Lukashenko says Prigozhin dismissed warnings about threats to his life; Kremlin denies being behind plane crash; flight recorders and 10 bodies recovered
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said he warned the Wagner group chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin – who apparently died in a plane crash on Wednesday – to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and insisted that Wagner fighters remain in Belarus. Lukashenko said on Friday that Prigozhin had twice dismissed his concerns about the possible threats. He said that during Prigozhin’s June mutiny he had warned he would “die” if he continued to march on Moscow, to which he said Prigozhin answered: “To hell with it – I will die.”
The Kremlin said western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. It declined on Friday to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company said. Russian media, mainly associated with a Wagner Telegram channel, had linked a second business jet with the mercenary group and reported it was also in the air at the time of the crash.
Russian investigators said they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the crash scene in Russia’s Tver region. “Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media on Friday.
The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof that Prigozhin was onboard the plane that crashed with no survivors but that it was “highly likely” he was dead.
Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister has said after Prigozhin’s presumed death. “There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Friday. “They are broken.”
The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. The training would begin after the pilots receive English-language training next month, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training at an airbase in Arizona, he added.
Turkey sees “no alternative” to the original grain export agreement Ukraine struck with Russia, Ankara has said, dismissing an alternate route reportedly being considered by the US. Russia last month pulled out of the deal that enabled Ukraine to export grain from three Black Sea ports but Ukraine this month sent a cargo vessel to Istanbul to test the alternate route. However, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, said Ankara was focused on reviving the original deal.
Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning.
The US state department has imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said were reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children.
Danish film-maker Lars von Trier has defended himself from a backlash after writing a social media post that criticised Denmark’s donation of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. “Russian lives matter also!” he wrote on Instagram on Tuesday after Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Denmark.
