September 26, 2022 Russia-Ukraine News

White House officials are watching closely and preparing their potential response Monday as four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine continued to vote in referendums that are being effectively carried out at gunpoint and have been dismissed by the West as a "sham."

With the results of the Russian-organized voting expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, US officials anticipate Russia could move quickly to annex the four areas, potentially within days.

If and when they do, it would prompt a swift response from the US, which has pledged not to recognize the results, one official said. 

British foreign secretary James Cleverly said in recent days that Russia has already decided in advance what will happen after these referendums are finished, stating that by “the end of the month, Russia’s intention will be to formalize the annexation of the four regions into the Russian Federation.”

As they monitor the referendums, top Biden administration officials have become more vocal in recent days about warnings they have delivered in private to Russian officials about the potential use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“Russia understands very well what the US would do in response to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine because we have spelled it out for them,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a television interview Sunday, though he declined to characterize who received those warnings or what the consequences would be.  

While officials have still not seen indications that Russia is planning to use nuclear weapons in the near term, they are more concerned about the possibility now than they were six or seven months ago, one official confirmed to CNN, though they still maintain that the likelihood of Russia doing so is low. 

The US State Department said they have not seen any indication that China is preparing to assist Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or assist Russia in evading sanctions.

Price said the US is “continuing to watch” what China does on Ukraine, and said that remarks by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi indicate that China has “a degree of unease with what Russia is doing in Ukraine.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Yi on Friday at the United Nations and “highlighted the implications if the PRC [People's Republic of China] were to provide support to Moscow’s invasion of a sovereign state,” according to the State Department readout of the meeting.

The Ukrainian security service says that a Russian soldier captured during combat in Kherson region this month has been linked to an atrocity carried out in Bucha near Kyiv back in March.

In a statement Monday, the agency claimed that the captured soldier, together with other Russian troops, "shot a car with a machine gun on the highway near Zdvizhivka village, Bucha district" in early March.

"The driver died on the spot," the statement said, claiming that the group then buried the victim's body in the forest.

The security service also said the driver's corpse was exhumed and submitted for forensic examination.

At the time Russian forces had just occupied Bucha.

When the Russian soldier was detained in September during combat in the Kherson region, the agency said its investigators proved the soldier's involvement in the crime.

The United States will “never recognize” Russian-occupied territory as “anything other than… part of Ukraine,” the White House said, as separatist leaders in four regions of Ukraine say that referendums are underway on whether to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at a Monday press briefing that the “sham referendum” was a “flagrant violation of international law.”

“We will continue to work with our allies and partners to hold Russia accountable and support Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Jean-Pierre said.

She added, “you will hear more from us in the coming days on this.”

The Russian state news agency TASS reported that a school in Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that was being used as a polling station in the so-called referendum on joining Russia has been hit by Ukrainian shelling.

Remember: Authorities in Kyiv and other Western countries say that the referendums are a “sham” whose outcome has been preordained, and which are carried out often literally at the barrel of a gun. International observers and the Ukrainian government expressed similar concerns in 2014, when Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea after a referendum carried out in the presence of Russian troops. 

TASS reported that six shells hit the school in Rubizhne. 

CNN is unable to verify what caused the extensive damage to the school.

The last day of the referendum process in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine is Tuesday.

Russian artillery and missile attacks have left at least one person dead and several injured in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, according to Ukrainian officials. 

Oleg Synehubov, head of the regional military administration in Kharkiv, said a missile attack on the city of Pervomaiske had killed a teenage girl and injured others. Two houses were destroyed.

Mykola Baksheev, the mayor of Pervomaiske, said there were several victims in the attack, and some Ukrainian media are reporting a higher number of fatalities.

In Donetsk, the middle of the city of Kramatorsk was hit, causing damage to an apartment block, according to images from the city council. 

The city of Sloviansk was also struck, according to the mayor Vadym Lyakh.

Despite recent progress by Ukrainian forces in the east, many cities and towns in those parts of Donetsk and Kharkiv under Ukrainian control are still within reach of Russian weapons. 

Satellite images from Sunday provided by Maxar Technologies show long lines of traffic on the Russian side of the border with Georgia.

Maxar says the northernmost image shows traffic queuing about 16 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) north of the border crossing, and adds that "the traffic jam likely continued further to the north of the imaged area."

CNN reported earlier Monday, that images and social media video from the border crossing between Russia and Georgia have shown long lines of stationary traffic through a mountain pass. Drone video uploaded from the area Monday suggests there are hundreds of vehicles gathered on the Russian side, with witnesses saying that people are waiting up to 48 hours to cross into Georgia.

Several videos show additional Russian security forces arriving at the border in an armored personnel carrier.

Queues have built up at the Verkhnii Lars crossing from North Ossetia into Georgia and other border crossings since the announcement last week by President Vladimir Putin of a partial mobilization.

Videos show some families and many men on their own among those waiting to cross at Verknii Lars Hundreds of people are approaching the crossing on foot, pulling suitcases. 

Amid the sudden influx, "we have been pushing government to introduce visas and/or close the borders," an opposition politician in Georgia, Nona Mamulashvili, told CNN.

At the moment, the border appears still to be open.

President Vladimir Putin has granted former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden Russian citizenship, according to an official decree published on the Russian government portal Monday. 

Snowden, who admitted to leaking information about US surveillance programs to the press, has been in Russia since 2013. He is facing espionage charges in the US and up to 30 years in prison.

In November 2020, Snowden and his wife applied for Russian citizenship. He had been already given permanent residency in Russia. 

What the US is saying: US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said their position on Snowden “has not changed” in light of this development. 

“Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that as a result of his Russian citizenship, apparently now he may well be conscripted to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine,” Price said at a State Department briefing Monday. “Mr. Snowden should return to the United States where he should face justice as any other American citizen would.” 

Price said he was not aware of any change in Snowden’s American citizenship.

CNN's Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting to this post.

Multiple social media videos show hundreds of civilians taking part in a second day of protests against military mobilization in the Russian region of Dagestan. 

The videos show scuffles in the main square in the Dagestan capital of Makhachkala involving dozens of young men. They also show police making a number of arrests.

In an apparent effort to assuage the protestors, the head of the Republic, Sergey Melikov, said that mobilization should take place "strictly according to criteria set out by the President."

In a message on his Telegram channel, Melikov said that if "those who are not included in the list were mobilized, including students, fathers with many children with young children, guys who have never held a machine gun in their hands, [this] should be immediately corrected."

"I know that at the very beginning of the mobilization such mistakes took place, among other things, because some citizens did not notify the military enlistment offices in a timely manner about the circumstances giving them a respite from mobilization," he continued.

"If on the ground you are faced with a violation of your rights in the process of partial mobilization, be sure to report this to the republican military registration and enlistment office. In each case, we will understand and make an objective decision," he added.

Melikov also suggested that there were "fake stories on social networks that our enemies diligently spread through public pages created abroad" about mobilization. He asserted that the protests were "prepared and controlled from abroad."

He said he was in regular contact with the military commissar of Dagestan about the mobilization process. 

More than 100 people were detained during the protests on Sunday in Makhachkala, according to an independent human right monitor OVD-Info.

More background: The protests come after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last Wednesday that 300,000 reservists would be drafted under an immediate “partial mobilization,” in a bid to reinforce his faltering invasion of Ukraine.

Though Russian authorities have said it would only affect Russians with previous military experience, the decree itself gives much broader terms, sowing fear among Russians of a wider draft in the future – and the implications for ethnic minorities.

Anti-mobilization protests have spread across the country, with more than 2,350 people arrested since the announcement, according to OVD-Info.

CNN's Josh Pennington and Jessie Yeung contributed reporting to this post.