hello and welcome. friday, september 23rd. 9 a.m. here in london. 11 a.m. in ukraine. voting begins today in the four occupied regions on whether to become a part of the russian federation. the areas make up about 50% of ukraine s territory. if they join russia many believe that will provide vladimir putin the pretexts to claim russian territory is under attack and escalate the war. it s prompting people to flee the country in all directions. a long line of cars backed up at russia s border with finland. the government in helsinki is thinking of new restrictions to keep russians from entering. they re crossing into armenia and turkey. according to one witness, traffic at one checkpoint stretched 5 to 6 kilometers. it was a similar scene along the border with kazakhstan. trucks lined up as far as the eye could see. ticket prices are soaring for flights out of moscow. most of which is sold out for the next few days. the kremlin calls reports exaggeration and fake news. the mobi
mobilization, it mentions mobilization. depending how you read that there s no cap on the number of people who could actually be called up but the reality, christina, is, look, russia is going to struggle to mobilize even far less than 300,000 let alone 300,000 people. the idea that a million con scripts could be called up if that were to happen, if that were to be true, it could not happen quickly. it s a very, very long process given russia s limitations. voting begins in this sort of essentially foehny referendum in four regions in ukraine. as we saw in crimea, this is likely to be a foregone conclusion. talk us through what the conclusion is and what we re seeing is happening. this is taking place in two regions in the south. zaporizhzhia and lieu hluhansk. it s difficult to say how weird this is. for the first four days of
people to remain at home. some people have heeded those words. some shops are closed, some are open and the metro system is public transport is still running. the metro stations are also being opened up for use as places to shelter if the conflict comes closer to this city of at least 1.5 million people. the real estimates should probably put that around 2 million. it s the second biggest city in the country. it s a significant target depending on what putin s game plan is. is he trying to draw ukrainian forces off away from the east by that threatening move with the transporter crossing from belarus south towards kyiv? is he trying to do the same by threatening kharkiv by knocking out the defensive positions and carving out those in the east, lieu hluhansk and donetsk.