At least ten people have been killed after a strike on Tuesday which hit a restaurant in Kramatorsk on Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The dead included at least three children, and more than 60 people are said to have been wounded. Emergency services said seven people had been rescued from under the rubble.
The Ukrainian government appointed a new head of state-owned weapons producer Ukroboronprom on Wednesday. “The newly appointed general director faces three main tasks: to increase the production of ammunition and military equipment, build an effective anti-corruption infrastructure in the company, and transform Ukroboronprom,” Oleksander Kamyshyn, minister for Ukraine’s strategic industries, said. The appointment of Herman Smetanin is part of a broader transformation of the key industry, officials said.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, reports that a 70-year-old woman was injured in shelling in the Kupiansk district.
Ukraine’s air force has reported that overnight it destroyed six “Shahed” drones. Two drones were shot down over Cherkasy region, but two more hit an empty warehouse in the region, it said.
Ukraine’s defence minister says Ukrainian forces have made “certain gains” that have not been made public and that the bulk of its troops reserves have yet to be deployed. Oleksiy Reznikov told the Financial Times the retaking of small villages from Russian occupation in recent weeks were “not the main event” in Kyiv’s planned attack.
One of the Russian-imposed leaders in occupied Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, reports that explosions have been heard in the city of Polohy. On Telegram he has suggested that three explosions were heard near the train depot there. The claims have not been independently verified.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, claimed that over 200 people had their water supply interrupted after a Ukrainian cross-border strike on the region.
Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, has confirmed that his country is to supply Ukraine with two Nasams launchers. Nausėda is visiting Kyiv on Wednesday ahead of travelling to an EU summit later in the week.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the parliament of Croatia for recognising the Holodomor as a genocide.
Gen Sergey Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, had advance knowledge that the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was planning a rebellion against Moscow’s defence officials, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Nato is ready to defend itself from “Moscow or Minsk” after calls from countries bordering Belarus and Russia for the alliance to strengthen its eastern defences. Nato head Jens Stoltenberg said it is “too early to make any final judgment about the consequences” of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin moving to Belarus, but said “what is absolutely clear is that we have sent a clear message to Moscow and to Minsk that Nato is there to protect every ally and every inch of Nato territory.”
The movement of Wagner group troops to Belarus is a negative signal for Poland, president Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday, as he headed for talks with other Nato leaders in the Netherlands. “We see what is happening, the relocation of Russian forces in the form of the Wagner group to Belarus, and the head of the Wagner group going there, those are all very negative signals for us which we want to raise strongly with our allies,” he told reporters.
Prigozhin flew into exile in Belarus on his private jet on Tuesday, as Moscow claimed the paramilitary force had agreed to hand over its weapons after the group’s failed insurrection. “Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today,” the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said in comments first reported by Belta, the country’s national news agency.
Wagner forces in Russia are expected to begin the process of disarming after Moscow announced plans for the group to hand over weapons, vehicles and equipment. Elements of the force will be disbanded, absorbed into the Russian military or head into exile in Belarus along with Prigozhin under the agreement hammered out between the mercenary leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Wagner mercenary group was entirely financed by the Russian state, which spent 86bn roubles ($1bn) on it between May 2022 and May 2023, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said. In addition, Prigozhin, who led the group’s brief mutiny on Saturday, made almost as much during the same period from his food and catering business, Putin said at a meeting with security forces.
Ukraine’s government reprimanded Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, on Tuesday as city officials faced criticism over the state of bomb shelters after the deaths of three people locked out on the street during a Russian air raid. The government said it had also approved the dismissal of the heads of two Kyiv districts and two acting heads of districts, Reuters reported. It was not immediately clear whether Klitschko, a former boxer, would face any further action.
