Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance to the state

Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance to Russian state

President Putin last night ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group.

Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect yesterday after the Kremlin said that western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control, reports Reuters.

The decree, published on the Kremlin website, obliges anyone carrying out work on behalf of the military or supporting what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia.

Fighters must pledge “their loyalty to the Russian Federation… strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders, and conscientiously fulfill their obligations,” it reads, according to the Moscow Times.

Described in the decree as a step to forge the spiritual and moral foundations of the defence of Russia, the wording of the oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of commanders and senior leaders.

Russian investigators inspect the crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

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Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control, reports Reuters.

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Russia reported a new drone attack on Moscow in the early hours of Saturday which again forced authorities to temporarily shut down all three major airports serving the capital.

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Reuters reports that Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was brought down by air defence systems over the Moscow region’s Istra district, about 50km (31 miles) west of the Kremlin.

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Three major Moscow airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo – suspended flights for a couple of hours on Friday, the state news agency Tass reported.

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Aerial attacks on Moscow and other Russian-held territory have intensified in recent weeks, including 42 drones intercepted over the Russia-held Crimean Peninsula on Friday – one of the biggest reported air assaults since the war began.

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The attacks have not caused extensive damage but their intensity has forced Russian authorities to temporarily shut down airports serving the capital several times this week.

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Russia blamed Ukraine for Friday’s attack and all the previous assaults, which intensified after two drones were destroyed over the Kremlin in early May.

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Ukraine did not immediately comment and almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has said previously, however, that destroying Russia’s military infrastructure helps a counteroffensive that Ukraine began in June.

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President Biden has said US officials are trying to determine precisely how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down, leaving no survivors.

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Russia earlier on Friday criticised Biden for expressing his lack of surprise that Prigozhin had been killed in a plane crash and cautioned that it was not appropriate for Washington to make such remarks, Reuters reports.

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Asked by reporters what brought down the Wagner leader’s jet in Russia, Biden said on Friday:

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\n

I’m not at liberty to speak to that precisely … We’re trying to nail down precisely, but I don’t have anything to say.

\n

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President Putin sent his condolences to Prigozhin’s family on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader’s plane crashed two months after he led a mutiny against Russia’s military chiefs.

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Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a look at the latest key developments.

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President Biden has said US officials are still trying to determine how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down in Russia, killing all 10 people aboard.

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Biden said on Friday the US was “trying to nail down precisely” the cause of Wednesday’s jet crash in the Tver region north-west of Moscow.

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Western intelligence officials have said Prigozhin was most likely to have been killed by an onboard explosion on the orders of President Putin. The Kremlin said on Friday that claims of Putin’s involvement were “an absolute lie”.

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Meanwhile, Russian air defences destroyed a drone as it approached Moscow, the city’s mayor said early on Saturday.

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Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties or damage on initial information.

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The launch is the latest in a string of drone attacks on the capital region.

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More on both those stories shortly. In other news:

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A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company said. Russian media, mainly associated with a Wagner Telegram channel, had linked a second business jet with the mercenary group and reported it was also in the air at the time of the crash.

Russian investigators said they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the crash scene. “Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media on Friday.

Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister has said after Prigozhin’s presumed death. “There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Friday. “They are broken.”

The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. The training would begin after the pilots received English-language training next month, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training at an airbase in Arizona, he added.

Turkey sees “no alternative” to the original grain export agreement Ukraine struck with Russia, Ankara has said, dismissing an alternate route reportedly being considered by the US. Russia last month pulled out of the deal that enabled Ukraine to export grain from three Black Sea ports but Ukraine this month sent a cargo vessel to Istanbul to test the alternate route. However, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, said Ankara was focused on reviving the original deal.

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Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.

German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning last October.

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Key events

Lyndsey Winship

Alexei Ratmansky, the most significant classical choreographer of the current era, has told of finding himself at the centre of this moment in history – his identity closely entwined between Ukraine and Russia.

He was born in St Petersburg, grew up in Kyiv, trained in Moscow, started his professional career in Ukraine, and later became the artistic director of Russia’s Bolshoi ballet. He now lives in New York.

The choreographer is spending a lot of time researching Ukrainian ballet, often little known or hard to find, sharing clips of archive performances to celebrate Ukraine’s own cultural identity and style, as distinct from Russia’s.

There are still professional ballet companies working in Kyiv and Odesa, Lviv and Dnipro. “They’re still performing, and they stop when there is an air-raid siren, they go to the shelter, and then they continue when it ends,” says Ratmansky. “I think it’s important for them to continue – for the dancers, for the audience, for the whole world. It says something about the spirit of the Ukrainians: it’s unbreakable.”

His parents and in-laws are still in Ukraine. “The horror continues,” he says. “We stay up half the night checking the news, and in the morning we start with the news. And the news is bad,” he says. “It’s not safe, but they can’t leave. They won’t leave.”

Amid waves of support, a few angry voices have criticised Ratmansky for not speaking out against Putin’s regime earlier, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and for continuing to work at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky in that period. Does he regret not speaking publicly sooner?

“Yes, I do, I do,” he says firmly. “I also regret – and it’s something I’m going to have to live with – that I went back and worked there. I was thinking art is outside of politics, or could be. But the invasion opened my eyes. And I have to admit that this guilt of not speaking out is very strong.

Ratmansky’s embrace of his own Ukrainian identity is echoed across his country. “The whole nation is so united now,” he says. “The more Putin wants to destroy it, the more it comes together.”

The governor of Russia‘s Belgorod region said Kyiv has shelled the town of Urazovo, about 10 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, injuring four people.

Russian regions bordering Ukraine have regularly reported indiscriminate shelling by Kyiv’s armed forces and occasional cross-border incursions.

“The Ukrainian armed forces shelled the town of Urazovo in Valuysky municipal district with Grad shells,” governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on social media. He said Ukraine used “cluster munitions” in the attack, and that residential homes and an agricultural shop were hit, AFP reports.

“According to preliminary data, there are four victims – three men and one woman. All of them have shrapnel wounds,” he added.

The crash that killed militia leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has raised serious questions about the future of the mercenary Wagner Group of which he was the leader, especially following Putin’s demand for fighters to sign an oath of allegiance.

In African countries where Wagner provided security against groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, officials and commentators predict Russia will likely maintain its presence, placing the forces under new leadership. Others, however, say Prigozhin built deep, personal connections that Moscow could find challenging to replace quickly.

This summer, Wagner helped secure a national referendum in Central African Republic that cemented presidential power, it is a key partner for Mali’s army in battling armed rebels and it contacted the military junta in Niger that wants its services following a coup.

But some in Central African Republic denounce the mercenaries, and the UN peacekeeping mission there criticised them in 2021 for human rights abuses.

Yesterday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Wagner’s future. However, according to the Moscow Times, he said that “legally the Wagner private military group does not exist”.

Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance to Russian state

Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control, reports Reuters.

Russian investigators inspect a part of the crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, 23 August. — Russian investigators inspect the crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Russian authorities have said that air defences had destroyed one drone as it approached Moscow and another close to the border with Ukraine.

“Tonight, air defence forces destroyed a drone on approach to Moscow in the Istrinskii district,” the capital’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote on Telegram. “Preliminarily, there were no casualties or damage. Emergency services are working on the site.”

Moscow was rarely attacked during the early stages of the conflict but the city and other Russian regions have been targeted by a barrage of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent days, with Kyiv vowing to “return” the conflict to Russia, AFP reports.

The defence ministry said a second Ukrainian drone had been destroyed early Saturday in the Shebekino district, part of the Belgorod region close to the border. “An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack with a drone against sites on Russian territory has been prevented,” the ministry posted on Telegram.

The New York Times reports that Ukraine has increased the frequency of its drone attacks “to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back, especially as the counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops moves slowly.”

Moscow has been attacked by drones on a number of occasions this week. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA

Ukrainian forces believe they have broken through a difficult line of Russian defences in the south and will now be able to advance more quickly, a commander fighting in the south has told Reuters.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian troops raised the national flag in the wartorn settlement of Robotyne in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, about 10 km south of the frontline town of Orikhiv, despite at least two houses remaining under Russian control.

A commander who led some of the troops into Robotyne said:

We don’t stop here … Next we have [the town of] Berdiansk, and then more. I made it clear to my fighters at once: our goal is not Robotyne, our goal is (the Sea of) Azov. We have passed the main roads that were mined. We are coming to those lines where we can go (forward). I’m sure we’ll go faster from here.

He added of the houses still under Russian control in Robotyne: “We’re fighting for them, and then we’ll have full control”.

Ukrainian forces raise the national flag in the settlement of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, in this screen grab taken from a social media video released on 23 August. Photograph: Valerii Zaluzhnyi/Reuters

Dan Sabbagh

Eleven days ago, some of the most senior soldiers in the Nato alliance travelled to a secret location on the Polish-Ukrainian border to meet Ukraine’s chief military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for what was privately billed as “a council of war”.

It was no ordinary discussion: Zaluzhnyi brought his entire command team with him on the roughly 300-mile journey from Kyiv. The aim of the five-hour meeting was to help reset Ukraine’s military strategy – top of the agenda was what to do about the halting progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, along with battle plans for the gruelling winter ahead plus longer-term strategy as the war inevitably grinds into 2024.

Particularly notable was the presence not just of Nato’s military chief, the American Gen Christopher Cavoli, but also Adm Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s most senior military officer, who is now acknowledged in Washington and Kyiv as an increasingly important actor in helping Ukraine overcome the Russian invaders.

2/2. Russia underestimates Ukraine’s resilience and resolve, continued military strength and expertise, and the solidarity of its allies. pic.twitter.com/ddHIyaLxOw

— Chief of the Defence Staff 🇬🇧 (@AdmTonyRadakin_) August 18, 2023

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2/2. Russia underestimates Ukraine’s resilience and resolve, continued military strength and expertise, and the solidarity of its allies. pic.twitter.com/ddHIyaLxOw

— Chief of the Defence Staff 🇬🇧 (@AdmTonyRadakin_) August 18, 2023

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency has said a Ukrainian drone attack hit a Russian military base deep inside annexed Crimea, while residents reported casualties, explosions and a road closure.

Early on Friday, Russia reported one of the biggest coordinated Ukrainian air raids yet over Russian-controlled territory but said air defence systems had downed all 42 drones attacking Crimea before they could hit their targets.

However, Ukrainian intelligence officials said the attack struck a Russian brigade based in Perevalnoye, a town more than 200km (120 miles) from Ukraine-controlled territory, Reuters reports.

“We confirm that there was a hit,” said GUR spokesman Andriy Yusov, according to Ukrainian media outlet Liga.Net.

Perevalnoye residents posting on Telegram reported hearing blasts from the military base and cited casualties.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

“Two people died on a firing range, one was taken to a hospital in a severe condition. This is information from above, from the firing range,” said a user nicknamed Abdul Has, whose profile picture shows a man in camouflaged uniform.

Another user, Vlad the Local, said roughly one person was dead.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has put Russian forces under pressure in Bakhmut and southern Ukraine but Russia has made limited advances in the country’s north-east and is likely to intensify its attacks there in the next two months, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

It said in its latest intelligence update that Russia’s western group of forces had made their advances around the towns of Kupiansk and Lyman through “continued small-scale attacks”.

As Ukraine continued to gradually gain ground in the south, “Russia’s doctrine suggests that it will attempt to regain the initiative by pivoting back to an operational level offensive”. That might include in the Kupiansk-Lyman sector, the ministry said in its update, posted on former Twitter platform X.

A lightly injured woman walks among the debris of a neighbour’s destroyed home after shelling in a village near Kupiansk, Ukraine. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images

The ministry said:

There is a realistic possibility Russia will increase the intensity of its offensive efforts on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis in the next two months, probably with the objective of advancing west to the Oskil River and creating a buffer zone around Luhansk oblast.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 26 August 2023

Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/S2gIiCffTK

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Z3JuKMXE3U

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 26, 2023

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Russia blocks fresh drone attack on Moscow, says mayor

Russia reported a new drone attack on Moscow in the early hours of Saturday which again forced authorities to temporarily shut down all three major airports serving the capital.

Reuters reports that Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was brought down by air defence systems over the Moscow region’s Istra district, about 50km (31 miles) west of the Kremlin.

Three major Moscow airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo – suspended flights for a couple of hours on Friday, the state news agency Tass reported.

A man photographs a building damaged by a drone in the Moscow-City business centre on Wednesday. Photograph: Getty Images

The attacks have not caused extensive damage but their intensity has forced Russian authorities to temporarily shut down airports serving the capital several times this week.

Russia blamed Ukraine for Friday’s attack and all the previous assaults, which intensified after two drones were destroyed over the Kremlin in early May.

US trying to determine what downed Prigozhin plane, says Biden

President Biden has said US officials are trying to determine precisely how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down, leaving no survivors.

Asked by reporters what brought down the Wagner leader’s jet in Russia, Biden said on Friday:

I’m not at liberty to speak to that precisely … We’re trying to nail down precisely, but I don’t have anything to say.

Opening summary

Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a look at the latest key developments.

President Biden has said US officials are still trying to determine how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down in Russia, killing all 10 people aboard.

Biden said on Friday the US was “trying to nail down precisely” the cause of Wednesday’s jet crash in the Tver region north-west of Moscow.

Police officers keep guard at a checkpoint near the plane crash site in Russia’s Tver region — Police keep guard at a checkpoint near the site of the plane crash thought to have killed Prigozhin in Russia’s Tver region. Photograph: Anton Vaganov/Reuters

Meanwhile, Russian air defences destroyed a drone as it approached Moscow, the city’s mayor said early on Saturday.

Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties or damage on initial information.

The launch is the latest in a string of drone attacks on the capital region.

More on both those stories shortly. In other news:

A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company said. Russian media, mainly associated with a Wagner Telegram channel, had linked a second business jet with the mercenary group and reported it was also in the air at the time of the crash.
Russian investigators said they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the crash scene. “Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media on Friday.
Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister has said after Prigozhin’s presumed death. “There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Friday. “They are broken.”
The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. The training would begin after the pilots received English-language training next month, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training at an airbase in Arizona, he added.
Turkey sees “no alternative” to the original grain export agreement Ukraine struck with Russia, Ankara has said, dismissing an alternate route reportedly being considered by the US. Russia last month pulled out of the deal that enabled Ukraine to export grain from three Black Sea ports but Ukraine this month sent a cargo vessel to Istanbul to test the alternate route. However, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, said Ankara was focused on reviving the original deal.

A man sweeps grain during a clean up after Russian strikes on a storage facility in the Odesa region last month — Ukrainians clean up after Russian missile strikes on a grain storage facility in the Odesa region last month. Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning last October.