Ukraine said fighting had intensified on the eastern front as further details emerged about the number of Wagner troops who had relocated to Belarus.
“The situation has somewhat intensified in the east,” the Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said. She added that Ukrainian forces were on the defensive near the eastern city of Kupiansk but making advances near Bakhmut.
“For two days in a row, the enemy has been actively attacking in the Kupiansk sector in the Kharkiv region. We are on the defence,” Maliar wrote on Telegram.
Only a “few hundred” fighters from Russia’s Wagner group have so far relocated to Belarus, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday, leaving the eventual fate of the fighting force unclear.
The Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was given free rein to build a mercenary army of tens of thousands of contractors and prisoners, agreed to relocate his forces to Belarus as part of a deal to end his mutiny against the Kremlin last month.
Since then, however, there has been conflicting messaging about the fate of Wagner, which has carried out some of the most fierce fighting for the Russian side in Ukraine. Belarusian authorities say Wagner trainers have arrived in the country, and both Polish and Ukrainian authorities have confirmed this, but so far there does not appear to have been a mass relocation. The whereabouts of Prigozhin also remain a mystery.
“There are some groups of mercenaries on the territory of Belarus, but we are not talking about any massive or large-scale deployment … we are talking about a few hundred,” Andrii Demchenko, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guards, told Ukrainian television on Sunday.
On Thursday, the Pentagon briefed that while the majority of Wagner forces were still in Russian-occupied Ukraine, they “effectively are no longer contributing as a significant combat capability”, according to a spokesperson. Russia’s defence ministry has claimed Wagner has handed over thousands of tonnes of weaponry to the regular Russian army.
In Kyiv, a source close to Ukrainian intelligence said that although the turmoil over Wagner had not led to major Ukrainian gains on the ground, the Ukrainian military had noticed confusion and disarray among parts of Russia’s fighting force.
“They are trying to spread out the Wagner guys among other units, but of course this is going to affect their fighting abilities,” said the source. “These are professional, trained fighters who were used to fighting in particular units and combinations, and now they have to get used to something different.”
On Thursday, Putin told a trusted Russian journalist that “Wagner does not exist”, but he also gave details of a meeting he held in the Kremlin with Prigozhin and 35 Wagner commanders after the failed mutiny. Putin said he told the commanders they could continue to serve in Ukraine under the leadership of their battlefield commander, Andrey Trochev.
“A lot of them nodded their heads when I said this. But Prigozhin, who was sitting in front of them and didn’t see [their reaction], said: ‘No, the guys won’t agree with that decision,’” Putin said.
On the ground in Ukraine, fighting continues. On Sunday, Maliar said Ukrainian forces were “gradually moving forward” near the symbolic target of Bakhmut, which was seized by Russia in May, but were fighting defensive battles near the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region.
“Fierce battles are going on, and positions … change several times a day,” she added.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive, trailed for several months, has been making slow progress, with Kyiv calling on the west to supply more firepower. In an interview with the Guardian last week, a top Ukrainian security official said the international pressure over the counteroffensive was unhelpful.
“It’s not a sporting competition. There’s a lot at stake, people’s lives are at stake,” said Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the security council. He added, however, that he expected progress to come in August or September.
The US has controversially provided Ukraine with cluster munitions to help overcome the shortage of ammunition.
In an interview with state television, excerpts of which were published on Sunday, Putin said Russia had a “sufficient stockpile” of cluster munitions and said Moscow “reserves the right to take reciprocal action” if Ukraine used the controversial weapons. The use of cluster munitions by the Russian side has already been widely documented by human rights organisations.
Russia also said on Sunday it downed at least 10 drones close to Sevastopol, the Black Sea port in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014 and home to the Russian Black Sea fleet. The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, also claimed that a woman had been killed during a Ukrainian rocket attack on the town of Shebekino.
The Kremlin has not yet indicated whether Russia will renew a deal to allow Ukraine to ship its grain across the Black Sea. The United Nations and Turkey brokered the deal, which expires late on Monday, in July 2022. Russia has threatened to pull out of the deal, citing obstacles to its own exports.
“Vladimir Putin stressed that the obligations … to remove obstacles to the export of Russian food and fertilisers still remain unfulfilled,” according to a Kremlin statement on Saturday.
