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Russia shuts down major airports after drone strikes city complex
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Ukraine war: Footage appears to show moment drone attack hits building in central Moscow
Russia has appointed a new acting head of its aerospace forces to replace Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon”, who vanished from view after a Wagner mercenary mutiny against the top brass, the RIA state news agency reported on Wednesday.
During the revolt in June, Surovikin, who once commanded Russia’s overall war effort in Ukraine, appeared in a video, looking strained and without insignia, urging Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to abandon his march on Moscow.
Since the mutiny, which was ended by negotiations and a deal, some Russian and foreign news outlets have said that Surovikin, who was often publicly praised by Prigozhin in the run-up to the revolt, was being investigated for possible complicity in it and being held under house arrest.
His reported removal suggests the authorities found fault with his behaviour, but the details of his alleged wrongdoing remain unknown.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops on Wednesday gained a foothold in the southeastern village of Robotyne on the road to Tokmak, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said.
The liberation of Robotyne, an important regional rail hub occupied by Russia, would be a milestone in Kyiv’s southward drive to reach the Sea of Azov. The next major settlement is the big regional city of Melitopol.
General Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia‘s forces in Ukraine who was linked to the leader of an armed rebellion, has been dismissed from his job as chief of the air force, according to Russian state media.
The report Wednesday came after weeks of uncertainty about his fate following the short-lived uprising.
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Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine who was linked to the leader of an armed rebellion, has been dismissed from his job as chief of the air force, according to Russian state media
Britain will guarantee a £192m ($245m) export finance deal for Ukraine to buy nuclear fuel from producers including British companies, British energy minister Grant Shapps announced during a visit to Kyiv.
Ukraine‘s energy system was severely damaged by a massed campaign of Russian air strikes last winter, making it more reliant on its ageing nuclear power stations, which supplied about half the country’s power before the war.
“This guarantee that we will be providing is to help Ukraine ensure that … their nuclear fuel doesn’t have to come via Russia in future,” Mr Shapps told Reuters.
“This money will guarantee that it will come from much more secure sources.”
He said that one of those sources would be Urenco, a part-British nuclear fuel consortium.
Ukraine currently controls three of its four active nuclear plants.
The fourth, in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, was captured by Russia last March. Both sides have since repeatedly accused each other of endangering the facility’s safety.
President Vladimir Putin used a speech at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, India on Wednesday to repeat a number of what have become his rhetorical greatest hits – all aimed at defending Russia‘s war in Ukraine while trying to undermine the West by blaming them for the invasion.
That is despite it being Mr Putin’s own decision to send his troops into Ukraine.Speaking by video link to leaders of the group, he reiterated the Kremlin narrative that his invasion, condemned by Ukraine and the West as an imperialist land grab, was a forced response by Russia to Kyiv’s and Washington’s hostile actions.
“Our actions in Ukraine are dictated by only one thing – to end the war that was unleashed by the West and its satellites against the people who live in the Donbas,” Mr Putin said, referring to the eastern part of Ukraine where Russian proxies have been fighting the Ukrainian army since 2014.
“I want to note that it was the desire to maintain their hegemony in the world, the desire of some countries to maintain this hegemony that led to the severe crisis in Ukraine.”
Mr Putin was speaking to a small forum of countries that have refrained from condemning Russia‘s actions in Ukraine, unlike a majority of nations including the US, UK, Germany, France, Norway, Turkey, and Italy.
A Russian drone attack on the Danube River port of Izmail in southern Ukraine on Wednesday destroyed 13,000 tons of grain, Ukrainian deputy prime ,inister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
Kubrakov said on the Telegram messaging app that the port’s export capacity had been reduced by 15 per cent by the overnight strike, and added: “Russia is systematically hitting grain silos and warehouses to stop agricultural exports.”
Russia did not immediately comment on the overnight strikes.
Since Vladimir Putin rose to power as Russia’s president 23 years ago, few things have rocked his leadership as much as Saturday 24 June when Wagner mercenaries barrelled towards Moscow.
The “army within an army” who had been ruthlessly grinding away for months at the vanguard of some of the bloodiest fighting in eastern flanks Ukraine were now on the verge of triggering a war within a war – this time, against the Kremlin.
Below we track Wagner’s involvement in the invasion of Ukraine and their infamous- but failed- march to Moscow:
From Bucha to the battle for Bakhmut, we track Wagner’s bloody role in Vladimir Putin’s invasion
Pictures show workers clean a part of a damaged skyscraper in the “Moscow City” business district after a reported drone attack in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a summit of the BRICS group on Wednesday that Russia wanted to end a war he said had been “unleashed by the West and its satellites” in Ukraine.
Speaking by video link to leaders of the group, who have refrained from condemning Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, he repeated the Kremlin narrative that the war was a forced response to actions by Kyiv and the West.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Monday published his first recruitment video for the Wagner Group since organizing a short-lived mutiny against defense officials in Russia, according to information on Russian social media channels.
Prigozhin moved into the global spotlight in June with a dramatic, short-lived rebellion that posed the most serious threat to President Vladimir Putin of the Russian leader’s 23-year rule. The Wagner founder long benefited from Putin’s powerful patronage, including while he built a private army that fought for Russian interests abroad and participated in some of the deadliest battles of the war in Ukraine.
In the video, which was posted on Telegram messaging app channels which are believed to be affiliated with Prigozhin, a person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader says the Wagner Group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free.”
Posts on Russian social media channels indicate that Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has published his first recruitment video for the Wagner Group since organizing a short-lived mutiny against defense officials in Russia
Two educational workers were killed and three other people wounded in a Russian attack on a school in the city of Romny in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Wednesday.
He said two people were still under the rubble.
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47th Separate Mechanized Brigade/Handout via REUTERS
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