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.
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.
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.”
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.
These are some of the latest images to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine
An 18-year-old volunteer, who said she is collecting souvenirs, is seen inside a destroyed Russian armoured vehicle in the recently liberated town of Izium in the Kharkiv region. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
France's Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, right, stands near the remains of the Antonov An-225, the world's biggest cargo aircraft, which was destroyed during fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Flowers are pictured beside a destroyed building in the recently liberated town of Izium in the Kharkiv region. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
A local resident kisses bread after she received humanitarian aid in the recently liberated town of Izium in the Kharkiv region. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
