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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he had warned Wagner Group leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin about his safety at least twice, Belarusian state news agency BelTA reported, as questions linger over the circumstances of last week’s plane crash. in which he is presumed to have died.
President Biden told reporters that the United States is trying to identify the cause of the crash, adding on Friday that he was not yet free to speak with him. He also said he was not surprised by reports that the leader of the Wagner Group, which organized a rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, was assassinated. The Kremlin has denied widespread speculation that Prigozhin was assassinated on Putin’s orders, and Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had recovered the plane’s black box and forensic tests were underway to confirm the identities of the 10 crash victims. .
Here you will find the latest on the war and its ripple effects around the world.
Lukashenko claimed that he had told Prigozhin that he could guarantee his “full security” by talking to Putin and extracting him to Belarus, but that the leader of the mercenary group never accepted his offer, according to a report in the Belarusian state news agency BelTA on Friday. Prigozhin’s death has yet to be confirmed, but his name was on the passenger list of the Embraer plane before it crashed, Russian aviation officials said.
The evidence does not suggest that a simple mechanical problem or human error caused the plane crash., aviation experts told the Washington Post, though they said there isn’t enough information available to draw a definitive conclusion. Early assessments by US officials suggested the possibility of an explosion on board.
Three Ukrainian pilots were killed in a mid-air collision during a combat mission on Friday.said government authorities. The two L-39 combat trainer jets collided near Zhytomyr, according to the Ukrainian air force. One of the slain pilots, who had the call sign “Juice,” had described to The Post in April 2022 how Ukrainian airmen were fending off Russian invaders.
At least four people were killed in attacks in Ukraine on the last day, including two in the Kharkiv region, one in the Kherson region and one in the Zaporizhzhia region. One of the victims, who lived in Kherson, was an 83-year-old woman who died after a Russian shelling set her house on fire, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.
A drone killed a man while mowing grass in the Belgorod region of western Russia.the area’s governor, Viacheslav Gladkov, said on Saturday.
Four more military officers in Ukraine have been detained as part of an ongoing crackdown on corruption., said the Security Service of Ukraine on Telegram. The four individuals are charged with helping people evade conscription in exchange for money.
Journalist Evan Gershkovich appealed a Moscow court’s decision to extend his detention until November. according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Gershkovich is being held before trial on espionage charges that both the US government and the Wall Street Journal, his employer, consider baseless.
The executive vice-president of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, accused Russia of using “cereals as a weapon”. Reuters reported on Saturday, also urging the country to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative after it withdrew last month.
Analysis of our correspondents
Prigozhin’s lingering popularity poses a challenge for Putin: Russians mourning the alleged death of the Wagner Group leader have erected memorials in nearly two dozen cities across the country and in occupied Ukraine in recent days, a sign of the commander’s enduring popularity and a challenge to potential for President Vladimir Putin, who is currently facing internal divisions. the elite and the military, writes Robyn Dixon.
“Prigozhin, despite declaring allegiance to Putin, endangered his regime and showed his weakness for which he received the inevitable punishment. I think the elites understood this signal very well,” said Dmitry Kolezev, a Russian analyst and freelance journalist who left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. “At the same time, there is a broader audience of military activists, supporters of Wagner’s PMC and Wagner veterans, among whom there is a Prigozhin cult,” he added.
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