Here is a summary of today's developments
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Friday that he had warned the Wagner group chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin – who apparently died in a plane crash earlier this week – to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and he insisted that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus.
A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company told Reuters.
Russian investigators said on Friday that they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the scene of a plane crash thought to have killed Prigozhin two days ago.
Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
The Kremlin said on Friday that western suggestions that Yevgeny Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. It declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof that Prigozhin was onboard the plane that crashed with no survivors earlier this week, but said it is “highly likely” he is dead, Reuters reports.
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The Turkish and Ukrainian foreign ministers said on Friday that other solutions to the export of Ukrainian grain than the Black Sea grain deal, which ended after Russia quit last month, were less optimal.
The deal brokered by Turkey and the UN last year had allowed the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain. Ankara has been trying to persuade Moscow to return to the agreement.
Ukraine announced earlier this month a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea to release cargo ships that have been trapped in its ports since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The first vessel that used the corridor arrived in Istanbul last week.
In a news conference during his visit to Kyiv, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said renewing the grain deal was a priority for Ankara and that Russia must be included in the equation for a functioning agreement.
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Ten bodies recovered from scene of plane crash, say Russian investigators
Russian investigators said Friday they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the scene of a plane crash thought to have killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin two days ago.
An investigation is underway into what caused Wednesday’s crash, which came exactly two months after Wagner’s short-lived rebellion against Moscow’s military leadership.
“In the course of initial investigative work, the bodies of 10 victims were found at the site of the plane crash,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media.
“Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” it said, adding that “flight recorders” were also recovered from the scene.
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Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
The Dutch brewer, which also owns the Amstel, Birra Moretti and Tiger brands, said it would take a €300m loss as a result of the sale, which will see it transfer all of its remaining assets, including seven breweries, to Russia’s Arnest Group.
Read more here:
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Second plane linked to Prigozhin 'has no connection to Wagner', says airline CEO
A second plane linked to Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to the mercenary group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company told Reuters.
Russia’s aviation authority has said Prigozhin was on board a private Embraer jet which crashed on Wednesday evening north-west of Moscow with no survivors. An investigation has yet to definitively identify the 10 people on board, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has sent condolences to their families.
Russian media, mainly associated with the Wagner group’s Telegram channel, Grey Zone, had linked a second business jet with the tail number RA-02748 with the mercenary group, and had reported that it was also in the air at the time of the crash.
But the jet operator, Russian company Jetica LLC, denied any such link.
“Neither the plane itself nor its passengers are related to Wagner and never have been,” Jetica’s CEO Sergey Trifonov told Reuters.
This plane had not been rented out, Trifonov said, though he declined to say who its owner was.
The RA-02748 was landing in St Petersburg on Wednesday evening on a flight from Moscow when the plane believed to be carrying Prigozhin crashed, flight tracking data shows. It then took off to fly back to Moscow about 20 minutes later.
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Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister said on Friday, after the presumed death of the mercenary outfit’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
“They are broken.”
Reznikov said he believed that Prigozhin’s presumed demise had weakened the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
“Because it has shown the world: if Putin does a deal with someone and breaks the deal, then that means that he cannot be trusted,” said Reznikov in extracts of the interview released by the newspaper before its publication on Sunday.
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Germany’s top security official says she hopes prosecutors will find sufficient evidence to indict whomever carried out the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year.
Explosions on 26 September 2022 damaged the pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany. Whom was responsible for the sabotage – which added to tensions over the war in Ukraine as European countries moved to wean themselves off Russian energy sources – remains a mystery.
Germany, Sweden and Denmark have investigated the attack, though they have been tight-lipped about their findings.
“I hope that the [German] federal prosecutor will find enough clues to indict the perpetrators,” the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published on Friday.
“We must bring such crimes to court,” she said. “It also strengthens citizens’ confidence in the state of law when it succeeds in clearing up such complex cases.”
In July, European diplomats told the UN security council that investigators found traces of undersea explosives in samples taken from a yacht that was searched as part of the probe. But they said it wasn’t yet possible to “reliably establish” the identity or motives of the perpetrators, or whether a specific country was involved.
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Ukraine’s EU neighbours decided jointly to call for extending the ban on Ukrainian grain imports until the end of the year, the Polish agriculture minister said on Friday.
After a video meeting with his counterparts from Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, as well as Bulgaria, a country not bordering Ukraine, the minister said they came to a joint position on the matter.
“We support extending the [grain] import ban to our countries until the end of the year,” Robert Telus told reporters.
The restrictions are set to expire on 15 September, AFP reports.
In June, the EU agreed to restrict imports of grain from Ukraine to five member states seeking to protect their farmers who blamed those imports for the slump in prices on local markets.
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I urged Prigozhin to 'watch out', says Belarus leader
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Friday that he warned the Wagner group chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and he insisted that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, initially vowed to crush Prigozhin’s June mutiny, comparing it to the wartime turmoil that ushered in the revolution of 1917, but hours later a deal was clinched to allow Prigozhin and some of his mercenaries to go to Belarus.
Prigozhin, Lukashenko said on Friday, had twice dismissed concerns raised by the Belarusian leader about possible threats to his life. Lukashenko said that during the mutiny he had warned Prigozhin that he would “die” if he continued to march on Moscow, to which he said Prigozhin had answered: “To hell with it – I will die.”
Then, Lukashenko said, when Prigozhin and Utkin, who helped found Wagner and was also listed as a passenger on the plane which crashed, had come to see him, he had warned them both: “Lads – you watch out.”
It was not exactly clear from Lukashenko’s words, which were reported by state news agency BELTA, when that conversation took place, Reuters reports.
Lukashenko – an old acquaintance of Prigozhin and a close ally of Russia – said that Putin had nothing to do with the plane crash.
“I know Putin: he is calculating, very calm, even tardy,” Lukashenko said. “I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is to blame. It’s just too rough and unprofessional a job.”
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Our video team have clipped up Rishi Sunak commenting on Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is believed to have been killed when his Embraer jet crashed north-west of the Russian capital on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, on Friday to discuss “preparations for the Global Peace Summit and the Peace Formula [and] Russia’s threats to the Black Sea grain corridor”.
I received Foreign Minister of Türkiye @HakanFidan to discuss a range of important issues.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 25, 2023
Preparations for the Global Peace Summit and the Peace Formula. Russia's threats to the Black Sea grain corridor.
I thank Türkiye for its consistent and lasting support for Ukraine 🇺🇦🇹🇷 pic.twitter.com/FLbClACzCa
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Alexei Ratmansky, 54, is the most significant classical choreographer of the current era. Born in St Petersburg, he grew up in Kyiv, trained in Moscow, started his professional career in Ukraine, and later became the artistic director of Russia’s Bolshoi ballet, his identity closely entwined between the two countries.
When the Ukrainian invasion began, the ballet great left a show at the Bolshoi in protest. Here he reconsiders his past ties with Russia and the silence of the cultural elite in the country of his birth:
Here is a summary of today's developments:
The Kremlin said on Friday that western suggestions that the Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”, and it declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
Russian investigators have confirmed the death of the pilot of the plane that crashed with the loss of all onboard including Prigozhin, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning.
Poland’s domestic security agency is investigating whether an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease that has killed seven people in the south of the country could be the result of intentional tampering with the water system, authorities said on Friday.
The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof Prigozhin was onboard a plane that crashed with no survivors earlier this week but it is “highly likely” he is dead, Reuters reports.
The US state department on Thursday imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said were reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children, as Washington ramps up pressure on Moscow over its invasion.
The United States will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
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Amid the death of the Wagner group leader, some other groups are already sprouting, calling themselves Redut, Convoy or Patriot, although little information is available on their composition.
Lou Osborn, from the open-source group All Eyes on Wagner, told AFP these companies “have much less presence and are less successful than Wagner but they follow the same construction”, noting the arrival of defectors from Wagner and also their close links with GRU Russian military intelligence.
Lucas Webber, one of the co-founders of the Militant Wire research network, said Russian far-right movements within the military sphere on the internet were now bitterly mourning the deaths of the group’s leaders.
“These elements portray the Russian political and military elite as decadent, corrupt and detached from the realities of the battlefield.
“In contrast, they respected Prigozhin as a gritty character who cared about his men’s lives, was not afraid to criticise the military leadership and would frequently visit his fighters on the frontline.”
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Analysts say that while the Wagner mercenary group’s brand is inevitably going to be weakened by the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, its previous successes will serve to inspire other mercenary groups affiliated to the Russian state to emerge, albeit in a different format with likely greater Kremlin control.
“This process may also involve rebranding, and companies within the Wagner orbit may divide into separate entities based on functional area, which may be nationalised or maintained as quasi-independent entities,” Catrina Doxsee, an associate director and associate fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP.
But she added that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had likely seen in the June mutiny “the danger” in allowing so much power and responsibility to reside with one man.
“Although Russia is likely to seek to continue its PMC [private military company] model for foreign policy and security assistance, it is likely that the marketplace of PMCs will diversify away from Wagner’s monopoly to prevent a repetition of Prigozhin’s challenge to the regime,” she added.
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Russian investigators confirm death of pilot of downed plane and inform his family
Russian investigators have confirmed the death of the pilot of the plane which crashed with the loss of all on board including the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
They have yet to confirm a genetic match, the source added.
An Embraer executive jet on which Prigozhin was listed as a passenger crashed in Tver region north of Moscow on 23 August, according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.
Six other passengers were listed along with a crew of three, including the pilot, Alexei Levshin.
A source close to the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters that investigators had told Levshin’s family that they had “documentary proof” he had been on the crashed plane.
Levshin’s family are due to undergo a DNA test later on Friday to establish whether they are his relatives, the source said.
Investigators did not mention the fate of others registered as being on board the flight, the source said.
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Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday that its forces had downed 73 Ukrainian drones over the past 24 hours, after a night of mass drone attacks focused on the Russian-held Crimea peninsula.
It said its forces had also struck Ukrainian port infrastructure used for military purposes, Interfax reported.
'Attempted murder' in Berlin of Russian journalist who exposed war crimes in Ukraine
German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning.
Kostyuchenko, a foreign correspondent who exposed alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, last October experienced extreme disorientation, abdominal pain and swollen extremities on a train journey from Munich to Berlin.
“When I got out at the train station, I realised I couldn’t figure out how to get home,” she wrote two weeks ago in the literary journal n+1. “I knew that I needed to transfer to the subway, but I couldn’t figure out how.”
“The pain in my stomach was getting worse and worse. Even touching my own skin was painful. I barely slept that night and for several more after that. As soon as I managed to fall asleep, the pain would wake me up,” Elena Kostyuchenko said.https://t.co/YOglvA5UmA
— Novaya Gazeta Europe (@novayagazeta_en) August 15, 2023
Two weeks ago, the investigative portal the Insider reported that doctors they consulted said Kostyuchenko’s symptoms were consistent with poisoning.
A spokesperson for Berlin prosecutors said on Friday: “We can confirm that an investigation into the attempted murder of Elena Kostyuchenko is pending.”
The Insider reported that two other Russian woman journalists living in exile experienced poisoning symptoms in the same period: in May 2023, Natalia Arno, president of the US-based Free Russia Foundation, fell ill in Prague; and last October, the radio journalist Irina Babloyan fell ill in Tbilisi.
Kostyuchenko and her doctors initially believed she was suffering from Covid-19 symptoms, and by the time full tests were run, it was too late to test for poison residues or anything that would confirm poisoning.
German prosecutors declined to give Reuters further details of their investigation, citing its sensitivity.
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Russia’s online censorship agencies have increased spending by more than 60% since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, data from a monitoring firm showed, with regions bordering Ukraine accounting for the largest jumps in spending.
The research, published this week by monitoring firm Top10VPN, analysed almost 4,000 documents, including those found on state procurement website zakupki.gov.ru, and details the more than $57m in spending by state communications regulator Roskomnadzor and its subsidiaries since the war began.
Roskomnadzor did not immediately respond to a request by Reuters for comment.
Top10VPN research last year showed how demand in Russia for virtual private networks (VPNs) had skyrocketed after Moscow restricted access to Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.
Roskomnadzor has blocked access to thousands of online resources since then, particularly Russian-language independent news, depriving Russians of information in their native language about the war in Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
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The chair of the Commons defence select committee has said Vladimir Putin’s “back is against the wall” amid the death of a mercenary leader who led a mutiny against his regime.
Tobias Ellwood told Sky News he suspected the Russian leader would clamp down further on dissenting voices following the death of the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Ellwood said: “Putin is now exposed. This is his war and he has to show some form of success. He has to show he is actually taking advantage, if you like, of this situation. So, I expect something large to take place in Ukraine, or perhaps elsewhere, to distract.
“But, ultimately, he realises his back is against the wall. There are people circling, looking and recognising that he has been humiliated.
“I suspect he will clamp down further on dissenting voices and certainly he will be trying to reaffirm his leadership.
“This is a very dangerous situation, not just for Russia but for Europe as well.”
'Putin's back is against the wall'
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 25, 2023
Chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood suspects that the Russian leader will clamp down further on dissenting voices following the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.https://t.co/QYEclXw6pC
📺 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/1cdnNr49ep
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Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has died aged 62 in a plane crash, was a multimillionaire militia commander who sparked the biggest crisis in the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s two decades in power.
Once a close friend and confidant of Putin, in June 2023 Prigozhin led an armed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership after severely criticising the invasion of Ukraine as being unnecessary and based on false premises.
In an obituary for Prigozhin, Jonathan Steele explains how the head of the Wagner mercenary army played a key role in the war in Ukraine:
Poland to investigate Russian 'involvement' in outbreak of legionnaires’ disease
Poland’s domestic security agency is investigating whether an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease that has killed seven people in the south of the country could be the result of intentional tampering with the water system, authorities said on Friday.
The bacteria that cause the illness have been found in 113 patients hospitalised in Rzeszów and the surrounding area, health authorities said. The seven people who have died were aged 64 to 95 and had other health conditions.
The deputy coordinator of special services, Stanislaw Żaryn, told PAP news agency that the internal security agency was investigating the outbreak to rule out some intentional activity.
Although he described this as routine, he said various scenarios needed to be checked. This included ruling out any possible involvement by Russia, he said.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to soon hold talks in person with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Kremlin said on Friday, as Ankara attempts to persuade Moscow to return to the Black Sea grain deal.
The deal, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022 to help alleviate a global food crisis, allowed grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
However, Moscow quit the deal last month, complaining that an accompanying agreement to facilitate Russia’s own grain and fertiliser exports was not being implemented.
Asked about Erdoğan’s invitation to Putin to visit Turkey to discuss the deal and other pressing issues, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said: “There is an understanding that this meeting will take place soon.
“We usually synchronise announcements of such visits with our partner countries. We will announce shortly when and where it will take place. The meeting is being prepared, and is being prepared very thoroughly,” he said.
Earlier, Russia’s state RIA news agency reported that the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, would visit Russia but it gave no details.
Updated
Speculation Putin had Prigozhin killed 'absolute lie', says Kremlin
The Kremlin said on Friday that western suggestions that the Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”, and it declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
In a call with reporters, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said: “There is now a great deal of speculation surrounding this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, in the west, all this speculation is presented from a well-known angle.
“All of this is an absolute lie, and here, when covering this issue, it is necessary to base yourself on facts. There are not many facts yet. They need to be established in the course of investigative actions.”
Peskov added that an investigation into the plane crash on Wednesday evening, in which Vladimir Putin has said that Prigozhin and his associates were killed according to preliminary information, is continuing. The Russian president had not met Prigozhin recently, Peskov added.
He also said it was impossible to say whether Putin would attend the funeral of Prigozhin and that the president had “a very full schedule”.
Peskov said the mercenary Wagner group had no formal legal existence. He said Wagner existed as a group that had made a “big contribution” to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, and he praised its fighters’ “heroism”.
Wagner mercenaries in June briefly attempted to march on Moscow in a mutiny aimed at ousting Prigozhin’s rivals in the defence establishment, a rebellion condemned by Putin as a treacherous “stab in the back”.
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Ukraine announced the dismissal of the head of its state emergency service on Friday after an internal inspection of the agency, which has had a prominent role since Russia’s invasion 18 months ago, Reuters reports.
“The government has decided to dismiss Serhiy Kruk from the post of head of the state emergency service,” the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Klymenko gave no reasons for Kruk’s dismissal, but said it followed an internal inspection of the service, of which he provided few details. He said Kruk’s deputy, Volodymyr Demchuk, would serve as the agency’s acting head.
The service has been playing an important role trying to save lives, clear rubble and put out fires after frequent Russian air strikes and shelling.
More personnel decisions will follow the internal inspection, Klymenko said, adding that the service was working as usual.
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Russia on Friday scolded the US president, Joe Biden, for expressing his lack of surprise that the Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed in a plane crash and cautioned that it was not appropriate for Washington to make such remarks, Reuters reports.
Biden on Wednesday said he was not surprised by reports about Prigozhin’s death, adding that not much happens in Russia that Vladimir Putin is not behind.
“I’m not surprised,” Biden said. “There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said such remarks illustrated Washington’s disregard for diplomacy.
“Still, it is not for the US president, in my opinion, to talk about such tragic events of this kind,” Ryabkov was quoted by the state Tass news agency as saying.
Updated
Rishi Sunak has reaffirmed the UK defence ministry’s comments from Friday morning, saying intelligence suggested Prigozhin was “most likely” on the plane.
“We’re obviously monitoring the situation very closely, working with our allies to establish what happened,” the British prime minister told reporters.
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The Russian embassy in Helsinki said it had been informed of the detention of a Russian citizen in Finland on Ukraine's request and was taking steps to offer consular assistance, Reuters reports, citing the Russian state news agency RIA.
Ukraine shoots down four Russian missiles and a drone, says defence ministry
On Thursday night, Ukraine shot down four Russian cruise missiles and a drone, the defence ministry said.
On Twitter, which is now known as X, the ministry said: “Russians attacked Ukraine with two Kalibr cruise missiles, two Kh-59 cruise missiles, and a Shahed UAV.
“All targets have been destroyed by Ukrainian air defence.”
Last night, russians attacked Ukraine with two Kalibr cruise missiles, two Kh-59 cruise missiles, and a Shahed UAV.
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 25, 2023
All targets have been destroyed by Ukrainian air defense.@KpsZSU
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Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive was “obvious”, Reuters reports, citing the Russian state news agency RIA.
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UK says 'highly likely' Prigozhin is dead
The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof the Wagner group mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was onboard a plane that crashed with no survivors earlier this week but it is “highly likely” he is dead, Reuters reports.
“The demise of Prigozhin would almost certainly have a deeply destabilising effect on the Wagner group,” the ministry said in a defence intelligence update posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
(2/5) There is not yet definitive proof that Prigozhin was onboard and he is known to exercise exceptional security measures. However, it is highly likely that he is indeed dead.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 25, 2023
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US imposes sanctions on 13 people and entities over forced deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children
Reuters: the US state department on Thursday imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said were reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children, as Washington ramps up pressure on Moscow over its invasion.
The US is also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on three Russia-installed purported authorities over their involvement in human rights abuses of Ukrainian minors, the state department said in a statement.
The sanctions coincided with Ukraine’s Independence Day.
“The United States will not stand by as Russia carries out these war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told a UN security council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday.
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Danish film-maker and provocateur Lars von Trier has defended himself from backlash after writing a social media post that criticised Denmark’s donation of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
“Russian lives matter also!” he wrote on Instagram on Tuesday after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Denmark, where he and the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, inspected the F-16s to be delivered to his country.
Von Trier addressed his post to “Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, and not least Mrs Frederiksen (who yesterday, like someone head over heels in love, posed in the cockpit of one of the scariest killing machines of our time, grinning from ear to ear)”.
Von Trier disabled comments on the post but it attracted the attention of Russian and Ukrainian media. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, shared the director’s post, writing on Twitter: “War is not a movie where actors play life and death. Behind every living Russian terrorist, there is a dead Ukrainian. The choice between the executioner and the victim becomes a tragedy when the artist chooses the side of the executioner”:
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US to train F-16 pilots in October
The United States will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
The training would begin after the pilots receive English-language training next month, a Pentagon spokesperson, Brig Gen Pat Ryder, said on Thursday. The flight training would take place at the Morris air national guard base in Tucson, Arizona, he added.
Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training, Ryder added.
Last Sunday, Denmark and the Netherlands pledged to donate F-16s to Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding wish by Ukraine that it says will help strengthen air defences and aid its counteroffensive against Russia’s 2022 invasion. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, on Thursday said his country would also give Ukraine F-16s:
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42 Ukrainian drones launched over Crimea, says Russia
AFP: Russia’s air defence forces destroyed 42 Ukraine-launched drones over the Crimean peninsula and one missile over the Kaluga region early on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said.
The ministry said nine drones were destroyed by air defence forces while 33 were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed over Crimea without reaching their targets. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, said on the Telegram messaging app that a number of drones were destroyed over the Khersones promontory, on Sevastopol’s outskirts.
Earlier, the defence ministry said it had shot down a Ukraine-launched missile over the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the attacks, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Russian airports suspended flights for a few hours.
The number of drones launched was one of the largest in a surge of similar attacks.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.
Our top stories this morning: Russia’s air defence forces destroyed 42 Ukraine-launched drones over the Crimean peninsula and one missile over the Kaluga region early on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said.
The ministry said nine drones were destroyed by air defence forces while 33 were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed over Crimea without reaching their targets. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
And the US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
Elsewhere:
Vladimir Putin has called Yevgeny Prigozhin a “talented businessman” with “a difficult fate”. In a meeting at the Kremlin, the Russian president addressed the crash of the Wagner chief’s business jet for the first time, offering condolences to the families of the 10 people onboard. He said that Prigozhin had returned to Russia from Africa on Wednesday and had met “some officials”, without specifying whom. “He was a man with a difficult fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life,” Putin said.
An explosion onboard probably brought down the plane presumed to be carrying the Wagner leader, a preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded. US and western officials said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”. Several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants were also presumed dead. Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said he had no indication the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Kyiv had nothing to do with the explosion. The presumed death follows a pattern of “unclarified” fatalities in Russia, Germany’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
Moscow’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports suspended flights early on Friday, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. Residents of the Russian regions of Tula and Kaluga earlier posted on social media about explosions they heard in the night, Russian online media outlet Baza reported. Flights were also briefly disrupted on Tuesday and Wednesday during Ukrainian drone attacks.
Ukrainian forces marked the country’s independence day with a naval raid into occupied Crimea, and Zelenskiy praised Ukrainians for the defiance and courage that has won them global support in the fight with Russia. The national holiday celebrates Ukraine’s independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, but this year it also marks 18 months since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion plunged the country into a war for survival.
Zelenskiy said early on Friday he spoke with the US president, Joe Biden. Zelenskiy said he thanked Biden for his Ukraine Independence Day greetings and support in the conflict with Russia. “Together, we prove that freedom and independence are worth fighting for,” he said in a statement.
Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal only if the west fulfils its “obligations to Moscow”, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
Russia has extended the detention of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich by three months. He was the first journalist arrested by Russian authorities on allegations of spying since the cold war.
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