#Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin

[theancienttimesnews]

Wagner Leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Crashed Plane's Passenger List

Russian media outlets reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group involved in a rebellion against the Russian army in June, was listed as a passenger on a private Embraer Legacy plane that crashed. The aircraft was en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg and went down near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region. Russia’s aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, confirmed…

[ivovynckier]

Yevgeny sleeps with the fishes.

[niveditaabaidya]

Wagner Chief Reignites Tensions With Russian Officials. #wagner #ukraine...

[perjuryfan]

this is not a joke

[hachama]

[blueiscoool]

Wagner Mercenary Group Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin Dead

A Private jet carrying Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has crashed with 10 people on board.

In addition to Prigozhin, neo-Nazi Wagner leader Dmitry Utkin was allegedly aboard on the plane and is now dead.

“Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported the Embraer aircraft was shot down by air defense in the Tver region, north of Moscow,” BBC reported.

[ammg-old2]

The Wagner head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has accused Moscow’s leadership of lying to the public about the justifications for invading Ukraine, in the latest sign of conflict between Vladimir Putin’s government and one of his most important allies.

In an explosive 30-minute video posted on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin dismissed Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was planning to launch an offensive on the Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine in February 2022.

“There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,” Prigozhin said.

“The ministry of defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole Nato block,” the Wagner head said.

Shortly after Russia attacked Ukraine, Putin claimed Moscow’s invasion had thwarted Ukraine’s own plans for “a massive attack on the Donbas, and then on the Crimea”.

Prigozhin also said Russia’s leadership could have avoided the war by negotiating with Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelenskiy.

“When Zelenskiy became president, he was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him,” he said.

Prigozhin has been arguing with top military officials for months, blaming the minister of defence, Sergei Shoigu, for battlefield failures.

However, his latest tirade appeared to be a new escalation, as the warlord directly contradicted Putin’s rationale for the invasion, implying it was based on lies in what amounts to the harshest criticism by any prominent Russian war figure of the decision to attack Ukraine.

“What was the war for? The war needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star … The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war,” he said.

“The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘It’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want,’” Prigozhin continued.

While the warlord was careful not to directly attack the Russian president, Prigozhin did question several decisions made by Putin, including the Kremlin’s decision to exchange more than 100 captured Azov fighters for Viktor Medvedchuk, a close ally of Putin.

And in one instance, Prigozhin appeared to criticise the Russian president for continuing to self-isolate.

“We still have self-isolation in our country, and therefore none of the decision-makers have yet met [with military generals and discussed how to win the war]. They all talked on the phone.”

Prigozhin, whose Wagner troops have pulled back from Bakhmut, also attacked Russia’s current war efforts in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Directly contradicting Putin’s claims that Moscow has fended off Kyiv’s counterattack, Prigozhin also accused the Russian military leadership of lying to the public about the scale of its losses and setbacks in Ukraine.

“The Russian army is retreating in all directions and shedding a lot of blood … What they tell us is the deepest deception.”

[mariacallous]

Russian women have, shockingly, embraced the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine despite the heavy toll it exerts on their men.

Though Russia doesn’t disclose casualties, they are mounting. Scores of new graves housing the remains of “heroes” are popping up across the country as the labor ministry requests certificates for families of the deceased by the hundreds of thousands. While the state heaps praise on these men in death, in life it seems to view them as disposable. Russian officials have made this abundantly clear, repetitive to the point of cliché: “Women will give birth to more.”

Despite standing to lose so much, the wives, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends of Russian soldiers have largely nodded along with the Kremlin’s moribund determination to grind down their men. They weep at makeshift memorials to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late chief of the paramilitary Wagner Group. They show little gender allegiance to the women of their former sister republic. Some are actually proud of their “defenders,” egging them on to rape Ukrainian women should they get the chance. In packed concert halls across the country, girls sing along ecstatically to “Ya Russky” (“I am Russian”), the country’s new patriotic anthem. Their faces soften the song’s promises to “fight to the end” and “spite the whole world.” That seems to be the point.

Russian womanhood, routinely held up in the country’s lore as a paragon of strength, patience, and sacrifice, is now functionally a cover-up for the crimes of Russia’s men. Two of Russia’s most notorious propagandists, Margarita Simonyan of Russia Today and Olga Skabeyeva of the Russia-1 television channel, are women, as is Maria Zakharova, the boorish spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Beneath them lurk less prominent figures with important platforms. There’s Putin’s Brigades, a motley crew of activist grandmothers who have abandoned their communal yard benches to rally the masses for President Vladimir Putin and his war. They call on U.S. President Joe Biden to stop “NATO’s war against Russia” and on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender. The Project in Red Dresses, which is supported by an organization run by one of Putin’s relatives, mobilizes women across Russian towns. Draped in red, they waltz through public spaces, seeking to both boost women’s confidence and unite Russians around their leader.

Women support the war effort in other ways, too. Back in my hometown, my mother’s acquaintances are knitting camouflaging nets for Russian troops and teaching children how to make trench candles to send to the battlefield. Schoolteachers—the majority of whom are women—are now responsible for children’s patriotic upbringing. In the state-mandated weekly class “Conversations about important things,” teachers disseminate Kremlin-approved talking points and rally support for the war among children as young as kindergarteners—lining them in Z-formations, organizing visits and weapons demonstrations from “defenders of the motherland,” and even engaging children to help produce those weapons. Teachers who disagree with the war or try to get out of this duty are denounced—often by other women—and subsequently fired or forced to quit.

Women haven’t always been so compliant with the state’s agenda. In 1917, they famously took to the streets to protest food shortages and the monarchy, sparking the strike that eventually triggered the Russian Revolution. More recently, the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia was instrumental in pressuring then-President Boris Yeltsin to end his war on Chechnya in 1996.

Nearly two years of Russian carnage in Ukraine, however, have produced mostly acts of individual heroism. For instance, Channel One Russia employee Marina Ovsyannikova made an on-air appeal to viewers not to believe the state’s lies about the war. The artist Sasha Skochilenko swapped supermarket labels with messages about Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. These acts did not go unpunished: The former has since fled the country, while the latter was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Subversive performance art, once a tool of female dissent, is no more. After serving prison terms for their anti-Putin anthems, members of the feminist band Pussy Riot are now in exile, raising money to support the Ukrainian military. These days, the mere suspicion of “radical feminism” can land one in prison. Playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and theater director Yevgenia Berkovich, the duo behind an award-winning play about Russian women who married Islamic State fighters, were accused of “justifying terrorism” and were jailed in May 2023.

Women are now more likely to spend their energy on procuring fake medical certificates to excuse their sons and husbands from war than on resistance of any kind. Those who privately disagree with the war—their number is anyone’s guess—keep the sentiment to themselves. But their personal hesitations have sparked nothing remotely political, let alone a challenge to Putin’s willingness to wage war.

It is hard to say how much of the population’s 70 percent approval rate for the war is driven by fear, propaganda, or ignorance, but one thing is clear: Since the start of the invasion, the already-malfunctioning Russian moral compass has broken irrevocably. Designated to reproduce life, women now must participate in Putin’s show of death.

Seeing their men off to some kind of calamity has long been considered part of the bargain of Russian womanhood. The movies of my adolescence, which coincided with the last decade of the Soviet Union, featured countless examples of men marching off to fight our enemies—World War II, World War I, the civil war, the Napoleonic wars, the Mongol invasion, the Viking raids. In literature class, I memorized the monologues of wounded heroes; during choir lessons, I sang sad ballads with titles like “Goodbye, Boys,” begging soldiers sent to war “to come back alive.” This proposition wasn’t theoretical: My male classmates faced a real prospect of being drafted into the Soviet-Afghan War upon graduation. After that war, there were others; even during the post-totalitarian 1990s, war was never absent from the public’s mind. Someone, somewhere, was always waiting for “our boys”—the absolving way in which Russia routinely refers to its soldiers—to return.

While the boys were hailed as heroes, the options available for girls and women were less inspired. In a patriarchal society, like Russia and the Soviet Union before it, there are few acceptable female archetypes during times of war. Motherhood is one. In the Soviet era, it was epitomized in Mother Heroine, an honorary title awarded to women who bore and raised 10 or more children. Introduced under Joseph Stalin in 1944 to address the massive population loss during World War II, Mother Heroine codified the Soviet woman’s primary duty as the producer of manpower, a resource to be used at the state’s discretion.

After providing children for the state, the Soviet woman’s task was then to galvanize them into fighting for it. At the site of the Battle of Stalingrad, there is a colossal statue of a woman brandishing a sword, titled The Motherland Calls. At 279 feet, she is the tallest woman in the world, perpetually summoning her countrymen to battle. The Motherland Warrior, as we might call her, reminds citizens that their motherland is under threat and then assures them of the righteousness of any war fought in its defense.

Women under war were also encouraged to share its burden on the battlefield. In Soviet books and movies about World War II, women were often comrades-in-arms. Female sharpshooters killed Nazi officers, blew up German trains, and suffered Gestapo torture without shedding a tear. Though she fought alongside men, the Comrade-in-Arms still carried the emotional responsibilities of womanhood: She cared for the wounded and inspired them to commit more acts of heroism, just like their Mother Heroines did from the home front.

Between wars, women were equal partners in delivering on the state’s agenda, whether harvesting fields on collective farms or laying the bricks of the great construction projects of communism. In the iconic Moscow statue, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, a man and woman put this partnership on display, holding up a hammer and sickle triumphantly as they labor together toward the building of the socialist state. This gender equality, however, was less the product of idealism than economic necessity: Soviet leaders had to conscript every resource available to compensate for the flaws of their planned economy.

These archetypes, defined and promoted by the state, were meant to carve out and assign value to women’s roles in Soviet society. The reality behind them, however, was far less glorious.

The equal partner’s experience, for instance, did not feel very equal. Though women were emancipated by the revolution and encouraged to labor alongside men, their contributions were not rewarded with political power. Only four women ever breached the ranks of the Politburo, the highest communist body of political power; their prospects at the local level were similarly bleak. Beyond poster cases like sending a woman to space, an average Soviet woman’s celebrated equality mostly amounted to the double burden of work and household duties.

Nor could those state-imposed archetypes override the informal but pervasive attitude that women were the “weak sex”; this sealed their inferior position in society. From childhood, girls were groomed to compete for men by looking pretty, excelling at housework, and guarding their fertility (“Don’t sit on cold surfaces—you’ll freeze your ovaries!” our mothers, schoolteachers, and concerned strangers instructed.). In the lighter Soviet movies, even imaginary women who held positions in high society pined for marriage and children. Female intelligence was viewed as a handicap. A smart woman was a woman who didn’t know her place, a criticism that dogged Mikhail Gorbachev’s obviously smart wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, throughout his political career. In marriage, patience and self-sacrifice were considered the highest virtues, as demonstrated by the wives of the Decembrists, the 19th-century aristocratic women who voluntarily followed their husbands to Siberian exile in the aftermath of the failed uprising.

In the provincial town where I grew up, little respect existed between genders. In divorce, which was common, men’s infidelities, drinking, and beatings were often sheltered under the legal euphemism of “irreconcilable differences.” In the street, catcalling women and grabbing their bodies were the norm. Three of my close friends had their first sexual encounter in the form of rape. All three assaulters were boys we knew: our boys. My friends never reported the crime, unwilling to add societal condemnation to the despair they suffered in private. There were only so many ways to be a woman in the Soviet Union, and a victim was not one of them.

Perestroika, the period of liberalization started by Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, brought real rather than proclaimed agency to Soviet women. Shaken by the unfolding collapse of the socialist economy, most women had to concentrate on pulling their families out of financial ruin and had little time to spare for politics. But not all. Though they were still exceptions in the male-dominated political scene, several female trailblazers rose up during this time. Political dissident Valeria Novodvorskaya, who lived through decades of arrests and forced psychiatric treatments for protesting the Soviet regime, created the country’s first non-communist party, Democratic Union, effectively breaking the one-party state system. Galina Starovoytova, a democratic politician and advocate of ethnic minorities’ right to independence, became one of the most recognizable faces of the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era, as did journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who rose to the top of the largely male profession with her human rights activism and fearless coverage of the Chechen wars.

The 1990s, a decade of relative freedom ushered in by perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union, proved insufficient to revert Russia’s bend toward patriarchy. Gender equality is an expression of freedom, and Putin liked control. It didn’t help that both Starovoytova and Politkovskaya were assassinated, or that Novodvorskaya, among the first to ring the alarm on Putin, was repeatedly labeled “dem-shiza,” or “democratic schizophrenic.”

As Putin gradually retooled the country into an autocracy, he hijacked the ever-present fear of war lingering in a nation that had seen its men mowed down by the millions and painted it not only as inevitable but honorable. In his endless military spectacles, women in period combat nurse costumes marched alongside Topol missiles, walking reincarnations of Soviet-era war film stereotypes. Their cheery presence lent an air of legitimacy to the state’s escalating violence.

Putin wrapped sexism in dated chivalry rituals, like flowers “for the beautiful sex” (as women are often referred to in Russia) sprung on female politicians. Crude sexual jokes and rape talk, previously taboo in public discourse, were now gamely dispensed by Russia’s man in charge, met with laughter and applause in return. The international community may have been aghast in 2022 when Putin quoted an obscene Soviet-era punk rock lyric about raping a sleeping woman to explain his demands for Ukraine: “Whether you like it or not, bear with it, my beauty.” But in Russia, this phrase is familiar, quoted by men and women. In a society built on violence, revolutionary or otherwise, a woman always loses.

There is no obvious end in sight to this regression. The war in Ukraine has hastened the post-perestroika narrowing of paths available to Russian women, and their value is once again defined by their compliance with the war effort.

Today, even mothers and wives demanding the return of their sons mobilized to fight in Ukraine often start by avowing their support for Putin’s war; many simply insist on replacing their men, who paid their dues, with others. The promise of the equal partner is also fading: In wartime, putting their careers first is not a viable option for most women. The longer the war goes on, the less funding will be available to health care and education, sectors that traditionally employ women, as money is redirected to industries that more tangibly support the war effort. The GDP boost from increased military spending will be offset by Western economic sanctions, so women planning business careers may have to reconsider how they spend their time.

As abortion restrictions expand, there are now few legal offramps available from the path of motherhood, and aspiring career women will instead have to make do with the task of raising and educating future soldiers—an occupation they are encouraged to start shortly after completing their secondary education.

The resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, Putin’s main ally in turning Russia into a conservative bulwark, has expanded its mother-forward offerings to help women bear with this reality. New rituals and holidays were introduced to celebrate “traditional family” and “traditional values,” code words for LGBTQ denialism, and the woman’s role as the “keeper of the hearth.” In squares and plazas across Russian towns, Vladimir Lenin’s statues have begun sharing public space with those of previously unknown saints designated as the patrons of family and marriage.

The Mother Heroine, Motherland Warrior, and Comrade-in-Arms are alive and well in Putin’s Russia. Joining the ranks of these surprisingly durable Soviet archetypes is the soldier’s wife-in-waiting. She supports the war from the rear, infuses children with pride, and doesn’t ask questions if her man is reported dead or missing. This last attribute, not asking questions, seems to be the defining feature of acceptable Russian women today.

What, then, is the Russian woman’s reward for her compliance? The short answer is: not much. Russian oligarchs, the country’s proxy for economic power, are almost exclusively men. Women make up roughly 18.3 percent of the Russian parliament. In terms of pay equality, women earn about 70 percent of what men do in similar jobs. Culturally, misogyny and sexism flourish. Russian comedy shows often portray women as too dumb to tell the steering wheel from the shifting gear.

A deadlier plague is domestic violence, a problem recycled from Soviet times and the times before them. One-fifth of all Russian women have been physically abused by their partners. Every year, some 14,000 women are killed by it—that’s nine times more than in the United States, which has twice the population. The actual number is likely much higher, since many women are afraid to report incidents of violence against them. In 2017, with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Duma decriminalized domestic violence that doesn’t require a hospital stay. It is as if the state itself has embraced the worn Russian saying, “If he beats you, it means he loves you.” Given the toughness of this love, it’s possible that for some women, seeing their abusers off to war becomes a path to liberation.

It’s certainly a path to economic improvement. The $2,535 monthly starting wage offered to those enlisting to serve in Ukraine is nearly 14 times higher than the median salary in Russia’s economically depressed regions, which deliver a disproportionally large number of recruits. If they die in combat, oh well. Better to go out a hero than, as one Russian priest said, the usual “choking on their vomit.” The families of fallen soldiers can also receive lucrative “coffin money” payments for their troubles, a rare glimmer of economic opportunity for working- and lower-class Russians. In July 2022, Russia-1 aired a story advertising the riches of enlisting to fight: The family of one deceased soldier sorrowfully recounted how they bought a previously unaffordable Lada car with the payout for the death of their son who dreamed about having a white car—“just like this one”—then drove it to his grave.

For many women, the price of resistance may be higher than they’re willing to pay. But if they continue to go along with all this, they’ll be doing so under increasingly dangerous conditions. Already-rampant domestic violence will only get worse as the war goes on and civilian men are maimed by battle and replaced back home with traumatized veterans and pardoned convicts. In the past year or so, returning “heroes” have raped teenage girls and burned their sisters alive. One convict-turned-Wagnerite stabbed to death an 85-year-old woman after terrorizing others with an ax and pitchfork in truly Dostoyevskian fashion.

For crimes against women, however, there are few punishments so long as they are committed by those willing to sacrifice for the Kremlin. A lieutenant colonel from Kuzbass was detained for the murder of an 18-year-old girl nearly two months after Putin made him a “Hero of Russia.” Following the arrest, he was defended by his superiors for having “brought invaluable benefit to the motherland in the fight against the Ukronazis.” Another man was pardoned from an 11-year prison term for murdering his girlfriend and putting her corpse through a meat grinder, after enlisting to serve in Ukraine.

A nation can be judged by how it treats its women and its girls, to paraphrase former U.S. President Barack Obama. Russia’s abuse of women, plastered over at different points of its history by the rhetoric of equal rights and traditionalism, underwrites the brutality of its war on Ukraine. If men can pillage and plunder their own, nothing stops them from exercising that right in a foreign land with a gun and a hero’s medal. Having abdicated their collective responsibility to call their men to answer, Russian women find themselves in an increasingly dehumanized society, where support for the war is not a guarantee against becoming its victims.

[ukrainenews]

Update June 26, 2023

Under the cut:

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”. In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

The US is expected to announce another military aid package to Ukraine totaling approximately $500 million, a US official told CNN.

Ukraine's military intelligence chief accused Russia on Tuesday of "mining" the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine's south.

EU countries on Monday agreed to increase the maximum size of a fund used to finance military aid for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) to 12 billion.

Russian intelligence services are investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny by Wagner mercenary fighters on Saturday, the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday.

Frontlines across Ukraine have seen heavy combat over the past two days, with more than 20 engagements occurring in areas in the Donetsk region – chiefly Lyman, Marinka and Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian military.

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”.

In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.

“We stopped at that moment, when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”

He once again accused the Russian defence ministry of targeting his troops with artillery fire, calling it the “trigger for us to move out immediately”.

“The goal of the march was to not allow the destruction of the Wagner private military company and hold to account the officials who through their unprofessional actions have committed a massive number of errors. Society demanded it.”

Prigozhin acknowledged that his troops had killed Russian airmen during their uprising, saying they “regretted that they were required to carry out strikes against aircraft but they were hitting our forces with bombs and rocket strikes”.

He also claimed that the troops movement into Russia was a “masterclass” in how Russia should have carried out its 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which failed to achieve its goal of taking Kyiv.

-The Guardian

~

The US is expected to announce another military aid package to Ukraine totaling approximately $500 million, a US official told CNN.

The aid, which is expected to be announced on Tuesday, will include additional Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, the official said, and will be provided to Ukraine via Presidential Drawdown Authority. Ukraine lost several armored vehicles in the early days of its counteroffensive, which US officials believe Ukrainian forces launched earlier this month.

The package comes as US officials continue to assess what impact the Wagner rebellion inside Russia will have on Russia’s war in Ukraine. US and western officials told CNN last week that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not been meeting expectations, with Russian lines of defense proving well-fortified. Russian forces have also had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively.

The last package, announced earlier this month, was valued at about $325 million and included new air defense and rocket systems for Ukraine.

The US has provided more than $39 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion in February 2022, including $22 billion in presidential drawdowns.

-CNN

~

Ukraine's military intelligence chief accused Russia on Tuesday of "mining" the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine's south.

The six-reactor complex, Europe's biggest nuclear plant, has been under occupation since shortly after Moscow's forces invaded in February last year.

"...Most terrifying is that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was additionally mined during that time... namely the cooling pond was mined," Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR agency, said on television, without providing evidence for his assertion.

Reuters requested comment from the Russian defence ministry.

The two sides have accused each other of shelling the plant and its environs, and international efforts to establish a demilitarised zone around the complex have failed so far.

Ukraine's Defence Ministry, meanwhile, dismissed as "null and void" a Russian suggestion that it could be building a "dirty bomb".

The ministry said the suggestion, made on Monday by Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, was first advanced by Moscow last year.

The move was, a ministry statement said, aimed at "diverting attention from the clear defeats by occupation forces at the front and sowing distrust among Ukraine's Western allies".

"If Russia is talking about a 'dirty bomb', its use by Russia could be a real threat," the ministry said.

Naryshkin had called on the U.N. nuclear watchdog and the European Union to investigate the dispatch of "irradiated fuel" from the Rivne nuclear plant in western Ukraine for disposal at a spent fuel storage facility in Chornobyl.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said it had reported this month on the transfer of spent fuel from Rivne to Chornobyl and taken full account of the material.

-Reuters

~

EU countries on Monday agreed to increase the maximum size of a fund used to finance military aid for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) to 12 billion.

The European Peace Facility (EPF), which EU countries contribute to according to the size of their economies, has already allocated some 4.6 billion euros in military aid for Ukraine. It is separate from the EU's budget, which is not allowed to finance military operations.

"Today's decision will again ensure that we have the funding to continue delivering concrete military support to our partners' armed forces," the bloc's top diplomat Josep Borrell, who had requested the increase, said in a statement.

"The facility has proven its worth. It has completely changed the way we support our partners on defence. It makes the EU and its partners stronger," he said.

Hungary on Monday said it would not lift a block on a 500 million euro tranche of the existing fund until Kyiv removes Hungarian bank OTP (OTPB.BU) from a list of companies it deems "international sponsors" of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Hungary has branded the bank's inclusion "scandalous".

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, speaking in Luxembourg, said that Budapest was ready to change its mind if Ukraine dropped the blacklisting.

The EPF, established in 2021, was conceived for the EU to help developing countries buy military equipment. But the 27-member union quickly decided to use it also to get weapons to Ukraine after Russia's invasion in February last year.

The fund allows EU countries that supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine and claim back a portion of the cost.

-Reuters

~

Russian intelligence services are investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny by Wagner mercenary fighters on Saturday, the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday.

In an interview with Russian RT television, Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy had spoken to Russian representatives on Sunday and given "signals" that the United States was not involved in the mutiny and that Washington hoped that Russia's nuclear arsenal would be kept safe, TASS said.

Lavrov also quoted Tracy as saying the mutiny was Russia's internal affair.

Several Western leaders have said the incident shows that instability is growing in Russia as a result of President Vladimir Putin's decision to send his armed forces into Ukraine early last year.

Asked whether there was any evidence that neither Ukrainian nor Western intelligence services were involved in the mutiny, Lavrov replied:

"I work in a department that does not collect evidence about illegal actions, but we have such structures, and I assure you, they already understand this."

Doubts over Wagner's future have raised questions about whether it will continue its operations in African countries such as Mali and the Central African Republic, where its forces have played a big role in long-running internal conflicts.

Since the war in Ukraine undermined Russia's ties and trade with the West, the Kremlin has also been underlining its commitment to Africa.

Lavrov told RT that Mali and CAR both maintained official contacts with Moscow alongside their relations with Wagner, adding: "Several hundred servicemen are working in the CAR as instructors; this work, of course, will be continued".

A presidential advisor for CAR's president told Reuters on Monday that nothing had changed since the weekend events in Russia.

Fidele Gouandjika said Wagner was not officially established in the country, and that the military cooperation agreement they signed was with the Russian Federation, which deploys contingents of its choice.

"The first one (is) made of Russian instructors to train our security forces … the second contingent are soldiers that the West calls Wagner," he said.

"Russia sent us Wagner but we signed with Russia and so if they sent us private militias that's their choice. We keep working with the soldiers that Russia sent," he said.

Lavrov also said Ukrainian allegations that Russia plans to stage an attack involving a release of radiation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine were "nonsense", TASS reported.

-Reuters

~

Frontlines across Ukraine have seen heavy combat over the past two days, with more than 20 engagements occurring in areas in the Donetsk region – chiefly Lyman, Marinka and Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian military.

In its operational update, the General Staff said the Russians also carried out 25 air strikes over the past day.

There had been heavy Russian artillery and mortar fire in the Kupyansk area of Kharkiv, where the Russians have been trying to break through for over a month, the Ukrainians said.

The General Staff insisted all Russian efforts to take territory had been foiled. Across the Donetsk frontlines, the fighting was characterized by exchanges of indirect fire, but with little movement.

However, the Ukrainians say they are on the front foot around Bakhmut.

“(Troops) hold the initiative, continue assault operations and push the enemy back. Over the last day, the Ukrainian forces advanced 600 to 1,000 meters on the southern and northern flanks around Bakhmut,” said Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces. Nearly 200 Russian soldiers had been killed in the last day, and a variety of Russian equipment had been destroyed, according to Cherevatyi.

CNN cannot verify Ukrainian claims of battlefield gains, or casualties.

In the south, where Ukrainian forces have attempted to break through Russian lines, the General Staff said a Russian effort to regain lost positions in the area of Novodarivka had also failed.

Russian artillery continued to strike about 30 settlements along the frontlines in the Zaporizhzhia region, it said.

In Kherson, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in the south, said the Russians struggled to regain positions on the east bank of the river Dnipro, which was flooded by the recent damage to the dam at Nova Kakhovka.

“Their work is complicated by the spread of intestinal infections,” Humenyuk said.

-CNN

[argumate]

The Russian MoD has begun to remove commanders from some of the Russian military’s most combat effective units and formations and appears to be accelerating this effort.

The reported dismissal and arrest of commanders leading combat effective units and formations appears to be associated with cases of insubordination. Popov flagrantly attempted to bypass Russian Chief of the General Staff and overall theater commander Army General Valery Gerasimov and directly bring his complaints about the frontline in western Zaporizhia to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Seliverstov’s dismissal was a result of similar insubordination, and Russian sources claimed that Seliverstov had a reputation for speaking up on behalf of his soldiers. Kornev may have voiced criticism of a host of potential issues on behalf of the 7th VDV Division, including the likely failure to be notified beforehand about the Russian destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station (KHPP) on June 6, reported attritional fighting that failed to eliminate a Ukrainian presence near the Antonivsky Bridge, or conditions in western Zaporizhia Oblast similar to those that Popov complained about. Ibatullin’s arrest may be associated with the 90th Tank Division’s resumption of assaults in Luhansk Oblast, where it conducted widespread offensive operations that failed to achieve territorial gains during the Russian 2023 winter offensive campaign. It is unclear why Ibatullin would have been arrested, if, indeed, he was, when the other commanders were reportedly simply removed from their commands.

Insubordination among commanders appears to be spreading to some of their soldiers. Russian milbloggers shared an audio excerpt on July 16 in which the alleged elements of the 7th VDV Division threatened that they would withdraw from their positions in occupied Kherson Oblast if the Russian MoD arrests Teplinsky or threatens his life. The elements of the 7th VDV Division also claimed that they would defend Teplinsky against the Russian MoD and asserted that the high command is targeting Russia’s most combat effective commanders. This audio appeal, if legitimate, is a threat of mass desertion in the face of the enemy on behalf of Teplinsky. Desertion in the face of the enemy is a capital offense in many militaries. The VDV servicemen are blackmailing the Russian MoD to ensure that Teplinsky continues to command troops in Ukraine, despite Teplinsky’s previous affiliation with Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin who had led an armed rebellion on June 24 to overthrow Shoigu and Gerasimov.

The Kremlin’s chronic disregard for the Russian chain of command is likely hindering Shoigu and Gerasimov in their attempts to suppress insubordination and establish full control over the Russian military in Ukraine. Putin consistently bypassed or ignored the established chain of command in hopes of securing rapid successes on the battlefield throughout the war, degrading Shoigu’s and Gerasimov’s authority – especially when military failures on the frontlines also eroded their reputations. Putin had cultivated an environment in which military personnel, officials, and even Russian war correspondents bypassed Shoigu and Gerasimov to present Putin their understandings of the current state of the war and recommendations for what to do. It is unusual but not unique for a commander in chief to solicit views on the war from outside experts. It is more problematic, although still not unique, for a commander in chief to solicit the views of subordinates opposed to senior leadership directly. But allowing a quasi-military commander such as Prigozhin to conduct his own campaign parallel but not subordinate to the one being executed by the formal chain of command is extraordinarily unusual and badly corrosive of the authority of the formal military leadership.

Putin also established the Russian MoD as the scapegoat for all Russian military failures, which saddled Shoigu and Gerasimov with a reputation for incompetence and failure that they are unlikely to repair. ISW previously assessed that Putin regularly grants and withdraws his support for different commanders in hopes generating rapid improvements in Russia’s military fortunes but without always doing so formally. Shoigu and Gerasimov likely expected that Putin would restore their full authority over the Russian military’s decision-making processes given their loyalty to him after Wagner’s armed rebellion on June 24. Putin, however, has clearly not done so.  He has instead followed his normal pattern of seeking to divert backlash away from himself and rotating commanders instead of outright dismissing them. Intensifying insubordination and widespread outrage in response to the ongoing officer purge may force the Kremlin to reconsider its partial backing for Shoigu and Gerasimov in the wake of Wagner’s rebellion.

Russian commanders are likely setting information conditions to prevent the Russian MoD from punishing them for their insubordination by promoting narratives among Russian servicemembers along the front and thereby risking widespread demoralization.

The apparent crisis in the Russian chain of command and the corresponding morale effects it may produce will likely degrade Russian capabilities to conduct tactical offensive operations that are critical to the Russian elastic defense in southern Ukraine.

snippets from recent ISW updates, this isn't even relating to the Ukrainian offensive, it's all Russian-on-Russian violence

[is-putin-dead-yet]

Is putin dead yet?

23/08/2023: no

But we got the second best!!!!

[ivovynckier]

It's funny how those Russians always look like movie villains. Throw in a scar or a swastika and your character development is done. This is not the Method-acting crowd...

[schraubd]

Things Jews Are Blamed For Volume LXVI: The Wagner Coup

Seemingly as soon as it began, the "Wagner Coup" in Russia has come to an end. Shortly after taking control of the city of Rostov-on-Don and turning towards Moscow, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced he was backing down in a deal brokered by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko. (Prigozhin's safe transfer to Belarus has reportedly been "guaranteed" by Putin. Good luck with that).

But as brief as it was, things move quickly in the fast-paced ecosystem of the antisemitic conspiracy theory world (maybe why we had a two-fer today!). So in the short window when Wagner was on the march, we got some oh-so-typical content from sources close to the Kremlin:

The head of Russia's state-run television network RT said Saturday there was "no doubt" that the ongoing uprising by the Wagner mercenary group against the Kremlin was orchestrated by the secret services of the US, Britain and "perhaps one Mideastern country," a clear reference to Israel. 

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan is notorious for trafficking in baseless conspiracies and spreading false information at the behest of the Kremlin.

The "irony" is that Israel, of course, has been among the more tepid supporters of Ukraine compared to most of the western world, and thus seems quite unlikely to wade into the fray by supporting regime change in Russia. But plausibility was never the antisemite's strong suit. 

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/c9umW3L

[warningsine]

The head of the private Russian military company Wagner will move to neighboring Belarus as part of deal to defuse rebellion tensions and the criminal case against him will be closed, the Kremlin said Saturday.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s troops who joined him in the uprising will not face prosecution and those who did not will be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

After the deal was reached, Prigozhin said he was ordering his troops to halt their march on Moscow and retreat to field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian troops.

The deal appeared to defuse a dramatically escalating crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power.

The deal was mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a staunch Putin ally.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.

A rebellious Russian mercenary commander said Saturday he ordered his troops to halt their march on Moscow and retreat to field camps in Ukraine, appearing to defuse a dramatically escalating crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power.

Moscow had braced for the arrival of forces from the Wagner Group, a private army led by Yevgeny Prigozhin that has been fighting alongside regular Russian troops in Ukraine, by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. Red Square was shut down, and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.

But Prigozhin announced that while his men were just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow, he decided to turn them back to avoid “shedding Russian blood.”

He did not say whether the Kremlin had responded to his demand to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. There was no immediate comment from Putin’s government.

The turnaround followed a statement from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s office saying he had negotiated a deal with Prigozhin after discussing the issue with Putin. Prigozhin agreed to halt the advance in a proposed settlement including security guarantees for Wagner troops, Lukashenko’s office said, without elaborating.

Putin had vowed harsh consequences for organizers of the armed uprising led by his onetime protege, who brought his forces out of Ukraine, seized a key military facility in southern Russia and advanced toward Moscow.

In a televised speech to the nation, Putin called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment,” Putin said. “The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what concessions, if any, Putin may have made to Prigozhin.

If he accedes to Shoigu’s ouster, Prigozhin would emerge from the crisis as a clear winner in a major blow to Putin’s authority. If Prigozhin drops that demand, Putin could award him with more lucrative government contracts like those on which he has built his fortune.

However, it would be awkward and politically damaging for Putin to backtrack after branding Prigozhin a backstabbing traitor.

Some observers speculated that Prigozhin could make concessions such as putting the Wagner Group under federal authority, or he could shift the force’s activities back to Africa, where his mercenaries have been active in recent years.

Early Saturday, Prigozhin’s private army appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow, which runs Russian operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.

A nighttime video from the city posted on Russian messaging app channels showed Wagner troops getting ready to withdraw, hailed by shouts of “thank you!” and “well done!” in an apparent expression of relief following expectations of a bloody battle. Earlier videos had showed some residents yelling at Wagner mercenaries to leave.

Wagner troops and equipment also were in Lipetsk province, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) south of Moscow.

Authorities declared a “counterterrorist regime” in Moscow and its surrounding region, enhancing security and restricting some movement. On the southern outskirts, troops erected checkpoints, arranged sandbags and set up machine guns. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned that traffic could be restricted in parts of the capital and declared Monday a non-working day for most residents.

The dramatic developments came exactly 16 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s largest conflict since World War II, which has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and reduced cities to rubble.

Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting would create opportunities for its army to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that even with a deal, Putin’s position has probably been weakened and “these events will have been of great comfort to the Ukrainian government and the military.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Saturday, shortly before Prigozhin announced his retreat, that the march exposed weakness in the Kremlin and “showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs” that it is easy to capture Russian cities ”and, probably, arsenals.”

Switching into Russian in his daily video address, Zelenskyy said “the man from the Kremlin” was “very afraid.” He repeated his calls for the West to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets and ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, called for Prigozhin’s arrest Friday night after he declared the armed rebellion. It was unclear whether those charges would be dropped.

Prigozhin had vowed earlier that his fighters, whom he said number some 25,000, would not surrender because “we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.”

“Regarding the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our homeland,” he said in an audio message on his Telegram channel.

He posted video of himself at the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and claimed his forces had taken control of the airfield and other military facilities in the city without any deaths or even “a single gunshot.”

The rebellion came as Russia is “fighting the toughest battle for its future,” Putin said, with the West piling sanctions on Moscow and arming Ukraine.

“The entire military, economic and information machine of the West is waged against us,” Putin said.

State-controlled TV networks led their newscasts with Putin’s statement and reported the tense situation in Rostov-on-Don. Broadcasters also carried statements from top Russian officials and lawmakers voicing support for Putin, condemning Prigozhin and urging him to back down.

Chechnyan strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who in the past has sided with Prigozhin in his criticisms of Russia’s military, also expressed support for Putin’s “every word.”

“The mutiny needs to be suppressed,” Kadyrov said.

Wagner troops have played a crucial role in the Ukraine war, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. But Prigozhin has increasingly criticized the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.

In announcing the rebellion, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of attacking Wagner camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery, killing “a huge number of our comrades.”

Prigozhin alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu in which they decided to destroy the military contractor.

The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

The 62-year-old Prigozhin, a former convict, has longstanding ties to Putin and won lucrative Kremlin catering contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”

He gained attention in the U.S. when he and a dozen other Russian nationals were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory. Wagner has sent military contractors to Libya, Syria, several African countries and eventually Ukraine.

Even with the confrontation seemingly defused, it appeared likely to further hinder Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, as Kyiv’s forces probed Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.

Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House think tank in London, said the infighting could create confusion and potential division among Russian military forces.

“Russian troops in Ukraine may well now be operating in a vacuum, without clear military instructions, and doubts about whom to obey and follow,″ Lutsevych said. “This creates a unique and unprecedented military opportunity for the Ukrainian army.”

Western countries monitored developments closely. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterparts in the other G7 countries and the European Union’s foreign affairs representative, his spokesman said, adding that Blinken “reiterated that support by the United States for Ukraine will not change.”

Latvia and Estonia, two NATO countries that border Russia, said they were increasing security at their borders.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Now Putin is trying to avoid responsibility for his previous crimes by committing new ones—even more serious ones. Meanwhile, official propaganda deceptively presents Putin’s special military operation as Russia’s “existential struggle” or even as a global confrontation with the “satanic West.” In fact, this war is meaningless and destructive for Russia itself. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as of February 19, the losses of the Russian army have already exceeded 400,000 people. But it is not only about the death of people whom Moscow is pushing for a criminal war. The final transformation of Russia into a dictatorship, which occurred after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, has already provoked mass emigration, the volume of which may amount to 1.3 million people. The militarization of economic, cultural, and political life, as well as growing international isolation, are all signs that Russia is deliberately turning itself into an exile state, incapable of productive and mutually beneficial cooperation with the world. This, and not the mythical “conspiracy of the Anglo-Saxons,” which Putin claims, puts an end to the future of the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainian website, UKRINFORM, in an important piece called 10 Facts about [the] Russian-Ukrainian War. The article documents Putin's neverending sewage pipe of lies used to justify the most obscene, genocidal crimes against Ukraine, all for the sake of protecting his dictatorship.

The key quote here is: 'this war is meaningless and destructive for Russia itself'. The death toll of 400 000 soldiers is staggering, and just shows that the Russian terror state places no value whatsoever on human life.

Remember that Putin told Russian soldiers that they would be greeted in Ukraine as liberators, that they were 'denazifying' the country, and that they would quickly gain victory. The Russian Orthodox Church backed these claims, and bathed them in pseudo-religious justifications.

All of these claims were complete lies. And that's precisely why Putin won't visit any of his soldiers on the war front. The lies and death toll are too obvious.

The Wagner Group terrorist chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, discovered far too late that the problem was the Kremlin. He paid for his disagreement with his life.

It is important for Westerners not to fall for these lies, especially the claim that Moscow seeks peace. Russia had the option for peace for at least nine years. Instead, Putin's Mafia regime planned for further war. Russia has the option right now to immediately withdraw from all Ukrainian territory and reinstate the Minsk Agreements. It has refused to do so. So it is Russia that is blocking peace, not Ukraine.

And, as this quote shows, Putin is destroying Russia for his own imperialist delusions. This is always the case with dictators.

[tiggymalvern]

Wagner group turning on the Russian state was not in my bingo list for 2023, but I'll take it.