Ukraine strengthens northern defences as Wagner chief moves to Belarus

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered his military to strengthen its defences in northern areas, amid uncertainty over whether the Wagner mercenary group will relocate to Belarus following an abortive mutiny in Russia last weekend.

Mr Zelenskiy said he heard reports on Friday from his army commanders about “forward movement” on the battlefield and “strengthening our operations with additional artillery systems and shells”, and from his security services “on the situation in Belarus. We are keeping it under constant control.”

As a result, Ukraine’s top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi and Serhiy Naiev, commander of the northern sector, were ordered to “implement a set of measures to strengthen this direction.”

After Wagner fighters abandoned a brief rebellion last Saturday - during which they seized the southern Russian city of Rostov and shot down several military aircraft, killing their crew members – they were given the option of going home, joining the regular army, or moving to Belarus with the mercenary group’s now exiled leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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He has not been seen in public since last Saturday, but he has arrived in Belarus according to its president, Alexander Lukashenko, who said Wagner fighters would be welcome to set up camp there and share their combat experience with his own military.

Some 300 tent-like structures have been erected recently on a disused Belarusian military base near the town of Asipovichy, according to BBC analysis of satellite images, though it is not clear who they are intended to accommodate.

Mr Zelenskiy this week played down the potential threat posed by any Wagner presence in Belarus, and Lt Gen Naiev said: “I want to assure everyone that the situation in the northern operating zone remains stable and controlled…If this happens and the enemy tries to cross the state border then, for them, it will be nothing but suicide.”

Gen Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine’s forces had not noticed that Russia’s forces “got weaker somewhere or anything” as a result of the turmoil around Wagner’s brief revolt.

“I have a lot of fears, and Wagner is among them. And they’re not the only ones,” he told the Washington Post. “Our task is to prepare for the worst and most possible scenarios. And we will try to minimise the possible consequences of what could be.”

He also said it “pisses me off” to hear media reports that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was going slower than expected, because its forces were gaining ground every day and “every metre is given by blood.”

Gen Zaluzhnyi also compared Ukraine’s attempt to beat Russia’s military without western fighter jets as akin to using “bows and arrows” in a modern war.

“I do not need 120 planes,” he said. “A very limited number would be enough. But they are needed.”

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov insisted on Friday that Wagner’s mutiny was a minor incident and his country was only galvanised by such challenges.

“Thank you for your concern about our national interests, but you shouldn’t feel worried…Russia has always emerged stronger from any trouble,” he said. “That will be the case this time. Moreover, we already feel that this process has begun.”

Mr Lavrov also suggested that the Wagner group could continue to take lucrative security contracts from African regimes, despite doubts around its status in Russia: “It is up to the governments of the respective countries to decide how interested they are in maintaining this form of co-operation to ensure the security of government institutions.”

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency said Russia was withdrawing staff from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which Kyiv says Moscow’s forces have mined. Russia denies planning to cause a radiation leak at Europe’s biggest atomic facility.

Since seizing the plant last year, the Russian army has turned it into a military base.

Pope Francis said on Friday there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow. “The tragic reality of this war that seems to have no end demands of everyone a common creative effort to imagine and forge paths of peace,” the pope told a religious delegation from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Vatican said in a subsequent statement that the pope’s envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, had finished his consultations in Moscow, where he had met one of Russia president Vladimir Putin’s advisers, Yuri Ushakov, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

In Ukraine, Mr Zelenskiy met Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent European figures who are forming a working group to address ecological damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion.

The working group on the environment visiting Kyiv includes Ms Thunberg, former Irish president Mary Robinson, Sweden’s former deputy prime minister Margot Wallstrom and European Parliament vice-president Heidi Hautala.

Ms Thunberg said Russian forces “are deliberately targeting the environment and people’s livelihoods and homes. And therefore also destroying lives. Because this is after all a matter of people”.

Mr Zelenskiy also met former US vice-president Mike Pence, who visited Kyiv. Mr Pence, an advocate of US support to Ukraine, is running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. - Additional reporting: AP