The leader of the Russian Wagner mercenaries has announced that his troops will leave Bakhmut, which they have been trying to capture since last summer. Yevgeny Prigozhin said they would withdraw and end their involvement in the longest battle of the war on Wednesday, May 10, due to heavy casualties and insufficient ammunition supplies, and urged defense chiefs to put regular army troops in their place. But Ukraine said Wagner fighters would reinforce positions to try to capture the eastern city before that date.
Prigozhin previously released a video showing him standing in a field of Russian corpses and blaming defense chiefs for the casualties suffered by his fighters in Ukraine and looks set to reignite his simmering feud with Russian powerhouses.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has conducted an inspection of troop readiness for forces involved in the war, in an apparently cryptic response to Prigozhin’s criticism.
Ukraine said two people were killed and nine injured in the eastern Donetsk region and power distribution networks were damaged by shelling in the Donetsk and Kherson regions.
Some residents left the city of Kherson in cars and buses on Friday, and others stocked up on groceries before a 56-hour curfew begins Friday night. The curfew announcement has sparked speculation in Kherson that the city will serve as a base for the long-awaited Ukrainian counterattack.
Authorities in the Russian-held areas of Zaporizhia have started evacuating villages near the front lines. Russian-installed governor Yevgeny Balitsky announced the move in anticipation of a Ukrainian offensive aimed at retaking the area, claiming Kiev’s forces had “intensified shelling of settlements near the frontline” in recent days.
Engineers have reduced the risk of a dam bursting and damaging the Russian-held Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, a senior Russian official was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass on Friday. Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the general director of power engineering company Rosenergoatom, said specialists had started draining water from the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine.
A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of a theater director and a playwright on charges of “justifying terrorism”. about an award-winning play about Russian women recruited online to marry radical Islamists in Syria. Director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk were held in pre-trial detention until July 4, Russian news agencies reported.
Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down one of its own drones after losing control of Kiev. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, initially said an enemy drone had been shot down, but the air force later clarified that it was a Ukrainian drone, which was destroyed on Thursday.
The White House has dismissed as “ridiculous” claims by Russia that Washington orchestrated drone strikes on Moscow. He said the US was not involved in Wednesday’s incident and accused Russia of lying.
Finnish energy company Fortum has told the Kremlin that it strongly objects to Russia’s alleged “unlawful” seizure of its subsidiary in the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the seizure was in line with Russian legislation.
Bill Clinton said he knew in 2011 that it was only “a matter of time” before the Russian president attacked Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 – three years before he conquered Crimea – that he did not agree with the agreement I reached with Boris Yeltsin,” the former US president recalled. “He said… ‘I don’t agree with that. And I don’t support it. And I’m not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day that it was only a matter of time.”