Patriot, traitor, martyr … legacy of Prigozhin is still unwritten
In a 2018 documentary, Vladimir Putin answers instantly when asked if there is anything he cannot forgive. “Betrayal,” he says with no hesitation.
Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a probable assassination last week on board his Embraer private jet, held a similar belief. One of his fighters’ tactics to punish deserters was to tape their heads to a block of concrete and then bludgeon them to death with a sledgehammer. The hammer became their symbol.
For years, Prigozhin did the Kremlin’s dirty work and sought to spread Russian influence and sow discord among its enemies around the globe. Putin offered Prigozhin some praise after his death, calling him a “talented businessman” who had made a “significant contribution” to the war against Ukraine.
But, Andrew Roth wrote this week, Prigozhin’s legacy inside Russia will come down to whether the former Putin ally will bear the mark of a traitor, a word that Putin used during the Wagner uprising in June and others hinted at last week as the early eulogies poured in. On Tuesday, Pjotr Sauer covered Prigozhin’s ‘closed format’ funeral in St Petersburg, where the secrecy appeared to demonstrate the Kremlin’s unease over Prigozhin’s legacy.
Ukrainian drones attack planes and six Russian regions
Ukrainian drones have attacked at least six regions deep within Russia, including an airfield where they destroyed military transport planes, in one of the largest-scale attacks on Russia in months, Pjotr Sauer reported.
A drone assault on the city of Pskov in north-western Russia damaged four IL-76 military cargo aircraft, Russian authorities said early on Wednesday, engulfing two of the planes in flames.
Andriy Yusov, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, confirmed the strike on the city on Wednesday, saying all four IL-76 military cargo planes had been destroyed and adding that “several more planes were damaged”.
Holdouts quit Kupiansk after renewed Russian shelling
Antonina Sanina, 75, had spent the last two nights hiding in the basement of her apartment block in Kupiansk. She had endured six and a half months of Russian occupation last year, but now the renewed shelling of the city had prompted her to abandon her home. “I couldn’t take it any more,” she said a few minutes after local volunteers had driven her to safety.
She said eight neighbours hid in the cellar with her as the Russians targeted what they thought, wrongly, was a barracks nearby. “You could barely sleep. It would be on and off. Then you’d just wake up and you wouldn’t know – was that an actual hit or was it a dream?,” she told Dan Sabbagh. A day before she took flight, one civilian was killed and 11 injured in a daytime artillery strike on the city centre.
Ukraine confirms capture of key Zaporizhzhia village
A Ukrainian serviceman walks near a destroyed Ukrainian tank, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, near the village of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine on 25 August 2023. Photograph: Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
Ukraine has confirmed it has captured a key village on the southern Zaporizhzhia front, Dan Sabbagh reports, in the latest step in a gradual advance aimed at splitting the Russian lines that defend the overland route to Crimea.
Hanna Maliar, a deputy defence minister, said on Monday morning that the village of Robotyne, south of Orikhiv, had been liberated, bringing Ukraine into contact with Russia’s main defence line to the south covering routes to the Sea of Azov.
Although the territory gained in the Orikhiv sector is relatively modest – about four miles since the start of the counteroffensive in June – Ukraine’s progress has been steady as it has cleared dense minefields and trenches on the frontline.
How a UK military chief became key Nato liaison in Ukraine
Eleven days ago, some of the most senior members of the armed forces in the Nato alliance travelled to a secret location on the Polish-Ukrainian border to meet Ukraine’s chief military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for what was privately billed as “a council of war”.
It was no ordinary discussion: Zaluzhnyi brought his entire command team with him on the roughly 300-mile journey from Kyiv. The aim of the five-hour meeting was to help reset Ukraine’s military strategy – top of the agenda was what to do about the halting progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, along with battle plans for the gruelling winter ahead plus longer-term strategy as the war inevitably grinds into 2024.
Particularly notable was the presence not just of Nato’s military chief, the American Gen Christopher Cavoli, but also Adm Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s most senior military officer, who is now acknowledged in Washington and Kyiv as an increasingly important actor in helping Ukraine overcome the Russian invaders, Dan Sabbagh reports.
The top issues in Grant Shapps’ in-tray
Grant Shapps’ appointment as the new UK Defence Secretary comes at a time of the largest war in Europe since 1945, with Britain a key strategic partner for Ukraine as it seeks to kick out the Russian invaders. A central part of the job is public and private diplomacy, with the UK particularly keen to maintain its position as a bridge between Kyiv, always seeking new weapons, and an often cautious White House, already increasingly mindful of the looming 2024 election battle, most likely with Donald Trump.
Once Boris Johnson had been ousted from Downing Street, Kyiv looked to Wallace as an increasingly important figure, with the former defence secretary central in efforts to find a pathway for Ukraine to eventually join Nato and in ensuring long-term military support continues. Shapps will want to keep the long-term door to Nato membership open, but he may give Kyiv candid advice and help it temper its not always realistic lobbying. Dan Sabbagh looks at the major issues facing Ben Wallace’s successor.
Life on the International Space Station at a time of war
One evening in January 2015, Terry Virts, a Nasa astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS), decided to pop over to the Russian quarters, catch up with his Russian colleagues and check out the view. As a 47-year-old former space shuttle pilot, then on his second visit to the space station, Virts had experienced all of this himself and would do so many times again. But this night would be different.
Joining Virts at the window was Alexsandr Samokutyayev. Three years younger than Virts, the Russian cosmonaut was also on his second visit to the space station. Both men had been military pilots in their countries. They spoke each other’s languages. They exchanged Christmas presents. They were friends. Now the Russian and the American floated companionably side by side in the microgravity of orbit and gazed down at the world below.
Usually at night the inhabited areas of the Earth present a sensational spectacle of dazzling city lights. But at this point the space station happened to be passing over eastern Ukraine. Down there was darkness, punctuated by sudden red flashes. They were watching a war. By Stephen Walker.
