live blog
Poland’s President Duda met with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Lutsk, western Ukraine. The Kremlin has asked NATO to deal with the situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant. All developments in the live blog.
11:12 a.m
Poland’s President Duda meets Selenskyj
Polish President Andrzej Duda has arrived in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk. He visited a church with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ahead of the anniversary of the massacre of Poles in Volhynia by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, they commemorated the victims together.
Duda was in Kiev just last week. There he expressed concern about the situation in neighboring Belarus and the transfer of Wagner troops there_ “Today it is difficult to rule out that the presence of the Wagner group in Belarus poses a potential threat to Poland, which shares a border with Belarus, as well as (…) for Lithuania and possibly also for Latvia.”
10:56 a.m
US experts: Wagner troops continue to pose a threat to Putin
According to US experts, the Wagner army of the Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin continues to pose a potential threat to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin it in an analysis by the US Institute for War Studies ISW in Washington. According to the ISW experts, Putin either has remarkable confidence in Prigozhin’s pledged loyalty or is incapable of taking action against the Wagner troops. “But Ukraine has already benefited from the rebellion and can continue to benefit from it,” the analysis said.
10:15 am
London: Russian state media surprised by riot
According to British intelligence experts, the state-controlled Russian media were surprised by the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group. This emerges from the daily intelligence report from the Ministry of Defense in London. Accordingly, the normal program on Russian TV just continued.
After the uprising ended, Russian channels first tried to counter claims that security forces had been passive, according to the British. Instead, they tried to feed the narrative that President Vladimir Putin had triumphed by successfully ending the revolt without bloodshed. A week later, the importance of Prigozhin was downplayed. Wagner’s channels in the social network Telegram, on the other hand, were probably silenced due to state intervention.
09:43 am
Moscow: NATO should deal with nuclear power plants
Russia urges NATO to deal with Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. At its summit on Tuesday and Wednesday, the military alliance should focus its attention primarily on the nuclear power plant, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. After all, the vast majority of NATO member states would be within direct sphere of action should anything happen to the facility.
Zakharova accuses Ukraine of “systematically causing damage” to the nuclear power plant. The largest European nuclear power plant is occupied by Russian troops. It came under fire several times during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for which the warring parties blame each other.
Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
5:16 a.m
Ukraine demands clear NATO commitment
Ahead of the NATO summit, Ukraine continues to press for a clear commitment to join the alliance. “At the Vilnius summit, we expect a clear invitation and direction to join NATO,” said the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, the dpa news agency. Even if accession does not happen overnight, one expects that NATO will no longer allow any ambiguity.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the heads of state and government of the 31 NATO countries will meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, to discuss, among other things, Ukraine’s accession prospects. Makeiev warned against repeating alleged mistakes made at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. At that time, Germany in particular, under the then Chancellor Angela Merkel, had resisted Ukraine’s rapid admission to the alliance. “If Ukraine had already been a member of NATO in 2014, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbass and now the large-scale Russian war of aggression would certainly not have happened,” the ambassador said.
5:16 a.m
Russian paramilitaries: plan further operations in the border area
According to a spokesman, the paramilitary Russian volunteer battalion “Legion Freedom of Russia” is planning further actions in the Russian border area. “There will be another surprise in the coming month or so,” Maximillian Andronnikov, who calls himself Caesar, said in an interview with Britain’s Sunday newspaper The Observer. “This will be our third mission,” he said. After that there will be a fourth and a fifth. “We have ambitious plans. We want to liberate our entire area,” the spokesman continued.
The group consists of Russian nationalists currently fighting on the side of Ukraine. Already in May and June, fighters of the “Legion” together with the “Russian Volunteer Corps” took part in attacks in the Russian border region of Belgorod near Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian secret service, such operations are intended, among other things, to “liberate the area from the so-called Putin regime”. The government in Kiev stressed that it had nothing to do with the attacks.
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.
5:16 a.m
The live blog from Saturday to read
Poland moves about 1,000 soldiers to the border with Belarus. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy appoints Oleksandr Pivnenko as the new head of the National Guard.