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.
Nato denounces 'referendums' in occupied Ukrainian territories as 'sham' and 'violation of international law'
The Moscow organised votes in four occupied regions in Ukraine on annexation by Russia are a “sham” and “a blatant violation of international law,” NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.
Stoltenberg tweeted that he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “and made clear that NATO Allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to self-defence”.
“The sham referenda held by Russia have no legitimacy and are a blatant violation of international law. These lands are Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
He later waded into the row about the three separate leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, saying that while the facts were not yet clear, “Russia is now weaponising energy”.
He added that Russia had exacerbated the situation by holding “sham” votes, mobilising more personnel into its army, and threatening nuclear strikes if attempts were made to break its grip on areas it holds.
“All this is a serious escalation of the conflict. Our message is that any use of nuclear weapons is absolutely unacceptable,” Stoltenberg said. “It will totally change the nature of the conflict and Russia must know that the nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Just spoke with President @ZelenskyyUa & made clear that #NATO Allies are unwavering in our support for #Ukraine’s sovereignty & right to self-defence. The sham referenda held by #Russia have no legitimacy & are a blatant violation of international law. These lands are Ukraine.
— Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) September 27, 2022
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The United States welcomes Russians seeking asylum from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unpopular” war, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
“We believe that regardless of their nationality, they may apply for asylum in the United States and have their claim educated on a case by case basis,” she said.
Reuters is reporting from Russia’s borders as draft-eligible men flee.
The agency spoke to Nikita, a 24-year-old from the Russian city of Voronezh, who drove up to a border crossing on the arid steppeland along Russia’s remote border with Kazakhstan.
“The border is like death,” Nikita told Reuters in an interview over the Telegram messaging app. “In five hours they only let 50 people across”.
Nikita described would-be emigres pitching tents along the highway leading up to the Vishnyovka border post, while others less well-equipped slept on the tarmac, building makeshift beds out of their own clothes.
Giving up on the border crossing after four hours of waiting and getting a room for the night in the nearby city of Volgograd, Nikita and his girlfriend said they were still determined to find an alternative way out of Russia, and were looking at public transport links across the border.
The mobilisation announcement touched off a frenzy inside Russia, with many young men seeking ways to avoid fighting in Ukraine.
On social media, closed groups sprang up offering everything from tips for crossing at specific border crossings, to organising private charter flights. One Telegram group offered seats on a flight from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport to the Kazakh capital Astana for 140,000 roubles ($2,400), according to Reuters.
Norway to tighten security at oil and gas installations in Baltic Sea
Norway will strengthen security at its oil and gas installations in the wake of gas leaks in the Baltic Sea and reports of drone activities in the North Sea, the Nordic country’s energy minister said on Tuesday.
“Based on the information we have seen so far, much indicates acts of sabotage,” Norwegian oil and energy minister, Terje Aasland, said in a statement reported by Reuters.
The government had consulted with the armed forces and operators of oil and gas installations, both on land and offshore, it said.
On Monday, Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority had urged greater vigilance over unidentified drones seen flying near Norwegian offshore oil and gas platforms, warning they could pose a risk of accidents or deliberate attacks.
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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, AFP reports.
“We and many other countries have already been crystal clear. We will not - indeed, we will never - recognise the annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia,” Blinken told reporters as Kremlin proxies started to claim victory.
Blinken repeated President Joe Biden’s threat that the US “will impose additional swift and severe costs on Russia” for going ahead with the referendums.
“It’s important to remember what’s going on here. Russia invaded Ukraine, seized territory and is engaged in a diabolical scheme on some of the territory it seized where it has moved the local populace out,” he said.
Some people are deported and others “simply disappear,” Blinken said. “Then they bus Russians in, they install puppet governments and they engage in the referendum and manipulate, in any event, the outcome to then claim that the territory belongs to Russia.”
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Our correspondents Philip Oltermann in Berlin and Peter Beaumont in Kyiv have reported on the three separate leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines
Gas is pouring into the Baltic Sea from three separate leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, Denmark’s energy agency confirmed on Tuesday, amid claims by seismologists in Sweden and Denmark of two sharp spikes in undersea activity, possibly indicating explosions, and speculation about possible sabotage.
A seismograph on the Danish island of Bornholm, near where the leaks occurred, twice recorded spikes on Monday, the day on which the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines underwent dramatic falls in pressure, the German geological research centre GFZ said.
A Danish military flight over the leaks brought back striking images from the ruptures, including one showing an area of bubbling gas a kilometre wide on the sea’s surface.
The seismograph recorded near-silence until just after midnight GMT (2am local time), when there was a spike representing a tremor in the earth followed by a continuous hissing wave form. The pattern was repeated at 5pm GMT.
Amid the speculation over sabotage, suspicion immediately turned to potential culprits – with fingers pointed at Russia, whose pipelines were hit, suggesting a further weaponisation of energy supplies to Europe in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine. Not least it was seen as a possible message about the vulnerability of other marine gas infrastructure.
Read more of Philip Oltermann and Peter Beaumont’s report: Fears of sabotage as gas pours into Baltic from Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines
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These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had discussed further support of Ukraine’s armed forces by Nato member states, in a call with the bloc’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday.
The phone call came in the wake of votes staged in four occupied regions of Ukraine on annexation by Russia. Zelenskiy thanked Stoltenberg for his condemnation of the votes, which Ukraine and its western allies call illegal shams, in a post on Twitter.
I had a call with NATO Secretary General @JensStoltenberg to thank him for decisively condemning Russia’s illegal “referenda”. We discussed current battlefield developments and further support of the Alliance’s member states to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 27, 2022
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Moscow not planning to request extradition of Russians travelling abroad to escape military call-up
Moscow said it will not request the extradition of Russians travelling abroad to avoid being called-up to fight in Ukraine, after thousands of military-aged men crossed into neighbouring countries, AFP reports.
“The Russian ministry of defence has not sent any request to the authorities of Kazakhstan, Georgia, or any other country for the alleged forced return to Russian soil of Russian citizens, and it is not planning to do so,” the ministry said in a statement.
Neighbouring countries have seen Russians arriving en masse since the draft was announced last Wednesday, with hours-long queues at border crossings.
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Pjotr Sauer, the Guardian’s Russia affairs correspondent, reports that Russia is to boycott the Oscars
Russia will not submit a film to the Oscars this year, the first time the country has boycotted the prestigious film awards since the fall of the Soviet Union, as Moscow’s cultural isolation deepens.
“The presidium of the Film Academy of Russia has decided not to nominate a national film for the Oscars award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2022,” the Russian academy said in a statement on Monday.
The chairman of Russia’s Oscar nomination commission announced in a letter on Tuesday that he was resigning following the move, which he said was an “illegal” decision taken “behind his back”.
Read more of Pjotr Sauer’s report: Russia to boycott Oscars as cultural isolation deepens
Sweden launches investigation into possible sabotage related to Nord Stream 1 gas leak
Swedish police said it has launched a preliminary investigation into possible sabotage related to the Nord Stream 1 gas leak in the Baltic Sea.
“We have established a report and the crime classification is gross sabotage,” a national police spokesperson said, according to Reuters.
It comes as the US said it is ready to provide support to European partners investigating the leak.
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Daniel Boffey reports for us from the Verkhny Lars border crossing in Georgia where families are queuing for hours to escape Russian President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilisation
Alexandra, 37, a lawyer from Moscow, appeared to almost astonish herself as she said it. Perhaps it was the first time she had out loud. “We have left our house, our car, our lives – everything”.
Looking down at the top of the blond head of her small child, kicking a stone at her feet, Alexandra explained that she, her husband and son had driven for more than 20 hours from Russia’s capital before dumping their car in the southern city of Vladikavkaz and going on by foot to the border crossing with Georgia.
“We walked for 25km to get to the border with our four-year-old son, between the queueing cars, with no space and lots of fumes.” Asked what they will do next, she replied: “I don’t know, we don’t know”.
Alexandra’s husband, Artiom, 41, who works in radio technology, was at least clear as to why they were there, blinking in the bright sun, with thousands of others among the mountains on the Georgian side of the Verkhny Lars border point. “We didn’t want to be part of the war,” he said. Alexandra added: “My husband was born in Ukraine. He could be mobilised and fighting Ukrainians.”
The couple and their child, with only four small bags to their name, walked on, to be mobbed by the horde of taxi drivers who gather daily at the crossing, charging exorbitant fees for the three-hour drive to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.
This family, exhausted and bewildered, are just three of the 10,000 Russians that Georgia’s interior minister, Vakhtang Gomelauri, said on Tuesday were entering the country daily through Verkhny Lars, a bundle of grey buildings and lanes sandwiched in a gorge in the mountains that acts as the only formal crossing between the two countries.
Read more of Daniel Boffey’s report from Georgia: ‘We didn’t want to be part of the war’: Russians at the Georgia border flee Putin’s call-up
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Ukraine’s authorities have said citizens helping to organise Russia’s so-called “referendums”, which concluded on Tuesday in the occupied territories, will face up to five years in prison for their role in orchestrating them.
“We have lists of names of people who have been involved in some way,” a presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Blick, adding that Ukrainians who were forced to vote would not be punished.
Russian state media – as predicted - is reporting on Tuesday that people in the occupied areas overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, with claimed exit polls ranging from 87% to 92%.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to announce the territories’ annexation on Friday when he addresses both houses of Russia’s parliament, according to Russian state media.
Read more of Isobel Koshiw’s report from Kyiv: Ukrainians involved in ‘referendums’ face prison terms, says Kyiv
Updated
The number of Russians entering the EU has jumped following a partial mobilisation ordered by Moscow, and illegal crossings are likely to increase should Russia decide to close the border for potential conscripts, EU border agency Frontex said.
“Over the past week, nearly 66,000 Russian citizens entered the EU, more than 30% compared to the preceding week. Most of them arrived to Finland and Estonia,” Frontex said in a statement.
Over the last four days alone, 30,000 Russian citizens arrived in Finland, according to the statement published by Reuters.
“Frontex estimates that illegal border crossings are likely to increase if the Russian Federation decides to close the border for potential conscripts,” the agency said.
Eurovision song contest 2023 is to be hosted in Liverpool or Glasgow after the UK replaced Ukraine to host the event following Russia’s invasion
Liverpool and Glasgow are the two cities that remain in the competition to host the Eurovision song contest in 2023, when it will be held in the UK for the first time in 25 years.
The two cities were selected after Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester were removed from contention to host the music event. The BBC said a final decision would be made “within weeks”.
The Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra triumphed at the 2022 competition in Turin, Italy, which would normally make Ukraine the 2023 host, but the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which produces the event, decided the next contest could not be held safely in Ukraine due to Russia’s invasion.
Read more of Nadia Khomami’s report: Eurovision song contest 2023 to be hosted in Liverpool or Glasgow
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Updated
Summary of the day so far …
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.
Seismologists in Sweden say on Monday 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 due to end on Tuesday. 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. The process has been dismissed as a sham by western nations, and described as a “propaganda show” by Ukrainian authorities, which have pledged not to recognise the results.
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.
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.”
Russian media has announced more details of the early results of whether four occupied areas of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – should be incorporated into Russia.
Displaced people from those regions were able to cast votes in Russia. Russian state news agency RIA said the initial counts from inside Russia showed huge majorities in favour of the move. They ranged from 96.97% in the Kherson region, based on 14% of votes counted, to 98.19% in Zaporizhzhia, based on 18% of the count.
The majorities in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics were just under 98%, with 14% and 13% respectively of votes tallied.
Valentina Matviyenko, head of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said that if the referendum results were favourable, it could consider the incorporation of the four regions on 4 October, Reuters reported.
Updated
Facebook says it has identified and stopped a sprawling network of fake accounts that spread Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine throughout western Europe, AP reports.
Meta, its parent company, says the network created more than 60 websites that mimicked legitimate news organisations but parroted Russian talking points about Ukraine.
More than 1,600 fake Facebook accounts were used to spread the propaganda to audiences in Germany, Italy, France, the UK and Ukraine. Meta says it was the largest and most complex network linked to Russia that the California-based company has identified since the Ukraine invasion began.
The Russian Embassy in Washington DC hasn’t responded to a request for comment, the news wire said.
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Denmark’s armed forces released a video showing bubbles rushing to the surface of the Baltic Sea above the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, and said the largest gas leak had caused surface disturbance of well over 1km in diameter.
They posted a video on Twitter:
Se video og fotos af gaslækagerne på Nord Stream 1 og 2-gasledningerne i Østersøen på https://t.co/pj96CN7CDB: https://t.co/7bgt8TljaH #dkforsvar pic.twitter.com/I1zEPaBLYO
— Forsvaret (@forsvaretdk) September 27, 2022
Updated
Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has described the major leaks in two Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea as a “terrorist attack”.
In a statement on Twitter, he called for more arms and said:
"Gas leak" from NS-1 is nothing more that a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards EU. 🇷🇺 wants to destabilize economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic. The best response and security investment — tanks for 🇺🇦. Especially German ones…
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) September 27, 2022
Russian media announce early 'referendum' count results with 'yes' votes in excess of 97%
Russian media have announced early results from the four widely-derided “referendums” staged by pro-Russian proxy authorities in four occupied areas of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson
As widely predicted, authorities are claiming an overwhelming majority of the public there want to be annexed by the Russian Federation.
RIA Novosti reports 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 absorbed into Russia.
Ukrainian officials have described the process, which began on Friday, as a “propaganda show”, and western officials have said that the results will not be recognised.
The apparent leaks in the Nord Stream pipeline are both near the island of Bornholm, which belongs to Denmark in the Baltic sea.
Sweden’s SVT quotes seismologist Björn Lund saying that the area where they detected explosions is not an area usually used for military drills. He told SVT: “We usually get information about explosions that take place underwater, but sometimes we don’t get it. In this case, we have not received any information.”
According to Lund, one of the explosions had a magnitude of 2.3 on the Richter scale, and was recorded at 30 measuring stations in southern Sweden.
Prior to the reports from the seismologists, there had already been speculation about possible sabotage, as the pipeline operator had described three lines suffering significant damage within the space of a day as “unprecedented”.
Swedish seismologists registered explosions near the Nord Stream pipelines – reports
The Swedish national broadcaster SVT is reporting that seismologists registered explosions near the Nord Stream pipelines in the last 36 hours. In a report published in the last few minutes it said:
SVT can reveal that measuring stations in both Sweden and Denmark registered strong underwater explosions in the same area as the gas leaks on Monday. ‘There is no doubt that these are explosions,’ says Björn Lund, lecturer in seismology at the Swedish National Seismic Network, SNSN.
The first explosion was recorded at 2.03am on the night of Monday and the second at 7.04pm on Monday evening.
The warnings about the gas leaks came from the maritime administration at 1.52pm and 8.41pm on Monday, respectively, after ships detected bubbles on the surface.
SVT has obtained the coordinates of the measured explosions and they are in the same area where the gas leaks were registered.
It further quoted Lund saying of the measurements: “You can clearly see how the waves bounce from the bottom to the surface. There is no doubt that it was a blast. We even had a station in Gnosjö that picked this up.”
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Germany’s economy minister expects to have to extend the lifespans of the country’s last two nuclear power plants to avoid possible outages and grid bottlenecks in Europe’s biggest economy this winter, Reuters reports.
Germany had planned to complete a phase-out of nuclear power by the end of this year, but a collapse in energy supplies from Russia due to the war in Ukraine has prompted the government to keep two plants on standby until April.
Der Spiegel weekly quoted Robert Habeck saying: “We are already in a place where the stress test says: it may be necessary to use nuclear power plants for grid security.”
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The Danish defence command has issued a picture of the leaking gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline reaching the surface of the Baltic Sea.
It says that the disturbance on the surface of the water covers a diameter of at least 1km.
Denmark’s energy agency confirmed earlier today that gas is seeping into the Baltic Sea from three separate leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, prompting speculation that the infrastructure at the heart of the energy standoff between Russia and Europe had been deliberately damaged.
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The UK’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has condemned Russia’s “referendums” in Ukraine, saying the “phoney results” will not be recognised.
As I made clear at the UN last week, we will not recognise the phoney results of these sham referenda and we have sanctioned those responsible for imposing them. https://t.co/de5EiQMwAc
— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) September 27, 2022
This is a desperate move by Putin to paint Ukraine as an aggressor rather than the truth: that the Ukrainians are defending their country from an illegal invasion of their sovereign territory.
— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) September 27, 2022
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said that Russia wants to “save people” in four Moscow-controlled territories in Ukraine, on the last day of annexation votes denounced as a sham by Western leaders, AFP reports.
If the regions vote to join Russia, Moscow will claim sovereignty over about 20% of Ukraine, including Crimea – which was annexed in 2014.
Putin said during a televised meeting with officials:
“Saving people in all the territories where this referendum is taking place … is the focus of the attention of our entire society and of the whole country.”
Updated
Ukraine urged the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia to punish it for staging annexation votes in four occupied regions, Reuters reports.
The foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said personal sanctions would not suffice as punishment for the referendums, billed by Russia as a prelude to it annexing four Ukrainian regions.
“It won’t be enough to limit oneself to cosmetic measures … the softer the reaction to the so-called referendums, the greater the motivation for Russia to escalate and annex further territories,” he told reporters after talks in Kyiv with the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna. “In the content of the eighth [EU] sanctions package, we will see just how seriously the EU takes the problem of referendums.”
He added that moves by Moscow would not change Ukraine’s actions on the battlefield.
Colonna said that French support for Ukraine was “massive” and included humanitarian aid, financial aid and military or diplomatic assistance totalling more than $2bn.
“Russia is more and more isolated. No one has supported its presentation at the UN security council. Its narrative is incoherent,” she said. “So much so that we can even wonder whether our Russian colleague believed what he was saying. Everybody can see Russia is sinking further into an impasse, whether militarily or vis-a-vis its own people.”
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A new pipeline that will carry Norwegian gas via Denmark was inaugurated in Poland on Tuesday in a move to strengthen Europe’s energy security after Russia cut off Warsaw’s supplies, AFP reports.
At a ceremony in western Poland, the Norwegian energy minister, Terje Aasland, said it was “a milestone on the important path towards European independence from Russian energy”.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said the pipeline launch “marks a crucial geopolitical step for all of us.
“We have to do all we can to remove energy as a Russian instrument of power,” she said at the launch in Budno, near the city of Szczecin.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “uses Russian energy as a weapon to destabilise Europe, to divide us. He cannot be allowed to succeed,” she added.
The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, called the pipeline “a Polish dream”.
Frederiksen also referred to unexplained leaks from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines linking Russia and Germany, saying it was “hard to imagine” they were accidental. “It’s an unusual situation to have three leaks a distance from each other,” she said.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, went further and said the leaks were caused by “sabotage”.
“Today we faced an act of sabotage, we don’t know all the details of what happened, but we see clearly that it’s an act of sabotage, related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine,” he said during the opening of the pipeline.
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The EU said it will slap sanctions on organisers of “illegal” votes in four occupied regions of Ukraine that Russia is conducting as “referendums” with the aim of annexation, AFP reports.
“There would be consequences for all people who participate in the illegal, illegitimate referendums,” Peter Stano, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, told journalists as the voting took place for a fifth and final day.
A high-ranking official in Borrell’s foreign policy service, Luc Devigne, separately told EU lawmakers that “we will put in individuals that are obviously linked to the recent steps with these referendums” in the sanctions package.
The EU’s 27 member states are deliberating on fresh sanctions on Russia for holding the vote, widely dismissed by the West as a “sham”.
Devigne did not detail what the next sanctions package would contain, but he explained it would include new bans on Russian exports and imports and extend sanctions on some Russian business activities, as well as adding “new listings of companies and individuals”.
“We have been clear that those who are involved with these so-called referenda will be held accountable and this will (also) be the subject of... the additional restrictive measures,” he said.
Updated
These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires which show Russians fleeing into neighbouring Georgia:
Tens of thousands of Russians flooding over borders, say Georgia and Kazakhstan
Georgia and Kazakhstan said that tens of thousands of Russians had flooded into their countries from neighbouring Russia as military-aged men flee the Ukraine military call-up, AFP reports.
The Black Sea nation of Georgia said the number of Russians arriving daily has nearly doubled since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of reservists on September 21.
“Four to five days ago 5,000-6,000 (Russians) were arriving in Georgia daily. The number has grown to some 10,000 per day,” Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri told journalists.
Georgia and its neighbour Armenia, which do not require visas for Russians, have been a major destination for Russians fleeing since the war began on February 24.
The local interior ministry in a Russian region that borders Georgia said today there was a tail-back of around 5,500 cars waiting to cross the Georgian border, calling the situation “extremely tense”.
On Tuesday, Central Asia’s Kazakhstan said around 98,000 Russians entered the country since the draft was announced last Wednesday.
Astana provided no comparison with previous weeks.
“Recently we’ve had many people from Russia coming here,” Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was quoted as saying by his press service. “Most of them are forced to leave because of the hopeless situation. We must take care of them and ensure their safety.”
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Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has told a meeting with officials that farmers are among the Russians being drafted into the military, Reuters reports.
Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and autumn is a busy season for farmers as they sow winter wheat for the next year’s crop and harvest soybeans and sunflower seeds. Winter grain sowing has already been significantly delayed by rains.
“I would also like to address regional heads and the heads of agricultural enterprises. As part of the partial mobilisation, agricultural workers are also being drafted. Their families must be supported. I ask you to pay special attention to this issue,” Putin told the televised meeting.
Putin also said that Russia is on track to harvest a record grain crop of 150 million tonnes, including 100 million tonnes of wheat, in 2022.
Updated
Ukrainian and Russian forces were locked in heavy fighting in different parts of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Ukraine’s presidential office says at least 11 civilians have been killed and 18 others wounded by the latest Russian shelling, AP adds.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Donetsk region in the east remained his country’s - and Russia’s - top strategic priority, with “particularly severe” fighting engulfing several towns as Russian troops try to advance to the south and west.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor, said three civilians had been killed and 13 wounded in the Donetsk region in the past 24 hours.
There were also reported clashes in the Kharkiv region in the northeast - focus of a Ukrainian counter-offensive this month. A strike on the town of Pervomaiskyi killed eight people, including a 15-year-old boy, Ukrainian officials said. Oleh Synyehubov, Kharkiv governor, said in televised comments that “the senseless shelling looks like an attempt to scare civilians.”
A Reuters reporter in the city of Zaporizhzhia saw a huge crater next to a restaurant on Khortytsia Island and workers disentangling power lines and trees. The restaurant owner said nobody had been hurt in the overnight strike.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Tuesday it had shot down three Iranian-made drones operated by Russia after an attack on the Mykolaiv region.
Updated
The UN said it is “deeply disturbed” at reports of nearly 2,400 arrests in less than a week of protests in Russia against the draft ordered by President Vladimir Putin, AFP reports.
“We are deeply disturbed by the large number of people who have reportedly been arrested,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
Russian authorities have cracked down on criticism of the war in Ukraine, arresting thousands of protesters since the beginning of the conflict in February. But the arrests have sky-rocketed since Putin announced a partial military mobilisation to bolster troops in Ukraine last Wednesday.
Shamdasani pointed to “credible reports (that) some 2,377 demonstrators had been arrested … in various locations across the country. It is unclear how many people remain in detention.”
On Saturday, police monitoring group OVD-Info counted at least 726 people in detention in 32 cities across Russia, nearly half of them in Moscow.
Shamdasani highlighted in particular the two days of protests in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, where clashes erupted between demonstrators and the police. “Dozens of people were reported to have been arrested,” she said.
She stressed that the majority of protests across Russia to date had reportedly been peaceful. She said:
“We stress that arresting people solely for exercising their rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
“We call for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily detained and for the authorities to abide by their international obligations to respect and ensure the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly.”
Updated
Russians who also hold Israeli citizenship are being denied entry into Estonia, according to the Israeli daily, Haaretz.
Dozens of men with dual nationality have reportedly attempted to cross the Estonian-Russian border and been turned back by Estonian border guards since Vladimir Putin’s conscription declaration on 21 September.
In an interview on Tuesday, Estonia’s ambassador to Israel, Veikko Kala, said that Israeli citizens were only being prevented from entering if they “misled” border officials over the purpose of their trip.
“As long as the Israeli citizens, who want to go home through Estonia or visit Estonia, have the required documents, nothing is stopping them from entering Estonia, given that they do not give misleading information about their visit,” he told the newspaper.
Estonia has taken an extremely critical stance towards Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, the Baltic state, along with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, closed its borders to Russian citizens.
The restriction, however, is not supposed to apply to those travelling with Israeli passports, which grants visa-free travel in the EU.
About 100,000 Israeli citizens are believed to live in Russia. Another 24,000 people with Jewish ancestry have decided to move to Israel since the war began.
Israel is home to around 1.5m native Russian speakers, most of whom emigrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Updated
The Kremlin said it does not rule out sabotage as a reason behind the damage to the Russia-built network of Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Reuters reports.
It comes after Nord Stream AG, the operator of the network, said earlier that three offshore lines of the Nord Stream gas pipeline system sustained “unprecedented” damage in one day.
When asked if sabotage was the reason for the damage, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “No option can be ruled out right now.”
He also said the Kremlin was very concerned with the situation, which requires a prompt investigation as it was an issue for the energy security for the “entire continent”.
“This is a very concerning news. Indeed, we are talking about some damage of an unclear nature to the pipeline in Denmark’s economic zone,” he said. “This is an issue related to the energy security of the entire continent.”
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Russia’s “referendums” in Ukraine, which could lead to Moscow annexing 15% of the country’s territory, are due to end on Tuesday. Voting in the eastern provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia began on Friday and have been dismissed as a sham by western nations, which have pledged not to recognise the results.
Russian media have announced that “referendums” in four occupied territories of Ukraine are “valid” a day before voting ended, claiming the turnout had already passed 50%. Analysts have called those turnout claims “flagrantly falsified”.
Russian news agency Tass is reporting that two of the polling stations being used in the widely derided referendums in occupied Luhansk have been moved to reserve locations following “threats”.
President Vladimir 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 Russian occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia, the British Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
Volodymyr Zelensky has called Russia’s mobilisation “a frank attempt to give commanders on the ground a constant stream of “cannon fodder”, in his nightly address on Monday evening.
The Russian Orthodox Church head says Russian soldiers who die on the battlefield will have their sins absolved. Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and a staunch supporter of the Ukraine invasion, said the “sacrifice washes away all sins”.
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.
Sweden’s Maritime Authority said it had issued a warning of two leaks on the Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline in Swedish and Danish waters, shortly after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 project was discovered. Nord Stream AG, the operator of the network, says three offshore lines of the Nord Stream gas pipeline system have sustained “unprecedented” damage in one day.
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.”
Japan’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, has commented on the detention of the country’s consul, telling reporters that he was subjected to a “coercive interrogation” during his detention by Russia’s FSB security service and that Japan has demanded an apology. Hayashi told reporters on Tuesday that consul Motoki Tatsunori had not engaged in any illegal activity and described his detention, which lasted several hours, as “totally unacceptable”.
Refugees arriving from Ukraine have helped drive Germany’s population to its highest level, the Federal Statistical Office said, with more than 84 million people now living in the EU’s most populous country. Germany’s female population grew by 1.2%, significantly more than its male population, which increased by 0.8%, reflecting the fact that mainly women and children fled the war in Ukraine.
The Philippines is in talks with Russia to buy fuel and other commodities, according to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who said the country’s national interests had to take precedence over politics.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later on. Emine Sinmaz will be with you shortly.
Updated
Vakhtang Gomelauri, who is head of the ministry of internal affairs in Georgia has, according to Russian RIA Novosti news agency, been moved to say that “we have no reason to close the border with Russia and restrict entry to Russians”.
He denied reports that some 250,000 Russians had recently arrived in Georgia, saying: “That many people haven’t come, I don’t know where these numbers come from.”
He said: “Approximately four to five days ago there were 5,000-6,000 arrivals. Now this figure has grown to 10,000.”
Updated
In another sign of cultural isolation, Russia appears to have decided to boycott the Oscars, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.
It says the Russian film academy said in a statement late last night: “The presidium of the Film Academy of Russia has decided not to nominate a national film for the Oscars award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2022.”
Pavel Chukhray, head of the committee responsible for selecting a nomination, said on Tuesday that he had resigned in the wake of a decision taken “behind his back”.
Updated
UN report describes 'dire human rights situation' in Ukraine after Russian invasion
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.
The OHCHR also said it was “highly concerned” about the “enormous risks” posed by hostilities near or in nuclear power plants, and called for immediate steps to demilitarise the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station occupied by Russian forces.
The OHCHR said it was continuing to document and verify allegations of unlawful killings of hundreds of civilians by Russian armed forces in the Kyiv, Sumy and Kharkiv regions. It said it had also documented at least six killings of civilians perceived as traitors for alleged collaboration with Russia in occupied areas.
It said alleged violations included extrajudicial executions, torture and ill-treatment, sexual violence, ignoring fair trial guarantees, denial of medical assistance, lack of food and water, and poor sanitation.
Neither Kyiv or Moscow have immediately commented on the report
Oliver Carroll, who is a foreign correspondent for the Economist, has posted an image of cars queueing at the checkpoint with Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia.
At last checkpoint before Russia occupied Zaporizhia. Counted about 100 cars arriving within 30 min, overflowing with humanity. 5,6,7 to a car. pic.twitter.com/D14cBOZkuy
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) September 27, 2022
In a subsequent tweet, he says “Ever so kind, the Russians painted their Z signs on cars that they let through. People were scrubbing them off when they stopped in Ukrainian controlled territory.”
The queue does not look as long as the one seen in this satellite image released yesterday by Maxar, which shows the queue of vehicles at the Russian border with Georgia earlier this week.
Andrii Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, has tweeted to suggest that Russian conscripts being sent to the front under the partial mobilisation announced last week would be best advised to surrender at the first opportunity. He said:
Mobilized Russians who surrender themselves have a chance to save their lives. Everyone else won’t have it.
Мобілізовані росіяни, які здадуться в полон, мають шанс зберегти життя. У всіх інших його не буде.
— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) September 27, 2022
Updated
Refugees arriving from Ukraine have helped drive Germany’s population to its highest level, the Federal Statistical Office said, with more than 84 million people now living in the European Union’s most populous country, Reuters reports.
The Federal Statistics Office said that the population had grown by 1%, or 843,000 people, in the first half of 2022. The population grew just 0.1% over the whole of 2021. Germany recorded net immigration of 750,000 people from Ukraine over the same period.
Germany’s female population grew by 1.2%, significantly more than its male population, which increased by 0.8%, reflecting the fact that mainly women and children fled the war in Ukraine.
Here are some of the latest images that have been sent to us from Ukraine, showing that the “voting” continues in the occupied areas of the country while the aftermath of attacks is being dealt with in Kharkiv and Slovyansk.
Updated
'Unprecedented' damage to three offshore lines of Nord Stream in one day – operator
Reuters has a further update on the pipeline situation, carrying a statement from Nord Stream AG, the operator of the network, which says three offshore lines of the Nord Stream gas pipeline system have sustained “unprecedented” damage in one day.
It also said that it was impossible to estimate when the gas network system’s working capability would be restored.
Russia's Nord Stream pipelines leaking into Baltic Sea
Sweden’s Maritime Authority said it had issued a warning of two leaks on the Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline in Swedish and Danish waters, shortly after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 project was discovered.
“There are two leaks on Nord Stream 1 – one in Swedish economic zone and one in Danish economic zone. They are very near each other,” a Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA) spokesperson told Reuters.
The leaks were located north-east of the Danish island Bornholm, the spokesperson said. It was not immediately clear what had caused the leaks.
“We are keeping extra watch to make sure no ship comes too close to the site,” a second SMA spokesperson said.
On Monday, Danish authorities had asked ships to steer clear of a five nautical mile radius south-east off Bornholm after a gas leak from the defunct Nord Stream 2 pipeline drained into the Baltic Sea.
Later the same day, the operator of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which ran at reduced capacity from mid-June before shutting down completely in August, also disclosed a pressure drop on both lines of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline.
The Danish energy ministry said in a statement that “there are no security risks related to the leak outside of the prohibitive zone. The incident is not expected to have consequences for the security of Danish gas supply”.
Updated
Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish deputy chairman of the security council of Russia, Putin ally, and former prime minister and president of Russia, has issued another warning over the use of nuclear weapons to the west via a long screed on Telegram, in which he specifically criticises US president Joe Biden and new British prime minister Liz Truss.
In the course of the message, Medvedev says:
I have to remind you again – for those deaf who hear only themselves. Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary, in predetermined cases, in strict accordance with the fundamentals of state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence. If we or our allies are attacked using this type of weapon. Or if aggression with the use of conventional weapons threatens the very existence of our state. The president of Russia spoke about this directly recently.
In addition, we will do everything to prevent the appearance of nuclear weapons in our hostile neighbours. For example, in Nazi Ukraine, which is directly controlled today by Nato countries.
He complains that Biden and Truss “demand that Russia remove its hand from its ‘nuclear button’” while accusing Truss of being “completely ready to immediately begin an exchange of nuclear strikes with our country”.
He then goes on to say that he does not believe the west would come to Ukraine’s aid or retaliate if Russia did use nuclear weapons, saying:
If the threat to Russia exceeds the established danger limit, we will have to respond. Without asking anyone’s permission, without long consultations. And it’s definitely not a bluff.
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.
The Russian ministry of defence this morning has published a seven-minute video on its official Telegram channel which it claims are interviews with Ukrainian citizens in Russia voting in Novy Oskol in the Belgorod region.
The message accompanying the video quotes a Vladimir Buinak saying “With the collapse of the Soviet Union, everything became very bad, and over time, our region, one might say, was destroyed. We are only for the Russian Federation, we are only for Russia. We were Russian-speaking, we studied in Russian schools.”
Another quote is given from Elena Korobova, who pre-empts the result of the vote, saying: “The reunion, of course, is long-awaited, how much we have been waiting for, more than eight years, and, finally, it has happened or it will happen soon.”
The Russian ministry of defence goes on to say “All the votes cast by the residents of Donbas on the territory of Russia will be taken into account, and their choice will become part of the historic decision of people who freely vote for what they truly believe in.”
Belgorod is to the north-east of Ukraine, bordering the Kharkiv region. The “referendum” process being carried out by proxy Russian authorities in occupied areas of Ukraine has been widely derided as a sham vote.
Updated
A video has been circulating on social media that purports to show “election officials” at a polling station in Donetsk standing to attention while the Russian national anthem plays.
Commenting on the clip, BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford says: “An ‘electoral commission’ in Donetsk stands for the Russian anthem before another day’s ‘voting’ on whether or not to join Russia … Don’t expect many ‘no’ votes here.”
Updated
Richard Dannatt, former chief of the general staff of the British army, has been interviewed by Sky News in the UK this morning about his view on the latest situation in Russia. He described Vladimir Putin’s order for a partial mobilisation as “deeply unpopular” and said that it was now “hitting home” with ordinary Russians. He told viewers:
[Putin] has got an increasing problem at home of his own making. Did he have any alternative? Actually probably not, because of the casualties they have taken, killed or wounded. He was running out of manpower, just as he was probably running out of everything else to do with the military. He’s not going to give up. He’s going to double down.
Russia has given an official casualty figure during what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine of around 6,000 personnel. Ukrainian armed forces, by contrast, claim to have killed over 55,000 enemy combatants. Neither figure has been independently verified.
The Russian news agency Tass is reporting that two of the polling stations being used in the widely derided “referendums” in the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine have been moved to reserve locations following “threats”.
It quotes Elena Kravchenko, giving her job title as “head of the central election commission of the Luhansk People’s Republic”, saying:
Here were threats against members of the commission in the Starobilsk district … that the sites would be burned, they were personally threatened. In this regard, we had to transfer the work of these sites to reserve sites, change the addresses of these polling stations. All voters have been notified, work continues.
Ukrainian authorities have described the so-called referendums as a “propaganda show”.
Updated
Oleh Synyehubov, Ukraine’s governor of Kharkiv, has issued a status update on Telegram, listing damage and casualties in the last 24 hours that he says has been caused by Russian shelling.
He claims that in Kupyansk a church school, an outbuilding, and a shop burned down as a result of shelling and five people were hospitalised. He reports that a 15-year-old was killed in Pervomaiskyi, and seven dead people were found under the rubble in the aftermath of the attack. In Dvorichna, he says that a first responder was killed.
The claims have not been independently verified.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can message me at martin.belam@theguardian.com
Updated
The Philippines is in talks with Russia to buy fuel and other commodities, according to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who said the country’s national interests had to take precedence over politics.
Marcos Jr told Bloomberg TV that the Philippines was in “conversations with as many possible suppliers” and was close to reaching agreements.
President Putin has previously claimed that US and European efforts to isolate Russia with economic sanctions will fail because he will instead look to Asia for new trading partners. Over recent months, Russia has courted several countries in the region, offering cheap fuel deals at a time when many are struggling with painful price rises. Indonesia is also reportedly considering buying Russian fuel.
Asked about the sanctions imposed on Russia, Marcos said the political side of striking a deal “has been of course a little tricky”, but added “nonetheless, the national interest comes first”.
Updated
Details are still emerging about Russia detaining a Japanese consul and demanding he leave the country for alleged espionage. You can read about that in full from our Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry, here:
Putin may formally announce 'accession' of Ukrainian territories Friday - British defence
President Vladimir 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 Russian occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia, the British Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update:
There is a realistic possibility that Putin will use his address to formally announce the accession of the occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. The referendums currently underway within these territories are scheduled to conclude on 27 September”
Russia’s leaders almost certainly hope that any accession announcement will be seen as a vindication of the ‘special military operation’ and will consolidate patriotic support for the conflict.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 27 September 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 27, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/xG1CgXqeKM
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/schw2ockbs
Updated
The general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine says that the occupied part of Kherson region is completely closed for entry and exit.
The Ukrainian military did not specify a reason for the movement restrictions.
Updated
Japan’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, has commented on the detention of the country’s consul, telling reporters that he was subjected to a “coercive interrogation” during his detention by Russia’s FSB security service and that Japan has demanded an apology.
Hayashi told reporters on Tuesday that consul Motoki Tatsunori had not engaged in any illegal activity and described his detention, which lasted several hours, as “totally unacceptable”.
Japan’s foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador, Mikhail Galuzin, over the incident, according to the Kyodo news agency. The ministry demanded that Moscow make a formal apology, Hayashi said, adding the government would consider appropriate retaliatory measures.
Images are emerging of Russia’s mobilisation in Siberia, where families are farewelling those drafted to fight in the invasion of Ukraine. Reuters correspondents on the ground report that the music of Soviet war songs mixed with the sobbing of relatives in the small Russian town of Bataysk, Omsk, as freshly mobilised reservists farewelled their families on Monday.
Protests against the call-up and Russia’s military operation have taken place in dozens of cities, and long queues have formed at Russian land borders with a number of countries.
Russian media have announced that “referendums” in four occupied territories of Ukraine are “valid” a day before voting ended, claiming the turnout had already passed 50%. Analysts have called those turnout claims “flagrantly falsified”. Russian state media agency Tass said that on Monday 26 September, voter turnout was 86.89% in Donetsk, 83.61% in Luhansk, in the 63.58% in Kherson, and 66.43% in Zaporizhzhia.
Voting is due to end today. The referendums have been repeatedly condemned by Ukraine and the west as a “sham”. Thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said:
Turnout even in a free and fair referendum, rather than the Kremlin’s sham plebiscite, would almost certainly be much lower … Even in peacetime, Ukrainians do not turn out to vote at rates as high as what Russian occupation officials are reporting; the first round of Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election saw only a 62.8% turnout.”
Updated
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says the Kremlin “faces a daunting task in trying to calm the Russian people while still mobilising enough men to keep fighting,” in its latest Russian offensive campaign assessment.
The thinktank documented protests in at least 35 Russian settlements on September 25 and at least 10 settlements on September 26, and said police continued to suppress protests, notably detaining several hundred women in Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha.
The ISW also said that the “planned annexation of occupied Ukraine may take place before or shortly after October 1, the start of Russia’s normal fall conscription cycle, to enable the forced conscription of Ukrainian civilians to fight against Ukraine.”
New: The #Kremlin is attempting to message its way out of the reality of major problems in the execution of its “partial mobilization,” but its narratives are unlikely to placate #Russians who can perceive the real mistakes all around them.https://t.co/1hZ3ygLJV2 pic.twitter.com/EI1Bf33F6A
— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) September 27, 2022
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called Russia’s mobilisation “a frank attempt to give commanders on the ground a constant stream of “cannon fodder”,” in his nightly address on Monday evening.
Russian society is not yet aware of all the brutality of the Russian government towards its own people. But we must do everything so that every citizen of Russia recognises that his own state is depriving him of the most important thing - the right to life.”
The president’s comments were published to Telegram.
Japanese consul detained by Russia
Russia’s FSB security agency said on Monday it had detained a Japanese consul for suspected espionage and ordered him to leave the country.
The consul, Motoki Tatsunori, was released after a few hours of detention, Reuters reports. Japan’s top government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said he was blindfolded, restrained, and treated in an “intimidating manner” which was “a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”.
Tokyo has lodged a “strong protest” about the detention and signalled it may retaliate, Matsuno told a media briefing on Tuesday.
The FSB said the consul was declared persona non grata after he was caught “red-handed” receiving secret information on the effects of Western sanctions on the economic situation in Russia’s far east. It said the classified information, which also concerned Russia’s cooperation with an unnamed Asia-Pacific country, had been obtained in return for a “monetary reward”. Japan has said he was not participating in any illegal activity, and will leave the country by Wednesday.
Summary
Good morning. I’m Tess McClure, and will be beginning our live coverage with you. It’s just after 7am in Kyiv. Here’s the latest news and what’s happened overnight:
Russia’s “referendums” in Ukraine, which could lead to Moscow annexing 15% of the country’s territory, are due to end on Tuesday. Voting in the eastern provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia began on Friday and have been dismissed as a sham by western nations, which have pledged not to recognise the results.
The Kremlin said it had made no decision on closing Russia’s borders as the first mobilisation since the second world war prompted some to flee.
Russia detained a Japanese consul for suspected espionage on Monday, and has ordered him to leave the country. Japan alleges he was blindfolded and restrained. Tokyo has lodged a “strong protest” about the detention and signalled it may retaliate.
A Russian man shot the leader of the local military draft committee in a Siberian town on Monday, after telling him he would refuse to fight in Ukraine. Video showed the gunman, dressed in camouflage, firing at the official from point-blank range as other potential draftees for the Russian invasion fled the room.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline’s pressure collapsed mysteriously on Monday. Authorities in Germany are trying to establish what caused the sudden drop in pressure in the defunct pipeline, with a spokesperson for its operator saying it could have been a leak.
Long queues of vehicles formed at the border crossing between Russia and Mongolia as people continue to flee the Kremlin’s mobilisation order. The head of a checkpoint in the town of Altanbulag said more than 3,000 Russians had entered Mongolia via the crossing since Wednesday.
Nato air forces are conducting drills over the Baltic Sea. Member states including the UK, Germany and Italy have taken part in the military training, both over water and on land, in an effort to boost eastern defences.
The Netherlands has increased its military support for Ukraine. The prime minister, Mark Rutte, also announced new sanctions in response to Russia’s mobilisation and referendums.
The US pledged to provide Ukraine with $457.5m in civilian security aid. The support was aimed at “saving lives” and “bolstering” Ukrainian law enforcement, said the secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
The Russian Orthodox Church head says Russian soldiers who die on the battlefield will have their sins absolved. Patriach Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and a staunch supporter of the Ukraine invasion, said the “sacrifice washes away all sins”.
The UK announced 92 new sanctions in response to Russia’s “sham referendums” in Ukraine. The package of penalties target those behind the sham votes as well as oligarchs and board members.
Germany is debating whether it should grant asylum to Russian war refuseniks. The interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said the country was potentially prepared to give protection to deserters who face repercussions if they refused to fight, but each case would be decided on an individual basis amid security concerns.
The UN’s atomic energy watchdog says it is ready for talks about setting up a protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency head met the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine at the UN general assembly last week to discuss the possibility.
The US has warned of horrific consequences if Russia follows through with its thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. Antony Blinken said any use of the weapons would have a “catastrophic” impact across the world.
Negotiators of a spending bill in the US Congress have agreed to include nearly $12bn in new military and economic aid to Ukraine, Reuters reported sources as saying on Monday. The funding – requested by the Biden administration – would include $4.5bn for defence capabilities and equipment for Ukraine and $4.5bn in direct support to the Kyiv government, the sources said.
Ukraine claims some Russian conscripts from the Kremlin’s mass mobilisation are being sent directly to the frontlines without training. Those included newly drafted personnel in Crimea as well as conscripts in the Luhansk region who have received draft summonses in recent days.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed to liberate the entire country as Russia presses on with its supposed referendum in occupied areas of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president said the country’s armed forces would throw out Russia’s forces and retaliate against “every strike of the aggressor”.
