Summary of the day
Denmark’s military has issued an image of gas bubbling at the surface of the Baltic Sea after “unprecedented” damage to the Nord Stream pipelines, which has seen three offshore lines of the system damaged in one day.
Swedish police said it has launched a preliminary investigation into possible sabotage related to the Nord Stream 1 gas leak in the Baltic Sea. It comes after Seismologists in Sweden said they detected what they described as two explosions in the regions of the Baltic sea where the leaks have occurred.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has already called the leaks “an act of sabotage” which he said “related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine”.
Russia’s “referendums” in Ukraine, which could lead to Moscow annexing 15% of the country’s territory, are ending today. Voting in the eastern provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia began on Friday. Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that Russia wants to “save people” in the four Moscow-controlled territories.
Russian media have announced early results, claiming that with approaching a quarter of the “votes” counted in each of the four referendums, all the regions have voted by at least 97% to be annexed by Russia.
Nato has denounced the ‘referendums’ as a ‘sham’ and ‘violation of international law’. Meanwhile, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, vowed that the west will never recognise Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory, which he called part of a “diabolical scheme” by Moscow.
Putin is scheduled to address both houses of Russian parliament on Friday 30 September, and may use the address to formally announce the accession of the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia, the British Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
The United Nations human rights office has said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had caused a dire human rights situation and led to a wide range of rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and torture, that could amount to war crimes. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a report that it was particularly concerned about torture and ill treatment of detainees by Russian forces and affiliated armed groups, but said there had been rights violations by both sides.
Georgia and Kazakhstan said that tens of thousands of Russians had flooded into their countries from neighbouring Russia as military-aged men avoid military call-up.
Moscow said it will not request the extradition of Russians travelling abroad to avoid being called-up to fight in Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish deputy chairman of the security council of Russia, has again threatened the west with the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and said “Imagine that Russia is forced to use the most formidable weapon against the Ukrainian regime, which has committed a large-scale act of aggression, which is dangerous for the very existence of our state. I believe that Nato will not directly intervene in the conflict even in this situation. After all, the security of Washington, London, and Brussels is much more important for the North Atlantic Alliance than the fate of Ukraine, which no one needs, even if it is abundantly supplied with various weapons.”
Two seismic shakings resembling blasts rather than those recorded from earthquakes were recorded on Monday at seismographic stations in Denmark, Sweden and Germany, Denmark’s Geological Survey said on Tuesday.
The first shaking happened at 0003 GMT measuring 2.3 on the Richter scale, while the other at 0503 GMT measured 2.1 on the Richter scale, it said in a statement.
