Putin says mutiny tried to force soldiers ‘to shoot their own’ in desperate message

Ukraine has marked a rare first instance in the continuing war by retaking a territory controlled by Russia since 2014, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

“Ukrainian Airborne forces have made small advances east from the village of Krasnohorivka, near Donetsk city, which sits on the old Line of Control,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

It claimed that this is one of the first instances since Russia’s February 2022 invasion that Ukrainian forces have “highly likely recaptured an area of territory occupied by Russia since 2014”.

“Recent multiple concurrent Ukrainian assaults throughout the Donbas have likely overstretched Donetsk People’s Republic and Chechen forces operating in this area,” the ministry said.

The new Russian Revolution failed to take place. Vladimir Putin may be much weakened, but he has not been deposed. Yevgeny Prigozhin is not in Moscow, but on his way to Minsk. There are no signs, as yet, of the Kremlin’s military lines in Ukraine crumbling.

As the dust churned up by tanks and armoured cars begins to settle, inevitable questions have arisen about what exactly happened in the astonishing and tempestuous 36 hours in which a country with a vast nuclear stockpile came so close to civil war.

It was not entirely unexpected by some. US and Western intelligence agencies, it has emerged, had begun to learn some days ago that the Wagner group, Prigozhin’s mercenary army, would soon be on the move. Not against Ukrainians, but back into Russia and ready for armed confrontation with Russian forces.

The information, according to Western security officials, as well as one from a Baltic state, had been gleaned from satellite imagery of heavy weaponry being moved, troop redeployments, and interception of communication which has proved so valuable in predicting Putin’s invasion before it began.

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta has more on Saturday’s dramatic events in this longer read:

On the surface, the turmoil in Russia would seem like something for the US to celebrate: a powerful mercenary group engaging in a short-lived clash with Russia’s military at the very moment that Ukraine is trying to gain momentum in a critical counteroffensive.

But the public response by Washington has been decidedly cautious. Officials say the US had no role in the conflict, insist this was an internal matter for Russia and decline to comment on whether it could affect the war in Ukraine.

The reason: to avoid creating an opening for Russian President Vladimir Putin to seize on the rhetoric of American officials and rally Russians by blaming his Western adversaries.

Countries that “sat on the fence” at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should now be persuaded to come off it, Britain’s former national security adviser Lord Ricketts has said.

Speaking in the House of Lords, the ex-ambassador told peers: “The spectacle we saw last weekend must surely have shown the whole world that Putin is a weak and indecisive leader, and the head of a corrupt and chaotic country.

“I agree with the Government that the leadership of Russia is something for the Russian people. Our business is to ensure that Ukraine grows in confidence and strength in the months ahead.

“In that context, will the minister reassure us that ambassadors of all those non-aligned states, which sat on the fence at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, can now be persuaded that this would be a very good time to come off that fence, to give their support to Ukraine with the aim of shortening the war?”

Responding, foreign minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said: “We have been working diplomatically through the United Nations and directly and bilaterally with key countries particularly across south Asia, the Middle East and north Africa, and are we seeing results? Yes, of course.”

He highlighted the support of the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, adding: “I am not saying that there is not more work to be done, but clearly the diplomatic effort along with all the other areas we are working on is showing results.”

Russia conducted tactical fighter jet exercises over the Baltic Sea with the main goal of testing readiness to perform combat and special tasks operations, its defence ministry announced this morning.

“The crews of the Su-27 (fighter jets) of the Baltic Fleet fired from airborne weapons at cruise missiles and mock enemy aircraft,” the ministry said on Telegram.

“The main goal of the exercise is to test the readiness of the flight crew to perform combat and special tasks as intended.”

The ministry said that in addition to improving skills, the fighter jets crews are on “round-the-clock combat duty” guarding the air space of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky cheered his troops last night after marking a successful day in the battlefield where he claimed that the Ukraine’s soldiers progressed in all directions.

“Today – the front. Donetsk region, Zaporizhzhia. Our warriors, our frontline positions, areas of active operations at the front. Today, our warriors have advanced in all directions, and this is a happy day. I wished the guys more days like this,” he said in his nightly address.

Monday was the first day of battlefield operations after a chaotic mutiny in Russia which forced Vladimir Putin to keep his attention on mercenary fighters of Wagner group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin marching towards the Kremlin.

While it was unclear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine, where Western officials say Russia’s troops suffer low morale, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that Ukraine had “gained impetus” in its push around Bakhmut.

Ukrainian troops marked progress north and south of the town, it said, adding that the forces claimed to have retaken Rivnopil, a village in southeast Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting.

Wagner’s forces were key to Russia’s only land victory in months in Bakhmut.

President Joe Biden has stated that the US and Nato were not involved in the brief mutiny in Russia that took place over the weekend.

Speaking at the White House, Mr Biden said he was cautious about speaking publicly because he wanted to give “Putin no excuse to blame this on the West and blame this on Nato.”

“We made clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it,” he said.

The president spoke briefly about the events of the past 72 hours in Russia, where Wagner Group mercenaries seized a major hub of Russia’s defence sector before turning their columns towards the nation’s capital.

Mr Biden told reporters that he had convened the US’s European allies to discuss the political fallout from the mess, and “to make sure that we’re all on the same page”.

Western officials have been muted in their public comments on the mutiny as they carefully watched the series of events in the aborted military coup unfold.

Last seen on Saturday night smiling and high-fiving bystanders from the back of an SUV, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters had halted their campaign to avert bloodshed.

On Saturday, Mr Prigozhin said he was leaving for Belarus under a deal brokered by its president Alexander Lukashenko. In yesterday’s remarks he said Mr Lukashenko had offered to let Wagner operate under a legal framework, but he did not elaborate further.

Last night, he released an 11-minute audio clip, stating that he and his fighters “went as a demonstration of protest, not to overthrow the government of the country”.

But as of today, it remains unclear where has he taken shelter.

The White House said it could not confirm whether the Wagner chief was in Belarus.

Russia’s three main news agencies reported that a criminal case against Mr Prigozhin had not been closed, an apparent reversal of an offer of immunity publicised as part of the deal that persuaded him to stand down.

Russia needs a contract army of at least seven million military and civilian personnel, on top of the current conscript army, a senior lawmaker in Moscow said.

Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian lawmaker who has been an active member in a number of negotiations related to Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine, has said the seven-million strong army is needed to not require mercenary groups for country’s protection.

“The country does not need any PMCs (private military companies) and their likes,” Mr Slutsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party, said on Telegram. “There are problems in the regular army, but PMCs cannot solve them.”

Russia is reeling from a brief but rare military coup over the weekend when its powerful mercenary group Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led a failed mutiny by taking control of the military command steering Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Wagner leader and his fighters started a march on Moscow and claimed to come within 200km of the Kremlin before aborting the military coup.