampled on and crushed one another.