Stafford Drive may be Closed Forever but investigations continue
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| Stafford Drive Ruby Bay below this house |
Stafford Drive investigations continue
Tasman District Council hopes to receive expert advice on a large landslip at Ruby Bay shortly.
Stafford Drive will remain closed until further notice due to the massive land subsidence above McKee Domain.
The house at the top of the slip looks to be in a very precarious position.
Tasman District Council Transportation Manager Jamie McPherson expects to receive the final geotechnical report this week.
He says this will help inform the decision-making process about the future of the road, but at this stage there is no certainty about when or if Stafford Drive might be cleared and reopened.
McPherson says a key issue is ongoing land stability, and potential risks and impacts on road users and adjacent landowners need to be taken into consideration.
"Costs and future liabilities are important factors that will need to be weighed up. In the meantime, the road will remain closed, and the recommended detour is via Te Mamaku Drive, State Highway 60.”
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| One of the slips on Stafford Road Ruby Bay |
He says the situation is being closely monitored.
“But all road users should heed basic road rules, like passing other road users, for example cyclists, at places with adequate clear road space ahead to do so safely, and to drive to the conditions with an ability to stop within the visible road in front of them.”
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Gunman opens fire at Russian draft office amid backlash to Putin's mobilisation
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Russian police officers detain a man in Moscow following protests against the mobilisation |
Incident in the town of Ust-Ilimsk comes just days after the Russian president announced the mobilisation of 300,000 men
A man opened fire and wounded a recruitment officer at an enlistment centre in Siberia on Monday, the local governor said, as tensions mount over Russia's military mobilisation.
The incident occurred in the town of Ust-Ilimsk in Irkutsk, a vast and thinly populated region of south-eastern Siberia.
In a video published on social media, the gunman is seen identifying himself to police officers as Ruslan Zinin, 25, and firing at least one shot inside the draft office.
Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region, wrote on a messaging app that the head of the draft office was in hospital in a critical condition, and that the gunman "will absolutely be punished".
"I am ashamed that this is happening at a time when, on the contrary, we should be united. We must not fight with each but against real threats," Mr Kobzev said.
"I have given instructions to strengthen security measures. I ask everyone to remain calm," he said.
A number of draft offices have been attacked since Vladimir Putin declared a mobilisation last Wednesday.
Protests against the draft took place over the weekend in Dagestan and Yakutia, both of which have supplied disproportionate numbers of soldiers for the war in Ukraine.
Elsewhere, border crossing points out of Russia became clogged up by men of fighting age attempting to flee the country. There was reportedly a 24-mile queue into neighbouring Georgia as thousands attempted to escape across the frontier.
Flights to other countries had already sold out within hours of Putin’s mobilisation announcement.
It comes as Britain's Ministry of Defence said that the initial tranches of men called up as part of the mobilisation have started arriving at military bases.
"Many tens of thousands of call-up papers have already been issued. Russia will now face an administrative and logistical challenge to provide training for the troops," the MoD said in Londan.
It added that many of the drafted troops will not have had any military experience for some years, and that many will be deployed to the front line with "minimal relevant preparation".
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US will take ‘catastrophic’ action if Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons
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A Russian soldier sits with members of an electoral commission in Mariupol as they wait for voters. In occupied Melitopol, only 20 per cent of residents cast ballots in the sham referendums |
Severe consequences loom if Russia follows through on attack threat, says White House, as Kremlin’s sham referendums in Ukraine continue
Russia will face “catastrophic consequences” if it deploys nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US has warned Kremlin officials.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said on Monday that the US had communicated directly, privately to the Russians at very high levels how it would respond if Vladimir Putin carried out the nuclear strike threat he made during an address last week.
“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively.” Mr Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press programme.
Mr Sullivan did not describe the nature of the planned response but said the US had privately “spelled out in greater detail exactly what that would mean” to Moscow.
It came as Putin’s foreign minister said on Sunday that annexed areas of Ukraine would be protected like Russian territory. Referendums in those areas are continuing, with Ukrainians under pressure from armed Moscow forces to cast their ballots.
Some of Putin’s allies, including the speaker of the State Duma, publicly broke ranks on Sunday to criticise the way in which conscripts are being recruited, amid reports of elderly and ill men being drafted after the Russian president announced a partial mobilisation order.
Putin made the nuclear threat in an address when he said Russia had “various weapons of destruction” at its disposal and would use “all the means available”, before adding that he was not bluffing.
Nato’s nuclear powers have started ramping up vigilance and deterrence.
In a separate interview on Monday, Mr Sullivan said Putin’s nuclear threats were a “matter that we have to take deadly seriously”.
Military analysts believe Putin could use Russia’s military doctrine, which allows it to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory, to reframe the conflict in Ukraine as defensive.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s veteran foreign minister, said on Monday that the Kremlin could use nuclear weapons to defend occupied Ukrainian territories if annexed following referendums.
Russian forces have only been able to coerce one in five residents of occupied Melitopol to vote in a sham annexation referendum despite the threat of violence, its exiled mayor has said.
Since voting began on Friday, Russian officials have been going door-to-door in occupied regions flanked by gunmen to give out ballot papers and identify voters.
Ukrainians living under occupation have been warned their families would be massacred if they refuse to take part.
Despite the threats, Ivan Fedorov, Ukraine’s elected mayor of Melitopol, said: “Our citizens haven’t taken part in this fake referendum … after three days Russia has only been able to find just 20 per cent of people to vote. Nobody wants to vote, nobody wants to say yes to the Russian referendum.
Of those forced to cast a vote, he said “90 per cent” had voted against Russia’s occupation becoming permanent.
In the occupied regions of Ukraine, Moscow has introduced the rouble and issued Russian passports. Ballots are being held, and are expected to continue until Tuesday, in Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
Melitopol, in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, had a pre-war population of about 150,000 and is one of the largest cities to fall under Russian control since the start of the war.
In the build-up to the vote, pro-Moscow officials blocked evacuation routes to Ukrainian-held territory, only allowing women and children to flee to occupied Crimea, Mr Fedorov said.
Mr Fedorov said men of fighting age had been blocked from leaving altogether, raising the prospect of them being forcibly drafted into Russian-backed armed forces.
More than 60,000 people still reside in the city, without the support of Ukraine’s government.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, confirmed on Sunday that Kyiv had received high-powered air-defence systems for the first time from the US. The National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) was promised by Washington last month.
Mr Zelensky told CBS the shipment had been received but added: “Believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians.”
Thousands of Russians have fled to Finland to escape mobilisation
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Thousands of Russians crossed the Finnish border over the weekend. |
Almost 17,000 Russians crossed the border into Finland during the weekend, an 80 per cent rise from a week earlier, Finnish authorities have said.
Captain Taneli Repo at Finland's southeastern border authority said: "The queues continue to be a bit longer than they've usually been since the pandemic.”
Young Russian men who spoke to Reuters after crossing into Finland via the Vaalimaa border station last week, some three hours by car from Russia's second-largest city St Petersburg, said they left out of fear of being drafted for the war.
The Finnish government, wary of becoming a major transit nation, on Friday said it will stop all Russians from entering on tourist visas within the coming days, although exceptions may still apply on humanitarian grounds.
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