NATO chief calls Nord Stream leaks acts of ‘sabotage’

The leaks from the Nord Stream gas pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic sea pose “no health risk,” according to Denmark’s Energy Management Agency.

“The prognoses show that the concentration of gas that could potentially reach Bornholm are very small and far below the threshold to pose any health risk,” the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

The agency assessed “no risk outside the safety zones established at sea,” the statement added.

In addition to running prognoses, the agency said it had sent specialized equipment and crew to Bornholm to measure concentrations in the air.

“The crew has been working since Tuesday morning and the measurements confirm that there is no health risk,” the statement said.

Some context: Earlier this week, European countries raced to investigate unexplained leaks in two Russian gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark, infrastructure at the heart of an energy crisis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The incident has scuppered expectations that Europe could receive gas via Nord Stream 1 before the winter, as gas prices soar and countries search for alternative energy supplies.

Russia ceased all gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 in August, condemning Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties — which European politicians say is a ploy to stop dispensing gas.

The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had not yet entered commercial operation, and Germany abandoned the plan to use it to supply gas just days before Moscow launched its invasion in February.

CNN’s Jessie Yeung and Chris Liakos contributed reporting to this post.

Authorities in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine that held so-called referendums say that all votes have now been counted and each saw a huge majority in favor of joining Russia.

The head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said on his Telegram channel that 99.23% of votes cast were for “joining the Donetsk People’s Republic to the Russian Federation.”

Elena Kravchenko, the head of the election commission of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), said 98.42% of voters cast their ballots in favor of the motion.

As CNN previously reported, in Kherson, the Telegram channel of the pro-Russian administration said that with all votes counted, 87.05% were in favor of joining Russia.

In Zaporizhzhia, the head of the election commission said the final tally was 93.11% in favor.

The referendums — announced at short notice by pro-Russian authorities in the four regions — were widely condemned by Western governments as a sham and against international law. They were not observed by independent monitors.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said the referendum process was a “sham” that showed Russia’s “contempt for all those who have been calling for diplomacy”.

Ukrainian officials say that turnout has been extremely low and claimed that people had been bussed in from Crimea to vote.  

Two covert “influence operations from China and Russia” spreading political narratives about the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine were removed from Facebook for violating the platform’s policy on “inauthentic behavior,” Meta said Tuesday.  

The Russian network was the “largest of its kind we’ve disrupted since the war in Ukraine began,” Meta said, targeting audiences in Germany, France, Italy and Ukraine with “narratives focused on the war and its impact through a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations.” 

Narratives pushed by the Russian network centered on the war in Ukraine, parroting Kremlin talking points about the impact of sanctions, and spreading stories critical of Ukrainian refugees. 

The sprawling network — which began in May of this year — comprised over 60 websites which carefully impersonated news organizations across Europe, including The Guardian, Bild and Der Spiegel. The disinformation effort revolved around fake news articles, original memes and YouTube videos which were shared across Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, Change.org, Avaaz, and LiveJournal, according to Meta. 

The content was shared in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian, and in some cases amplified by the Facebook pages of Russian embassies in Europe and Asia. 

The network that originated in China was smaller in its scope and targeted people in the United States, Czech Republic and to a lesser extent Chinese and French speaking audiences globally in four “largely separate and short-lived efforts” between 2021 and mid-September 2022.  

In the US the operation focused on “domestic politics ahead of the midterm elections,” while in the Czech Republic the narratives concerned the country’s “foreign policy toward China and Ukraine,” Meta said. 

The European Union is “deeply concerned” about damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that has resulted in leaks in the international waters of the Baltic Sea, calling it a “deliberate act.”

The bloc “will support any investigation aimed at getting full clarity on what happened and why and will take further steps to increase our resilience in energy security,” he said. 

The European Union “denounces” the holding of illegal referendums by pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Wednesday.

The referendums – condemned by Western countries as a sham – have seen four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine vote on whether to join Russia via polls which are contrary to international law. 

“We commend the courage of Ukrainians, who continue to oppose and resist Russian invasion,” he added. 

Untrained Russian forces are arriving in combat zones across Ukraine following the Kremlin’s mobilization effort, the Ukrainian military claimed Wednesday in its daily situational update. 

CNN is unable to verify the Ukrainian Armed Forces claims.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the immediate “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens, in an effort to bolster the Kremlin’s faltering invasion, following Ukraine’s gains in its ongoing counteroffensive. 

Experts have previously expressed concerns about the state of Russian forces in Ukraine and their ability to get new recruits sufficiently trained.

Several European leaders have suggested three leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea were caused deliberately.

On Tuesday the Danish Prime Minister said she sees the leaks as “deliberate actions.” 

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson also said Tuesday that the incident is “likely a deliberate action.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referred to the pipeline leaks as “sabotage action” in a tweet Tuesday. She added that, “Any deliberate disruption of active European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest possible response.”

Finland Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Tuesday that the damage caused to the pipelines is “very concerning,” following a call with his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde.

“There should be a full investigation into the incident. Sabotage to the pipelines cannot be excluded. (This poses) serious risks for the environment and shipping,” he added.

Even Russia, which built the network, said the possibility of sabotage could not be ruled out.

Nord Stream AG, the operator of the pipelines, in safety documents published before any news emerged of the leaks, had said that the probability of a pipeline failure or leakage is “as low as one damage event every 100,000 years”.

Canada will impose fresh sanctions on “persons and entities” involved in carrying out “sham referendums” in Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday. 

“Canada does not and will not ever recognize the results of these sham referendums or Russia’s attempted illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories,” Trudeau said. 

Some context: Pro-Russian authorities have held so-called referendums across Ukraine in the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east and parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. 

The votes – which are illegal under international law – have been dismissed as a “sham” by Ukraine and Western nations.  

An exclusive CNN poll of Ukrainians conducted in February, just before Russia’s invasion, found that no region of the country had more than one in five people backing Ukrainian “unification” with Russia.

A British ambassador has urged the United Nations to reject the results of illegal Russian-backed “sham” referendums in Ukraine.

During a United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the war, the United Kingdom’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN James Kariuki said the referendums were “an egregious violation” of the principles of the UN Charter.

“The very idea that a referendum on a fundamental question could be held at three days’ notice in the middle of a war zone is frankly farcical,” he added.

“We must all unequivocally reject these illegitimate actions and Russian attempts to illegally annex Ukrainian territory,” he said.