Ukraine war live: Putin ally Lukashenko says he warned Prigozhin to ‘beware’ of threats to his life

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he had warned the chief of Wagner’s mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to “beware” of threats to his life before the plane crash in which he is believed to have died.

Lukashenko said Prigozhin had twice dismissed concerns raised by the Belarusian leader about potential threats to his life.

Lukashenko said he warned Prigozhin during the rebellion that he would “die” if he continued his march on Moscow, and said Prigozhin replied: “Go to hell – I will die.” Then, Lukashenko said, when Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, who was also listed as a passenger on the crashed Embraer Legacy 600, came to see him, he warned them both: “Boys, you’re watching.” Outside.”

Two people were killed and another wounded on Saturday when Russian shelling hit a cafe in the village of Podoli in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, local governor Oleh Sinyhopov said.

“The enemy hit a civilian target – a cafe where the locals were during the day,” Sinyhopov wrote on Telegram.

Podoli was occupied shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but Kiev retook the village in a counterattack the previous September.

Russian forces have tried to advance on the front line in the Kharkiv region in recent weeks. The Ukrainian military has acknowledged that the fighting there has become more difficult, but says it is sticking to its position

Russia reported a new drone attack on Moscow overnight, which again led to the temporary closure of three major airports serving the capital, and another in the southern region bordering Ukraine.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that air defense systems shot down a drone over the Istra district of the Moscow region. The area is located about 31 miles west of the Kremlin.

The TASS news agency said Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports had suspended flights for two hours.

In the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that air defenses shot down a drone near the village of Kupino, without reporting any damage or casualties.

But he said that four people were wounded in the Ukrainian shelling of another village, Urazovo. He posted pictures showing the damage to the buildings, as the roof of one of them was destroyed.

Russia has recovered 10 bodies and flight recorders from the ill-fated plane carrying the Wagner leader and his allies that crashed on Wednesday, officials said.

On Friday, officials said an investigative committee was conducting molecular genetic tests to identify the bodies from the crash site.

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from Moscow for St Petersburg. The Russian Civil Aviation Authority said it was believed to be carrying the leader of the powerful mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin, six other Wagner members and a crew of three.

And Russian media reported, quoting anonymous sources from the Wagner Group, that rescue workers found 10 bodies at the site of the plane’s wreckage, and confirmed the death of their greatest leader.

Officials did not confirm the identity of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.

The former prime minister described the downing of Wagner’s plane as a “violent liquidation” and claimed that Putin was “turning before our eyes into an Asian tyrant.”

“I can think of no other example of such ostentatious and unrestrained brutality by a world leader – not in our lifetime,” he said.

In defense of Ukraine’s strategy this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed suggestions that his country’s forces were deployed too thin and reiterated his belief that Kiev would recapture all of the Ukrainian territories captured by Moscow.

“We’ve gone through mined main roads. We’ve come to those lines where we can move (forward). I’m sure we’ll go faster from here,” said Combat.

He said two houses remain under Russian control in Robotyn: “We are fighting for them, and then we will have full control (of Ropotyn).”

Combat said that Ukrainian forces had now entered territory where there were only “Russian logistical” groups, and made it clear that he did not expect it to be so difficult to break through the Russian defenses.

He added, “We are going to liberate all our lands.”

A commander fighting in the south said that Ukrainian forces believed they had breached Russia’s toughest lines of defense in the south and would now be able to advance more quickly.

Kiev forces launched a counterattack in June, but well-prepared Russian defense lines, reinforced by minefields, slowed their advance south towards the Sea of ​​Azov.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces said they raised the national flag at the settlement of Ropotyn in the southern Zaporizhia region, about six miles south of the front-line town of Orekyev.

“We don’t stop here,” said the commander, who led some troops to Robotyn and uses the nom de guerre “Kombat.”

“After that we have (town) Berdyansk, and then some more. I immediately made it clear to my fighters: our target is not two robots, our target is (the sea of) Azov.”

Robotyn is located about 100 km from the port of Berdyansk on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, and 85 km from the strategic city of Melitopol. Russian forces occupy both regions after a large-scale invasion of Moscow in February last year.

Moscow has not confirmed that Ukraine has advanced in the field of Robotyne.

The British Ministry of Defense said that there is a realistic possibility that Russia will increase the intensity of its offensive efforts on the Kobyansk-Lyman axis during the next two months in the eastern part of Ukraine.

This will likely be the goal of advancing west to the Oskil River and creating a buffer zone around Luhansk Oblast, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update today.

As Ukraine continues to make incremental gains in the south, Russian doctrine indicates that it will attempt to regain the initiative by returning to the offensive at the operational level. The Defense Ministry said that one possible area for this is the Kobyansk Lyman.

She added, “The Ukrainian counterattack put the Russian forces under pressure in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine. Despite this, Russia’s Western Group of Forces continued small-scale attacks to the northeast, in the Kobyansk-Lyman sector, and made some limited local advances.

Ukrainian Colonel-General Oleksandr Sersky, commander of the ground forces of the Russian army, said that Russia is regrouping its forces in the eastern part of Ukraine controlled by Moscow in order to resume the offensive.

Colonel General Sersky said in his telegram: “After a month of fierce fighting and heavy losses in the Kobyansk and Liman directions, the enemy is regrouping its forces and means, and at the same time expelling the newly formed brigades and divisions from the territory of the Russian Federation.” channel.

He said that the main goal of these measures is “to raise the level of combat potential and the resumption of active offensive operations.”

The commander-in-chief did not provide details of the Russian regrouping but said the forces continued heavy artillery, mortar and air strikes.

“Under these circumstances, we must immediately take all measures to strengthen our defenses on threatened lines and advance wherever possible,” said the general.

Russia captured Kobyansk, which had a pre-war population of about 27,000, in the early days of the February 2022 invasion, before Ukrainian forces regained it in a lightning attack last September that embarrassed Moscow.

The Kremlin on Friday rejected allegations that it was behind the plane crash that supposedly killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“At the moment, of course, there is a lot of speculation about the plane crash and the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

“Of course, in the West these speculations are put forward under a certain angle, and they are all a complete lie.”

The 62-year-old former convict and mercenary chief was listed among those on board.

Vladimir Putin on Thursday mourned Prigozhin, whose savage fighters in Ukraine, Africa and Syria were feared even as suspicions grew that the Russian leader was behind the incident that many see as an assassination.

An initial US intelligence assessment concluded that the plane was brought down as a result of a deliberate explosion.

One of the US and Western officials describing the assessment said it concluded Prigozhin was “likely” a target and that the blast was consistent with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”.