Russia launched referendums on Friday aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine, raising the stakes in the seven-month-old war with what Kyiv called an illegal sham that saw residents threatened with punishment if they did not vote.

DIPLOMACY

• The referendums had been discussed for months by Moscow-installed authorities in the four regions - in Ukraine’s east and southeast - but Kyiv’s recent battlefield victories prompted a scramble to schedule them.

• Voting in the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, representing about 15% of Ukrainian territory, is due to run from Friday to Tuesday.

• A U.N.-mandated independent Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that war crimes had been committed in Ukraine based on evidence gathered from four regions of the country.

• A senior Chinese diplomat pressed Ukraine’s foreign minister for ‘peaceful settlement’ of crisis.

• Putin was “pushed” into invading Ukraine and wanted to put “decent people” in charge of Kyiv, former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi said, drawing fierce criticism just ahead of Italy’s election.

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Moscow was not threatening anybody with nuclear weapons and that open confrontation with the United States and NATO was not in Russia’s interests.

• War crimes including rape, torture and confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, the head of a U.N.-mandated investigation body said on Friday. Ukraine and its Western allies allege a litany of rights abuses by Russian soldiers since the Feb. 24 invasion, but Moscow denies that as a smear campaign.

CONSCRIPTION

• Draft-age Russians headed abroad to escape their country’s biggest conscription drive since World War Two, with crossings into Finland and Khazakstan busy. Prices for air tickets from Moscow rocketed. The Kremlin said reports of an exodus were “exaggerated”.

• Russia’s General Staff said some 10,000 volunteers had enlisted without even waiting for their call-up papers, Russian news agencies reported.

• Some Russian technology professionals, bankers, and journalists at state media outlets will be not be called up to serve in Ukraine as part of Russia’s mobilisation drive, the defence ministry said.

FIGHTING

• Russian-installed separatists said at least six civilians had been killed and six wounded in a missile strike on a market in central Donetsk. A Reuters reporter saw five dead people and several wounded.

• Russian forces attacked several towns including Zaporizhzhia, which was hit by about 10 shells, said regional governor Oleksander Starukh. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

• The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said Russian mortar bombs killed two people and wounded six in Toretsk town in the Donetsk region.

• In the Russian-held southern city of Melitopol, a blast hit a crowded market. The city’s exiled mayor said it had killed three soldiers.

QUOTES

• It’s all nonsense, bluff, and political manipulation to frighten us and the Western countries with their nuclear stuff,“ 65-year-old Oleksandr Yaroshenko said when asked about the referendums.