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”.
Key events
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
Bethan McKernan
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.
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.”
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 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.
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.
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.”
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”.
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.
Andriy 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
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.