By Amy Woodyatt, Thom Poole, Adrienne Vogt and Tori B. Powell, CNN
From CNN's Olga Voitovych
Six civilians have been hurt by Ukrainian shelling in Russia's Belgorod region, the region’s Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said, adding that they received "shrapnel wounds."
"One injured is in extremely serious condition - a man has shrapnel wounds in the lumbar area, and internal organs have been damaged," Gladkov said in a Telegram post Saturday. The man is undergoing surgery, he added.
The governor said over a dozen houses and several cars have been damaged as a result of the shelling.
Analysis by CNN's Ivana Kottasová and Stephanie Busari
Yevgeny Prigozhin turned the Wagner Group from a shadowy band of mercenaries into a feared military powerhouse operating across multiple countries on three continents. Now that he is gone, the future of the group is anyone’s guess.
The warlord is presumed dead after aviation authorities said he was on board a jet that crashed near Moscow on Wednesday, exactly two months after he launched a short-lived rebellion in Russia.
Most security experts doubt Wagner can survive without Prigozhin, posing major questions about what will happen to the group’s fighters, weapons and operations.
They said the Kremlin may seek to further absorb the group into the Russian military, or try to replace the Wagner chief with an ally, but it’s unlikely there will be much appetite for that among Prigozhin’s men. What’s clear is that the fallout will be felt far beyond Russia’s borders, especially in African countries where Wagner has been employed to help prop up leaders and suppress rebellions.
“My guess is that (Wagner) is going to fall apart without him because he led the group in a very personalized manner, in a way where loyalty was to him over any other entity or person,” said Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor at the University of Essex who researches authoritarian regimes and violent non-state actors.
The kind of clear chain of command that is common in traditional military does not exist in Wagner, which makes Prigozhin’s demise a potentially existential problem for the group. “It’s really all about him, and once he is gone, it will be more chaotic. It’s not clear where the loyalties are going to go to,” Lindstaedt told CNN.
From CNN's Josh Pennington and Alex Stambaugh
Russia's air defenses thwarted a new drone attack near Moscow early Saturday, Russia's defense ministry said in a post on Telegram.
The drone was destroyed over the Istrinsky district in Moscow region around 3 a.m. local time (8 p.m. ET Friday), according to the ministry.
"Preliminarily, there are no casualties or damage. Response teams are working at the scene," Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram.
Some background: A string of drone strikes have peppered Russian cities including Moscow throughout the summer. In one of the most dramatic instances, sea drones targeted a major Russian port hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-held territory.
Ukraine has typically not taken direct responsibility for the attacks, though its responses have become more bullish in recent weeks.
From CNN's Olga Voitovych
At least one person was killed and another wounded in Russian attacks on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region in the past day, according to Yurii Malashko, head of the regional military administration.
"Over the past day, the enemy fired 85 times at 26 settlements in Zaporizhzhia region," Malashko said in a post on Telegram Friday.
"Unfortunately, a 58-year-old resident of Mala Tokmachka was killed," he said, and added that a 59-year-old man was also injured during shelling on the village.
Elsewhere in southern Ukraine, one person was wounded by Russian attacks over the past day in the Kherson region, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration there.
Prokudin said Russian attacks hit residential areas of the region's settlements, a critical infrastructure facility, a building of an educational institution and territories of two farms. The attacks also hit a business and gym in Kherson city, he added.
Some context: Signs are growing that Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian defenses along part of the southern front lines in Zaporizhzhia region and are expanding a wedge toward the strategic town of Tokmak, while stepping up attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea, as part of a slow moving counteroffensive.
On Thursday, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, Nataliya Humenyuk, said Russian forces were bringing more forces to the Zaporizhzhia area from Kherson to the south, due to the heavy casualties among units already there.
There has been further success in two areas – toward the village of Novoprokopivka and further east in the direction of another small settlement, Ocheretuvate, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Friday.
CNN cannot independently verify battlefield reports from either side in the conflict.
From CNN's Alex Stambaugh, Katharina Krebs and Heather Chen
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said he warned Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin twice to watch out for threats to his life.
The Wagner warlord, who led a failed uprising against the Kremlin two months ago, was on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday. The cause of the crash remains unclear.
“The first time was when I phoned him and negotiations (were taking) place while they were marching on Moscow,” Lukashenko told reporters in comments carried by Belarusian state news agency Belta on Friday.
“I told him: ‘Yevgeny, do you understand that you will doom your people and will perish yourself?’ He had just come back from the front. On an impulse he said: ‘I will die then, damn it!”
Warned "in no uncertain terms": Lukashenko said the second time he warned him was when Prigozhin and Dmitriy Utkin, a long-time lieutenant of Prigozhin’s, had come to see him. The Belarusian leader says he “warned them in no uncertain terms to watch it.” Lukashenko did not say when the meeting took place.
The Belarusian president said he suggested to Prigozhin that he could talk with Putin and “guarantee full security” in Belarus if he was concerned for his safety, Belta reported.
“I said: ‘If you are afraid of something, I will talk to President (Vladimir) Putin and we will extract you to Belarus. We guarantee full security to you in Belarus.’ And credit where credit is due, Yevgeny Prigozhin has never asked me to separately pay attention to security matters,” Lukashenko said.
Read the full story here:
From CNN's Eliza Mackintosh, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Benjamin Brown and Katie Polglase
There is a puff of white and then a plane can be seen falling, a trail of smoke or vapor stretching behind it, descending rapidly against a bright blue sky. The person filming the video zooms in as the aircraft spirals downward out of control, revealing that it is missing a wing.
The footage, published by Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, appears to show the moments before a private plane purportedly carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin crashed in a field northwest of Moscow, while en route to St. Petersburg.
The evidence: CNN has reviewed flight data and videos, and interviewed aviation and explosive experts, to piece together what happened in the minutes leading up to the crash. The analysis suggests that the private aircraft experienced at least one “catastrophic inflight incident” before it dropped out of the sky. The available video does not show that catastrophic event.
A passenger manifest released by Russia’s civil aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, on Wednesday showed that Prigozhin’s name and that of Wagner’s top commander, Dmitry Utkin, were among the seven passengers and three crew members, all of whom Russia’s emergency services ministry said were killed.
Russian authorities have yet to officially confirm Prigozhin’s death but, acknowledging the crash in public comments on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to him in the past tense.
Rosaviatsia said it had launched an investigation into “the circumstances and causes of the accident.” The Investigative Committee has also launched a criminal probe.
The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin launched a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, posing an unprecedented challenge to Putin’s authority.
The US view: The Pentagon said on Thursday that Prigozhin was “likely” killed in the crash. US and Western intelligence officials that CNN has spoken to believe it was deliberate. Officials said that it was too early to determine what brought the plane down, but that one possibility being explored was an on-board explosion.
There’s been plenty of speculation. But no evidence has been presented pointing to the involvement of the Kremlin or Russian security services in the crash.
Experts interviewed by CNN say that available evidence indicates that the crash was unlikely to have been caused by a mechanical failure. The dramatic descent of the plane, the way that it broke apart in the air and the extent of the debris field point to an explosion, they said.
