Russia-Ukraine war: at least 730 protesters detained in Russia; Europe urged to accept Russians fleeing draft – live

Here is some more information after it emerged that The Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, may debate bills incorporating Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine into Russia on September 29, the state-run TASS news agency said on Saturday, citing an unnamed source.

Moscow launched referendums on joining Russia in the four occupied regions of Ukraine on Friday, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western nations, who dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognise their results.

TASS cited Denis Pushilin, head of the Russia-backed separatist Donetsk area of Ukraine, as saying his priorities would not change once the region was part of Russia.

TASS quoted an unnamed Duma source as saying the chamber could debate a bill on the incorporation of Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine as soon as Thursday, two days after the end of so-called referendums in the four provinces.

The Interfax agency quoted a source saying the upper house could consider the bill the same day, and RIA Novosti, also citing an unnamed source, said President Vladimir Putin could be preparing to make a formal address to an extraordinary joint session of both houses on Friday.

An official in Luhansk region announced the turnout after two days of voting was 45.9% while in Zaporizhzhia it was 35.5%, Russian agencies said. Voting is due to end on Tuesday.

Pjotr Sauer

In a caricature by the country’s most prominent political cartoonist, Sergey Elkin, Vladimir Putin is standing on top of the Kremlin wall with his arms outstretched.

“So what else do I need to do for you guys to finally start rebelling,” Putin asks, with a look of desperation.

As images showing thousands of Russian men getting into buses bound for training centres have started to appear, many in the west are asking the same question.

Putin’s decision to call the first mobilisation since the second world war has prompted widespread panic among Russia’s population but has not yet led to mass protests as experts predict that the effect of the call-up on public opinion will be gradual.

China supports all efforts conducive to the peaceful resolution of the “crisis” in Ukraine, its foreign minister Wang Yi told the United Nations general assembly on Saturday.

Wang added the pressing priority was to facilitate talks for peace, Reuters reports.

In his address, Wang said the fundamental solution was to address the “legitimate security concerns of all parties”.

The Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, may debate bills incorporating Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine into Russia on 29 September, the Tass news agency reported, citing an unnamed source.

Moscow launched referendums on joining Russia in the four occupied regions of Ukraine on Friday, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and western nations, who dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognise their results, Reuters reports.

Voting is due to finish on Tuesday.

More than 730 people were detained across Russia at protests against a mobilisation order, a rights group said, three days after their president, Vladimir Putin, ordered the country’s first military draft since the second world war.

The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 cities, from St Petersburg to Siberia.

Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.

“Do you want to be like me?” read a placard held by a woman in a wheelchair at a rally in Moscow.

Footage from the same protest showed Russian officers carrying men and leading women to police vans.

Russian officials said 300,000 troops were needed, with priority given to people with recent military experience and vital skills.

The Kremlin has denied reports by two Russian news outlets based abroad – Novaya Gazeta Europe and Meduza – that the real target is more than 1 million.

Reports have surfaced across Russia of men with no military experience or past draft age suddenly receiving call-up papers, Reuters reports.

On Saturday, the head of the Kremlin’s human rights council, Valery Fadeyev, publicly announced that he had written to defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, with a request to “urgently resolve” problems of the mobilisation.

His 400-word Telegram posting criticised the way exemptions were applied and listed several cases of inappropriate enlistment including nurses and midwives with no military experience.

“Some [recruiters] hand over the call-up papers at 2am, as if they think we’re all draft dodgers,” he said.

Shaun Walker

Russia launched renewed strikes on Ukrainian cities on Saturday, as Moscow’s mobilisation drive to refresh its struggling war effort continued to provide scenes of chaos across Russia.

Ukrainian officials said a Russian missile hit an apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing one person and injuring seven others, and said a total of three people were killed and 19 injured in strikes across the south and east of the country.

In Russia, even Kremlin cheerleaders expressed unease at the progress of the mobilisation drive, announced by the president, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday. Viral videos have shown mobilised men who appear variously to be confused, drunk or angry at receiving the call-up.

Since Wednesday, people have been prepared to queue for hours to cross into Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Finland or Georgia, scared that Russia might close its borders, although the Kremlin has said reports of an exodus are exaggerated.

The governor of Russia’s Buryatia region, which is located on the Mongolian border and home to an ethnic Mongol minority, acknowledged on Friday that some had received papers in error and said those who had not served in the army or who had medical exemptions would not be called up, Reuters reports.

Tsakhia Elbegdorj, president of Mongolia until 2017 and now head of the World Mongol Federation, promised those fleeing the draft a warm welcome on Saturday.

“The Buryat Mongols, Tuva Mongols, and Kalmyk Mongols have ... been used as nothing more than cannon fodder,” he said in a video message, wearing a ribbon in Ukrainian yellow and blue, and referring to three Mongol ethnic groups in Russia.

“Today you are fleeing brutality, cruelty and likely death. Tomorrow you will start freeing your country from dictatorship.”

The pro-Kremlin editor of Russia’s state-run RT news channel expressed anger that enlistment officers were sending call-up papers to the wrong men, as frustration at the recent military mobilisation grew across Russia.

Wednesday’s announcement of Russia’s first public mobilisation since the second world war, to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine, has triggered a rush for the border by eligible men, the arrests of more than 1,000 protesters, and unease among the wider population, Reuters reports.

“It has been announced that privates can be recruited up to the age of 35. Summonses are going to 40-year-olds,” the RT editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, railed on her Telegram channel.

“They’re infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite. As if they’d been sent by Kyiv.”

A Ukrainian aid worker said he does not fear a nuclear attack because it would cause “political destruction” for Russia but said the damage already inflicted by the war was already akin to a nuclear strike.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accused the west of “nuclear blackmail” on Wednesday and warned “it’s not a bluff” as he vowed to use weapons of mass destruction to protect his country.

Dimko Zhluktenko, an aid worker based in Lviv, western Ukraine, said he did not believe there would be a nuclear strike as such a move would have no strategic advantage for Russian forces.

“Even if it were to happen, it wouldn’t have a massive effect,” the 23-year-old told the PA news agency.

“If they do a tactical nuke strike, that will be pure terrorism and that will lead to the absolute destruction of Russia.

“It wouldn’t grant any strategic advantage to Russian forces because they wouldn’t be able to advance to capture new territories.

“And at the same time, politically they would be destroyed because they would most likely get strikes back and face total isolation from other nations.”

Here are the latest photos to come out of Ukraine and Russia:

It’s 5pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:

• A new law signed by Vladimir Putin says Russian troops who refuse to fight, desert, disobey or surrender to the enemy could now face a jail sentence of up to 10 years, according to Russian media reports. The law was approved by the parliament earlier this week.

• Russia’s deputy defence minister, Dmitry Bulgakov, who has been in charge of military logistics since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion, has been dismissed from his post. He’s been replaced by Col Gen Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the National Defence Management Centre, who oversaw Russia’s siege of Mariupol.

• Iran’s ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, “advised” Ukraine to “refrain from being influenced by third parties who seek to destroy relations between the two countries”. The statement came after Ukraine downgraded diplomatic ties with Iran on Friday, and stripped its ambassador of his accreditation over what it called Tehran’s “unfriendly” decision to supply Russian forces with drones.

• Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, urged Europe to show an “openness to those who don’t want to be instrumentalised by the Kremlin”.

• The queue at the border between Russia and Georgia is approximately 6 miles (10km) long, where people have reportedly been waiting more than 20 hours to cross. The number of border crossers from Russia into Finland has also doubled in recent days compared with last week.

• More details of overnight attacks are emerging from Ukraine. Two civilians were killed on Friday in the Donetsk region, and three people were injured, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk oblast. Russian forces also shelled settlements near the Russian border. In the Kupyan district, five people were injured from shelling, including two children, aged 10 and 17.

• Russian authorities in the occupied regions of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson have allegedly started handing out draft notices and mobilising men of conscription age who “renounced Ukrainian citizenship and received passports of the Russian federation” according to Ukraine’s ministry of defence.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in occupied territory to hide from Russian mobilisation, avoid conscription letters, and get to Ukraine-held territory. However, if they end up in the Russian military, Zelenskiy asked people to save their lives and help liberate Ukraine.

• Russian forces are probably trying to attack dams in Ukraine in order to flood Ukrainian military crossing points amid Russian concerns about battlefield setbacks, UK intelligence said. The Ministry of Defence said in its latest daily briefing that the strikes were “unlikely to have caused significant disruption to Ukrainian operations due to the distance between the damaged dams and the combat areas”.

• So-called referendums are under way in areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops, with residents told to vote on proposals for the four Ukrainian regions to declare independence and then join Russia. The polls in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces are due to run until Tuesday and appear to be an attempt to provide cover for illegal annexation of the regions by Moscow.

• The UN has said its investigators have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture and horrific sexual violence. The team of three independent experts had launched initial investigations looking at the areas of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions, where they were “struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited”, and the frequent “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head and slit throats”.