Deadly strikes on eastern Ukraine as Kyiv blames Putin for death of Wagner mercenary boss

At least four people were killed and dozens injured in strikes by Moscow’s military on eastern Ukraine, as the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, blamed Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the death of Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last month.

One person was killed and more than 70 wounded when a Russian missile hit a police station and damaged nearby residential and office buildings in Kryvyi Rih, the city where Mr Zelenskiy grew up. Also on Friday, three people were killed and five injured when Russian forces struck two villages in Kherson region with bombs and mortars.

Russia said its troops repelled attacks along the front line in eastern Ukraine and shot down several drones, and its FSB security service claimed to have detained a Russian citizen who planned to blow up a train line in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Ukraine’s military said it was slowly gaining more ground in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region and near the occupied city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. It also said Russia’s invasion force was transferring some troops to Zaporizhzhia to strengthen defences there and building up a strike force near Lyman, about 60km north of Bakhmut.

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Bakhmut, a former regional transport hub, was reduced to ruins by months of heavy shelling and then street fighting before Russian forces led by the Wagner group finally seized control of the devastated city in May.

On June 23rd, Mr Prigozhin led Wagner fighters on what he called a “march of justice” towards Moscow to demand the removal of defence chiefs whom he accused of mishandling the invasion of Ukraine. They seized the southern Russian city of Rostov and shot down several Russian military planes, killing their crews, before calling off the uprising after a day.

Exactly two months later, Mr Prigozhin and top senior Wagner allies died when their private plane plunged to earth en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, in an unexplained disaster that Russian authorities claim to be investigating. The Kremlin rejected as “absolute lies” suggestions that Mr Putin ordered a missile or bomb attack on the plane.

“The fact that he killed Prigozhin – at least that’s the information we all have, not any other kind – that also speaks to his rationality, and about the fact that he is weak,” Mr Zelenskiy said of the Russian leader on Friday.

“Putin is left with just one step: instil fear in the West with his nuclear weapons… There will be moments when they are moving their nuclear weapons from one place to another to exert pressure on the United States,” he added.

Mr Zelenskiy also questioned the pace of allies’ additional arms deliveries to Ukraine – and provision of fighter jets – and their readiness to impose more sanctions on Moscow, in answer to some disappointment in western capitals about the slow progress of his military’s counteroffensive.

“All processes are becoming more complicated and slower – from sanctions to the provision of weapons,” he said. “The longer it takes, the more people suffer… If we are not in the sky and Russia is, they stop us from the sky. They stop our counteroffensive.”

Kyiv and western states rejected as a worthless farce “elections” that are now being held by Russia in occupied parts of Ukraine.

“Russia’s sham elections in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void. They will not have any legal consequences and will not lead to a change in the status of the Ukrainian territories captured by the Russian army,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said.

Cuban authorities said they had arrested 17 people as part of an investigation into alleged “trafficking” of the island’s citizens to fight for Russia in Ukraine.