Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner group mercenary force, said on Friday that his forces would leave the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would pull back on 10 May – ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war – because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place.
Earlier Prigozhin released a video showing him standing in a field of Russian corpses, personally blaming top defence chiefs for the losses suffered by his fighters in Ukraine. Prigozhin’s expletives were bleeped out in the video published by his press service, in which he yelled “We have a 70% shortage of ammunition. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the ******* ammunition?”. The reference to defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov appeared to reignite the simmering feud between Prigozhin and the Russian establishment forces.
In a coded response, defence minister Sergei Shoigu has carried out an inspection of troop readiness for forces that are engaged in the war against Ukraine.
Authorities in the Russian-occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia have begun evacuating villages near the frontline. The Russian imposed governor Yevgeny Balitsky announced the move in anticipation of a Ukrainian offensive aimed at retaking the area. It is believed that about 70,000 civilians could be taken away from the area.
“In the past few days, the enemy has stepped up shelling of settlements close to the frontline,” Balitsky said. “I have therefore made a decision to evacuate first of all children and parents, elderly people, disabled people and hospital patients.”
It is believed that Russia is bringing Wagner forces from along the frontline to Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar. She said that Russia wanted to capture the city before the victory day holiday on 9 May.
Residents in Kherson are readying themselves ahead of a 56-hour curfew due to begin on Friday evening. The violence in the oblast has intensified this week, with 23 people killed by Russian strikes on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed one of its own drones after it lost control over Kyiv on Thursday. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine presidential chief of staff, initially said an enemy drone that had been shot down. But the air force later clarified it was Ukrainian and had been destroyed to avoid “undesirable circumstances”. No casualties were reported.
The Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region of Russia has been attacked by a drone or drones for the second consecutive day.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said “any self-respecting country” would refrain from speaking to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy following the apparent drone attack on the Kremlin.
The White House has dismissed as “ludicrous” claims by Russia that Washington orchestrated drone strikes on Moscow, saying the US was not involved in the incident and accusing Russia of lying. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “One thing I can tell you for certain is that the US did not have any involvement with this incident, contrary to [Vladimir Putin spokesman] Mr Peskov’s lies, and that’s just what they are: lies.” Earlier, Dmitry Peskov said: “Decisions about such terrorist attacks are taken in Washington” and that Kyiv “just implements these decisions”.
Finnish power utility Fortum has formally notified the Kremlin that it strongly objects to what it said was Russia’s “unlawful” seizure of its subsidiary in the country. In his regular morning press conference, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov responded by saying the seizure was in accordance with Russian legislation.
Bill Clinton has said that he knew in 2011 it was just “a matter of time” before Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 — three years before he took Crimea — that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,” the former US president recalled. “He said . . . ‘I don’t agree with it. And I do not support it. And I am not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day forward it was just a matter of time.”
Video footage has emerged overnight of a scuffle between a Ukrainian delegate and a Russian delegate during a gathering of Black Sea nations in the Turkish capital Ankara. The footage shows the Russian delegations secretary, Valery Stavitsky, snatching a Ukrainian flag out of the hands of his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksandr Marikovski, who unfurled the flag behind another Russian delegate who was mid-interview at the parliamentary assembly of the Black Sea economic cooperation group in Turkey.
Russian forces in Ukraine are so degraded they cannot mount any significant offensive moves and are focused for now on consolidating control of occupied territory, the US intelligence chief said. Avril Haines said Putin’s strategy is likely to be to prolong the conflict until western support for Kyiv wanes.
Putin must be brought to justice for his war in Ukraine, Zelenskiy said on Thursday during a visit to The Hague, where the international criminal court (ICC) is based. “We all want to see a different Vladimir here in the Hague, the one who deserves to be sanctioned for his criminal actions here, in the capital of international law,” Zelenskiy said in a speech. “I’m sure we will see that happen when we win,” he said, adding: “Whoever brings war must receive judgment.”
