The alleged co-founder and military commander of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Dmitry Utkin, was buried near Moscow on Thursday.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has hit out at critics of Kyiv’s tactics in its counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion, saying they were spitting in the faces of Ukrainian soldiers and should “shut up”.
Royal Navy warships and RAF patrol aircraft have tracked a series of Russian warships as they travelled close to the UK including through the English Channel.
Two Ukrainian “saboteurs” were killed and five captured during an incursion into the region of Bryansk, a Russian official reportedly said on Thursday. Separately, Russia reportedly said on Thursday it intended to develop ties with North Korea.
A newly released video of Yevgeny Prigozhin purports to show the Wagner group boss in Africa addressing rumours about his wellbeing and threats to his life, just days before his death.
The UK government has named ex-energy secretary Grant Shapps as the new defence secretary. A former chief of the general staff of the British army said Shapps knows “very little about defence” and it will take him “quite some time to get up to speed”.
A military spokesperson said Ukrainian armed forces are making progress in the direction of Novoprokopivka – the village beyond Robotyne, in the direction of Melitopol.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has decried corrupt medical exemptions that have enabled people to avoid military service, saying the system was subject to bribes and mass departures abroad.
Ukrainian drones struck targets in at least six regions deep within Russia on Wednesday, in one of the largest-scale attacks on Russia in months. Drones hit an airport in the western Pskov region, and the regions of Moscow, Oryol, Bryansk, Ryazan and Kaluga.
The strike on the city of Pskov started a fire and damaged four Il-76 military cargo aircraft, Russian authorities said, engulfing two of the planes in flames. Footage and images posted on social media showed smoke billowing over the city and the regional governor, Mikhail Vedernikov, ordered all flights to and from Pskov airport to be cancelled on Wednesday.
Three drones came down in the Bryansk region, according to the Russian military, and two over the Oryol region, its governor, Andrei Klychkov, said. One came down in the Ryazan region, one more in Kaluga, and one more in the Moscow region, officials said. No damage or casualties were registered.
At least two people were reported killed in Kyiv in what authorities described as the heaviest series of Russian airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital for months. Air defences shot down all 28 Russian missiles and 15 out of 16 drones, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Wednesday.
Six Ukrainian pilots were reportedly killed when two military helicopters crashed in the eastern Donetsk region. According to the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, the two Mi-8 helicopters crashed in Kramatorsk on Tuesday. The aircraft were completely destroyed and the bodies of six dead servicemen were found.
