As it happened: EU vows sanctions after Russia's 'illegal' votes in Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken with Liz Truss this afternoon "in light of Russia's sham referendums", Downing Street has said

The prime minister "made clear the UK would never recognise Russian attempts to annexe sovereign territory", while the Ukrainian president welcomed her "strong backing", including at the UN last week.

Truss also thanked Zelenksy for his work in securing the release of five British nationals held by Russian-backed proxies in eastern Ukraine.

The leaders also discussed how the UK and Ukraine could work together to secure Ukraine’s gas supplies in the long term, No 10 has said.

Truss and her ministers are under pressure after the Bank of England stepped in to calm financial markets in the UK.

The EU has limped towards this set of sanctions proposals as member states were divided on whether to "take stock" of existing measures or push ahead with more.

But momentum to move forward grew after last week’s developments – namely President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear “threats” as well as Russia’s military mobilisation and so-called referendum plans.

The sanctions laid out today have largely been under discussion for some time with few in Brussels arguing that this latest tranche of measures is particularly radical when compared to previous packages.

However the European Commission insists new import and export bans will hit the Kremlin’s finances.

And they’re working on legislation so that the few member states still buying Russian oil by the end of this year are in line with the G7’s proposed price cap.

However one of those member states is Hungary – whose government is now openly arguing that sanctions have backfired on Europe.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

Norway will deploy its military to protect its oil and gas infrastructure against possible sabotage, the country's prime minister said on Wednesday.

Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference any possible attack would be "handled jointly" with allies.

This would likely mean Nato involvement, as Norway is a member of the Western defensive alliance.

The military support would include the Norwegian navy being deployed to protect offshore installations, and police could increase presence at facilities, he told reporters.

The head of the National Cyber Security Centre – an arm of GCHQ – has warned that, despite the absence of high-profile cyber-attacks on the UK so far, the threat from Russia remains real.

"There is still a real possibility that Russia could change its approach in the cyber domain and take more risks - which could cause more significant impacts in the UK," Lindy Cameron told a Chatham House think tank conference.

Quote Message: In response to significant battlefield setbacks, in the last week we have seen Putin react in unpredictable ways. So, we shouldn’t assume that just because the conflict has played out in one way to date, it will continue to go the same way."

In response to significant battlefield setbacks, in the last week we have seen Putin react in unpredictable ways. So, we shouldn’t assume that just because the conflict has played out in one way to date, it will continue to go the same way."

The NCSC had issued warnings earlier in the year to UK companies and organisations to be on alert.

Cameron said the answer to any who were wondering if this was still needed was an "emphatic yes".

Despite the fact there had not been the kind of major cyber-attacks in Ukraine itself that some had expected, this was not because of the lack of trying on Russia’s part, the head of the NCSC said.

She said there had been a “very significant conflict in cyber-space” with Moscow launching a series of "major" cyber-attacks on Ukraine.

However, Ukrainian defences had stood up well with "incredibly impressive defensive cyber-operations".

This was due to their experiences over the last decade making them "match fit" as well as support from the private sector and Western governments.

Quote Message: For several years, the UK has supported Ukraine to improve their resilience against cyber threats. This has included measures to enhance their incident response, forensics, and assessment processes."

For several years, the UK has supported Ukraine to improve their resilience against cyber threats. This has included measures to enhance their incident response, forensics, and assessment processes."

Russia's foreign ministry says that action would be taken soon to meet the "aspirations" of four occupied regions to become part of Russia, a day after the completion of what Ukraine and the West said were illegal ballots.

In a statement, the ministry claimed the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were held in compliance with international law.

Pro-Russia leaders in the four occupied regions of Ukraine where the "referendums" took place claim the votes show the vast majority of people support the annexation of the areas by Russia, and asked Vladimir Putin to incorporate their territories into Russia.

Russian forces are reportedly committing men to front lines in the Kherson and Kharkiv frontlines without prior training, the Institute for the Study of War has said.

In an update late on Tuesday, the US think tank cited a mobilised member an of an unspecified unit who recorded a video plea stating that his unit will not receive training prior to being deployed to the Kherson region on Thursday.

ISW said Moscow is likely to be attempting to reinforce units in the south for short periods with untrained, newly mobilised men.

"Mobilised men with a day or two of training are unlikely to meaningfully reinforce Russian positions affected by Ukrainian counter-offensives in the south and east," it said.

Last week's mobilisation decree has already triggered widespread protests in Russia.

The Kremlin has admitted mistakes were made in its drive to mobilise Russian army reservists to fight in Ukraine, amid growing public opposition.

AFP via Getty ImagesCopyright: AFP via Getty Images

Russians leaving their country for Georgia have been met with protesters waving placards reading "Putin is a terrorist" and "Russia kills".

Opposition supporters in Georgia have rallied against "uncontrolled" migration from Russia, which has almost doubled since Vladimir Putin announced a mobilisation for the war in Ukraine. Georgia is one of the few countries sharing a border with Russia which its citizens can enter without applying for a visa in advance.

Waving Georgian and Ukrainian flags, protesters gathered near the Kazbegi border crossing point, where large numbers of Russians have been crossing since the mobilisation was declared last week.

One sign read: "In surveys, most of you support the war, so why are you running from it now?"

AFP via Getty ImagesCopyright: AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty ImagesCopyright: AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian national anthem and folk songs were playing at the rally, organised by a pro-Western opposition party, Droa.

"Uncontrolled, unprecedented influx of Russians poses security risks to Georgia," one of the rally organisers, Tamar Gvinianidze, told the AFP news agency.

"The border must be closed immediately as the Georgian government has proved incapable of handling the migration crisis," she added.

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

Germany will not accept the results of "sham" annexation referendums in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call, according to the German government.

Scholz said Germany would continue to back Ukraine in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including weapons deliveries, a spokesman added.

The US Secretary of State said yesterday that the West would never acknowledge bogus referendums.

The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell spoke after Ursula von der Leyen, laying out new sanctions targeting individuals.

He says there are more than 1,300 people or entities who will be hit by new sanctions, including oligarchs, senior military officials and other people responsible for "undermining Ukrainian territorial integrity".

Borrell says they have been launched in response to what he termed the Russian "provocations" of troop mobilisation and "sham" referendums in Ukraine.

He says these "restrictive measures" will be against against those supporting, facilitating or benefiting from the invasion, as well as those involved in occupation and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory.

The package needs the approval of all 27 EU members.

To Brussels now, where the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is announcing a further round of proposed sanctions on Russia that she will put to the 27 member states.

Von der Leyen says that "last week, Russia escalated the invasion of Ukraine to a whole new level" through mobilisation and "sham referenda that are an illegal attempt to grab land and change international borders by force."

The EU is "determined to make the Kremlin pay with a new package of biting sanctions against Russia," von der Leyen says.

She aims to further restrict trade to isolate and restrict Russia's economy even more: "A sweeping new import ban on Russian products will keep them out of the European market and deprive Russia of an additional 7bn euros in revenue."

The EU will extend the list of products that can't be exported to Russia, particularly with regards to weapons, aircraft and chemical substances.

This will "weaken its capacity to modernise" Russia's military base.

Von der Leyen also says that under the package, EU nationals will be prohibited from sitting on government bodies of Russian state-owned enterprises, saying: "Russia should not benefit from EU knowledge and expertise."

She also laid out a price cap on Russian oil for developing countries, which has already been agreed in principle by the G7 group of major industrialised nations.

As we've been reporting, Denmark has said the ruptures in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were caused by carefully planned and powerful explosions - and reports from Germany suggest that the government there is not optimistic that they can be repaired.

But what do we know so far about what happened to the gas pipelines running along the Baltic seabed?

The operators of Nord Stream 2 warned of a loss of pressure in the pipeline on Monday afternoon near the island of Bornholm in Denmark.

Then on Tuesday, the operator of Nord Stream 1 - the pipeline which was in operation carrying Russian gas to Germany until recently - said the undersea tubes had simultaneously sustained "unprecedented" damage in one day.

Seismologists have detected underwater blasts in the locations where the leaks emerged and have said there "is no doubt" they were caused by explosions.

The leaks are likely to last for at least a week, until the gas currently in the pipes runs out. An investigation will begin after that.

The EU has said the damage was caused by sabotage but has stopped short of directly blaming Russia - restraint not shown by Ukraine which accused the Kremlin of terrorism.

Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was "extremely concerned" about the leaks, but dismissed accusations of sabotage as "predictable, stupid and absurd".

Read more here.

.Copyright: .

If you're just joining us, here is a round-up of where things stand this afternoon:

• Pro-Russia leaders in the four occupied regions of Ukraine where the "referendums" took place claim the votes show the vast majority of people support the annexation of the areas by Russia and asked Vladimir Putin to incorporate their territories into Russia
• The EU says there will be consequences for the organisers of the so-called referendums
• Ukraine says its counter-offensive to reclaim occupied territory continues, despite Russia's claims
• Denmark says the rupture of gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea was the result of a carefully planned attack
• The European Union and Nato have stressed the need to protect critical infrastructure from sabotage

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised Russia's "unilateral referendums" in occupied areas of Ukraine in a telephone conversation with Ukraine's Zelensky.

Erdogan reportedly described the referendums as a "source of concern" that would "make it difficult to revive the diplomatic process".

Nato-member Turkey has close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv, with President Erdogan seeking to mediate between the two since the start of the invasion.

EPACopyright: EPA

The US embassy in Russia has issued a security alert for its citizens in Russia, warning that the authorities may refuse to acknowledge dual nationals' US citizenship in the wake of the partial mobilisation announcement.

Russia may deny their access to US consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia, and conscript dual nationals for military service, it says.

The embassy also urged US citizens not to travel to Russia and said that those living or travelling in the country should depart at once "while limited commercial travel options remain".

Ethnic Tartars living in Russian-occupied Crimea say that hundreds of men from their community have been conscripted by Russia in the past week.

One activist told the BBC that conscription in Crimea, annexed by Russian in 2014, is deliberately targeting Muslim Tartars.

“They’re grabbing everyone,” said a 62-year-old activist who asked to be called Abdullah.

The call up papers began to be distributed on 22 September, he says, and they've been issued at Tartar schools, delivered to homes and handed out on the street.

“There were police patrols going round many villages and towns, and there were temporary checkpoints,” Abdullah says.

Quote Message: People were in shock and in a trance - they were lost and had heavy hearts.

People were in shock and in a trance - they were lost and had heavy hearts.

Young Tartar men are trying to escape, heading for Georgia, Kazakhstan and Armenia, Abdullah says. “It’s not just men. It’s their families, children,” he adds.

Crimean Tartars make up between 10 to 15% of the population of the peninsula.

Activists fear that the mobilisation drive represents a deliberate Russian effort to prevent the growth of the community.

Western officials, asked about the reports of Tartar conscription, say they have not seen independent corroboration of the claims, but find them plausible.

On Saturday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said the recruitment of Tartars represented “a conscious effort to destroy the Crimean Tartar nation".

German daily Tagesspiegel reports (in German) that German authorities assume that three sections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 might be "forever unusable", as salt water would corrode the pipelines unless they're repaired quickly.

Due to the complexity of the attack, experts and those in German government circles believe that it could only be carried out by a state actor, the paper says.

One theory is that divers may have planted explosives on the tubes, Tagesspiegel reports.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline stretches 1,200km (745 miles) from the Russian coast near St Petersburg to north-eastern Germany via the Baltic Sea.

It opened in 2011, and was sending a maximum of 170 million cubic metres of gas per day from Russia to Germany.

The construction of a second, parallel pipeline - Nord Stream 2 - was finished last year but the project was halted after Russia invaded Ukraine and it never started delivering gas.

The speed with which so-called referendums have been held in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia, the partial mobilisation and recent nuclear rhetoric are signs of panic in Moscow, a Western official has claimed.

Vladimir Putin may have begun to understand he made a mistake, the official told journalists.

There is also concern over mobilisation, they said, because people have learnt to distrust official statements - including that the mobilisation is only partial.

They said they had tracked 54 fires at military recruitment centres since the invasion, 17 of those were in four days between 21 and 25 September.

“It has brought the war home to Russians in a way he [Putin] didn’t want,” the official said.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

Ukraine says its counter-offensive to reclaim territory that’s under Russian occupation continues, despite the so-called referendums held by pro-Russian officials in four regions of the country.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to President Zelensky, has again called on Western countries to impose further sanctions on Russia and to increase the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

He told me nothing changes in practical terms because Russia “already occupies those territories” and that the Ukrainian government is “engaged in the liberation” of those areas.

“I think that Ukraine's next step is to intensify the negotiation process with our international partners to increase the supply of certain types of weapons, including missiles of a certain range in order to make us able to destroy sites storing Russian weapons in Crimea, from where they are taken to the territory of Ukraine.”

“We definitely suggest to our partners that... they should increase the sanctions pressure [on Russia] and, for example, eventually withdraw all key Russian banks from the Swift program... that is, to make sanctions really unsustainable for the Russian Federation.”

Tatyana KumokCopyright: Tatyana Kumok

Ukraine is waging counter offensives in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, and many Ukrainians who remain behind the Russian front line are anxiously waiting.

"We're euphoric when Ukraine hits the occupied territories," says Iryna, a resident of Melitopol in the south. "It means that Ukraine has not forgotten us. We all know that living near military infrastructure and buildings is not safe, so most civilians have moved out from those locations."

But for people in the occupied territories, the longer they wait, the harder it is to survive. Many believed that the counter-offensive would happen in August. But when that didn't happen, people started to flee towards Ukrainian-controlled territories and areas further to the West.

Among them was Tatyana Kumok from Melitopol. The Israeli citizen was visiting her hometown when the Russian invasion started in February. She stayed in the city and distributed aid to residents, but in September she and her family decided to leave. One of the main reasons for their decision was Russia's promise to hold a so-called referendum.

"As soon as it's done, the Russians will introduce new bans according to their laws and try to legitimise the occupation," she says.

Even a silent resistance to Russian occupation is getting dangerous now.

In September many families were forced to send their children to Russian-administered schools even though their children would be exposed to the Kremlin's propaganda.

"If you don't send your child to school, it's a litmus test for you - it means you have pro-Ukrainian views," explains Ms Kumok. "I know parents who had to tell their seven-year-old child not to talk about things discussed at home with anyone at school. Otherwise the child could be taken away. That was really awful."

Read Abdujalil Abdurasulov's full report from Kherson in southern Ukraine here.