August 26, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained four more employees of military enlistment offices as part of an ongoing crackdown on corruption, the agency said in a statement Saturday. 

Those detained are employees in military enlistment offices and heads of military medical commissions "who 'helped' evaders to avoid conscription and escape abroad," the SBU said. 

The cost of such "services" was up to $10,000 per person, the SBU said, adding "the amount depended on the timeframe for 'resolving the issues' and the financial capabilities of the 'clients.'"

In Kyiv: The head of the district military enlistment office and the head of one of the capital's military medical commissions were detained "for selling fake medical certificates about the presence of severe diagnoses," the SBU said. 

"The evaders used the purchased fake documents to avoid conscription and further travel outside Ukraine," it added. 

In the Kharkiv region: The head of a district military enlistment office in the northeastern Kharkiv region was detained after illegally gaining around $300,000 from potential conscripts. He also involved three officials of a local hospital in illegal activities, according to the SBU.

"In exchange for bribes, they 'found' 'health problems' in conscripts, which became a formal basis for deregistration," it said.

In Odesa: SBU cyber specialists also shut down a corruption scheme in Odesa involving the secretary of the local military medical commission.

"Together with a Kyiv lawyer and two accomplices, they set up a large-scale sale of falsified documents on unfitness for military service," the SBU said.

The suspects searched for their clients all over Ukraine and then registered them with the Odesa military enlistment office "to 'write them off' from military service," according to the agency. 

Probes ongoing: Investigations involving all the cases are still active, the SBU said. The operation was conducted jointly with the National Police under the supervision of the Prosecutor's Office.

The offenders face up to 10 years in prison as well as confiscation of property, according to the agency. 

Remember: Earlier in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has dismissed all officials in charge of regional military recruitment centers amid a widespread corruption scandal. On August 11, he said there were 112 criminal proceedings against officials at military registration and enlistment offices.  

At the beginning of the year, Zelensky also fired a number of senior officials over involvement in a scandal linked to the procurement of wartime supplies. 

The investigations are part of a major government shakeup aimed at eradicating corruption. Tackling corruption has been a key condition for Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union. 

The wreckage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Embraer private jet has been cleared from the crash site, and the flight recorders have been recovered, but the metaphorical smoke has yet to clear in Moscow after the presumed death of the Wagner mercenary boss.

We still do not know what brought down Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600 – expert analysis points to the possibility of an explosion – and we may never know. To use an inexact term, the biggest black box in this aviation catastrophe is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparatus of state, which is not known for its transparency.

That in turn points to a much bigger question: How will the Russian landscape change after the exit of the man who presented the most serious challenge to Putin’s rule in over two decades?

Putin has offered his own hot take, obliquely referencing Prigozhin’s contributions to the war on Ukraine.

But the real message Putin was sending, after waiting a full day after the crash, appeared directed toward Russia’s elite: mistakes can be fatal.

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At least two people have died and another was wounded in Russian shelling on Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration.

Syniehubov said the attacks happened in the frontline Kupiansk district, an area that has seen significant shelling and the first major Ukrainian evacuation in months. In recent weeks, Russia has been attacking near Kupiansk.

According to preliminary information, the two people died in the village of Podoly, Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram Friday.

The attacks hit a café where residents were, he said, adding law enforcement and emergency services are working at the scene.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

Read more about experts' analysis of data and video