Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says he had warned Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is presumed dead after a plane crash this week, to watch out for threats to his life after leading a failed uprising against the Kremlin. A CNN analysis suggests an onboard explosion was likely responsible for the crash.
Russian attacks killed one person and wounded another in the southern Zaporizhzhia region Saturday, Ukrainian authorities say. Kyiv’s forces have reported progress in the area as part of their slow-moving counteroffensive.
Russia says it thwarted two more drone attacks Saturday: one over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, and another outside the capital of Moscow. Ukraine has been escalating its attacks on Russian territory over the past months.
A well-known Ukrainian pilot, who went by the call sign “Juice,” was among three killed when combat trainer aircraft collided near the city of Zhytomyr, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
Well-known Ukrainian pilot among 3 killed when planes crash over western region
From CNN's Olga Voitovych
A Ukrainian pilot known by the call sign "Juice" speaks with CNN in 2023.
CNN
Three Ukrainian pilots, including one known by the call sign “Juice,” have died in a plane crash in the country’s western Zhytomyr region, the Ukrainian Air Force said Saturday.
The pilots were killed Friday when two L-39 combat trainer aircraft collided in the sky near Zhytomyr city, west of Kyiv, according to military officials. The Air Force said the pilots had been performing a combat mission.
The military branch expressed condolences to the families of the deceased, saying “this is a painful and irreparable loss for all of us.”
Last year, “Juice” told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he got his nickname during a trip to the United States. He said his friends came up with the nickname, because he doesn’t drink alcohol and was always requesting juice.
“Juice” was a MiG-29 pilot and had urged Western allies to provide Ukraine with US fighter jets. As part of a unit known as “Ghost of Kyiv,” he
defended the skies over the capital, and the central and northern regions of Ukraine, in the first hours after Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
Investigation underway: The State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine (SBI) is probing the circumstances of the crash. In a statement Saturday, the agency said special attention will be paid to the technical condition of the aircraft and whether the rules for preparing for flights had been complied with. Specialists will also conduct a thorough diagnosis of the black boxes, SBI said.
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This map shows key areas from the past week of fighting in Ukraine
From CNN staff
Battlefield updates in the past several days have often focused on the key southern region of Zaporizhzhia, where Ukraine has long sought to cut off the land route between the Russian-controlled peninsula of Crimea and the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
Now signs are growing that Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian defenses along part of the southern front outside Zaporizhzhia. The troops appear to be expanding a wedge toward the strategic town of Tokmak.
Here’s what is happening in some of the other key areas seen on the map below:
Robotyne: Ukraine has claimed “partial success” around this village east of Zaporizhzhia, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting. On Friday, social media video and images showed Ukrainian troops had entered the village. Almost no buildings are still standing there, Kyiv’s forces say.
Belgorod: The western border region has been a repeated target in the growing number of attacks on Russian soil. On Saturday alone, shelling wounded six civilians there and a drone attack left a man dead, while the region’s air defenses shot down another, according to the Belgorod governor.
Kharkiv: Russian shelling on this northeastern region in Ukraine killed two people and left another wounded, the regional military administration said Friday.
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Man killed by shrapnel in Russia's Belgorod region, governor says
From CNN's Mariya Knight
A man was killed after Ukraine dropped an explosive device from a drone in Russia’s western Belgorod region Saturday, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Gladkov said the attack came “when the man was in his garden mowing grass.”
“Shrapnel wounds received as a result of the explosion caused him to die,” the governor wrote in a Telegram post Saturday.
Ukraine has not yet commented on the claim, and often declines to directly acknowledge attacks on Russian soil.
Earlier Saturday, Gladkov said six civilians had been wounded by Ukrainian shelling in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, and that the region’s air defenses shot down another attack drone.
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WSJ journalist to appeal decision by Moscow court to extend pre-trial detention, Russian state media says
From CNN’s Darya Tarasova and Niamh Kennedy
Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich appears in court in Moscow, Russia, on June 22.
Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich will appeal a decision by a Moscow court Thursday to extend his pre-trial detention by three months, Russian state media outlet TASS reported Saturday.
Gershkovich’s lawyers have filed an appeal against the decision to extend his pre-trial detention until November 30, TASS reported, citing Moscow’s Lefortovo Court.
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in jail on espionage charges, which he, his employer and the US government vehemently contest. The journalist’s detention has further ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Moscow during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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It's late afternoon in Kyiv. Here's the latest on Russia's war in Ukraine
From CNN staff
Ukrainian servicemen ride a tank near the village of Robotyne, Ukraine, on August 25.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
As Ukraine presses forward in a grinding counteroffensive against Russia, shelling left people wounded in both countries Saturday.
Kyiv’s troops say they are seeing some gradual progress along a key section of the southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region, but they are doing so under heavy shelling and constant air raids.
Russia has fired on the territory 85 times over the past day, targeting some two dozen different communities, according to the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration. The shelling has killed one person and wounded another.
Shelling wounds Russian civilians: Meanwhile, in Russia, six civilians were hurt by Ukrainian shelling in the border region of Belgorod this morning, according to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. The victims suffered shrapnel wounds, he said.
Drone attacks thwarted: Russia says it has thwarted two more drone attacks: one over the Belgorod region and another in Moscow region. A string of drone strikes have peppered Russian cities throughout the summer.
Mystery surrounds Prigozhin crash: 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. It is not clear what caused his plane to crash, but CNN analysis suggests an onboard explosion was likely responsible.
Uncertain future: If Prigozhin indeed is gone, how will the Russian landscape change after the exit of a man who presented the most serious challenge to Putin’s rule in over two decades? And will the Wagner Group continue to operate in the absence of its leader?
Belarusian president says he warned the Wagner chief: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he warned Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin twice to watch out for threats to his life. Prigozhin led a failed uprising against the Kremlin, and US intelligence officials said this week that he was likely intentionally targeted in the attack.
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Ukraine detains more military recruitment officials amid ongoing corruption purge
From CNN's Olga Voitovych and Radina Gigova
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 areemployees 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.
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Analysis: After Prigozhin, who will stick their head above the parapet in Putin’s Russia?
Analysis from CNN's Nathan Hodge
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference on July 29, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Contributor/Getty Images
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.
2 people killed in Russian attack on Ukraine's Kharkiv region, official says
From CNN's Olga Voitovych
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.
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Shelling wounds 6 civilians in Russia's Belgorod region, governor says
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.
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Analysis: Can Wagner survive, even if Prigozhin didn’t?
Analysis by CNN's Ivana Kottasová and Stephanie Busari
A view shows a portrait of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin at a makeshift memorial near former PMC Wagner Centre in Saint Petersburg, Russia August 24.
Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters
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.
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.
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Russian attacks kill 1 person and wound another near Zaporizhzhia, regional leader says
From CNN's Olga Voitovych
A destroyed car is seen from a destroyed building near the village of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, on August 25.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
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.
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Belarusian president says he warned Wagner boss Prigozhin to watch his back
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.
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.
Here's what we know about the incident that likely brought down plane purportedly carrying Wagner boss
From CNN's Eliza Mackintosh, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Benjamin Brown and Katie Polglase
A view shows plane wreckage on fire following an air accident in Tver region, Russia, on August 23. Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of Russian private mercenary group Wagner, was reportedly listed as a passenger on the private jet.
Ostorozhno Novosti/Handout via Reuters
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.
