Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Vladimir Putin’s response to the armed Wagner rebellion shows he is "weak" and "crumbling."
Over a week ago, the mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin turned on his former ally Putin and marched on Russia's capital Moscow in an attempted coup.
Wagner mercenaries left Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city and rolled troops for hundreds of miles toward Moscow.
A series of dramatic hours followed but after less than 24 hours, Prigozhin agreed to stand down.
"We see Putin’s reaction," Zelensky told CNN in Ukraine over the weekend.
"It’s weak."
He continued: "Firstly, we see he doesn’t control everything. Wagner’s moving deep into Russia and taking certain regions shows how easy it is to do. Putin doesn’t control the situation in the regions.
"All that vertical [sic] of power he used to have is just crumbling down."
Speaking at a news conference in Kyiv Saturday, Zelensky said Prigozhin’s rebellion had greatly affected Russian power on the battlefield and could be beneficial to Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
While a top NATO military officer said today that Russia’s armed forces are bruised but by no means beaten in the war.
His remarks came as he laid out the biggest revamp to the organisation’s military plans since the Cold War if Russia expanded the conflict.
US President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts are set to endorse the changes in the alliance’s planning system at a summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius next week.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that an award-winning Ukrainian writer was among those killed by a deadly Russian missile attack on a popular restaurant frequented by journalists and aid workers in eastern Ukraine last week.
Victoria Amelina died from her injuries after the June 27 strike in the city of Kramatorsk, PEN America, a literature and human rights organisation said on Sunday in a statement.
At least 11 others were killed and 61 were wounded in the attack around dinnertime and Ukrainian authorities arrested a man a day later, accusing him of helping Russia direct the strike.
"Victoria Amelina was a celebrated Ukrainian author who turned her distinct and powerful voice to investigate and expose war crimes after the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine", said Polina Sadovskaya, Eurasia director at PEN America.
She continued: "She brought a literary sensibility to her work and her elegant prose described, with forensic precision, the devastating impact of these human rights violations on the lives of Ukrainians."
