The founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, shared an audio message Monday — his first since calling off his mutiny aimed at the leaders atop Russia’s Ministry of Defense. In the recording, which was published on a Telegram channel closely associated with Wagner, Prigozhin said his fighters will win the “next victories” in the war in Ukraine. He also assessed his march on Moscow as successful.
Ukraine live briefing: Wagner chief promises more ‘victories at the front’ in first message since mutiny
“Our ‘March of Justice’ was aimed at fighting traitors and mobilizing our society,” Prigozhin said. “I think that we have succeeded in much of this.” He did not specify where he is now or discuss Wagner’s plans. It was not immediately apparent when Prigozhin’s latest message was recorded. Other channels linked to Wagner and Prigozhin did not broadcast the message.
Investigators on Monday launched the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, a key step in investigating whether Russia’s war in Ukraine meets the legal definition of the crime of aggression. The center, based in The Hague, is tasked with providing a mechanism for officials to collect, analyze and share evidence of aggression — a crime beyond the jurisdiction of existing international courts — to help build cases for future trials.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Key developments
- The U.S. ambassador to Russia met with jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison on Monday. Gershkovich, who was detained in March on espionage charges, has been designated by the State Department as “wrongfully detained.” Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government have all forcefully rejected the allegations against the journalist. The ambassador’s visit is the second since Gershkovich was detained, and it comes after a Russian court rejected Gershkovich’s appeal against his imprisonment at Lefortovo on June 22.
- The new center in The Hague is a landmark first step in building a case against Russian officials and a possible precursor to the establishment of a special tribunal. “We cannot tolerate the gross violation of the prohibition of the use of force, one of the fundamental rules of the international rule-based order,” said European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders at a news conference Monday.
- The International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression is backed by the European Union, the United States and Ukraine. It will allow prosecutors from different countries to share evidence that could be crucial in later trials. “We don’t want to wait until the end of the conflict,” said Ladislav Hamran, president of the E.U. Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, which will house the center. Its key purpose “is to start building the case now,” he said.
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu credited the loyalty of his forces for the Wagner mutiny’s defeat in his first public comments since the rebellion. “These plans failed primarily because the personnel of the armed forces showed loyalty to the oath and military duty,” Shoigu said, according to the state-owned Zvezda TV network. Moscow was rattled by the failed rebellion, which ended with Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin agreeing to leave the country.
- A celebrated Ukrainian author died over the weekend of injuries from a Russian missile attack last week on a pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine. Victoria Amelina, 37, was having dinner when the Iskander missile struck. Amelina is the 13th fatality as a result of the Russian attack on the Kramatorsk pizza restaurant. She was the author of two novels about contemporary Ukraine and children’s literature. In a statement, the PEN Ukraine writers association said Amelina was having dinner at the restaurant with a delegation of Colombian writers and journalists when the building was struck Tuesday.
- About 700,000 children have been brought into Russian territory from war zones in Ukraine, a lawmaker in Russia’s upper house of parliament said. Grigory Karasin, chairman of the international committee in the Russian Federation Council, wrote on Telegram that hundreds of thousands of children have “found refuge” in Russia in recent years. Earlier this year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner on charges of illegally transferring children from occupied territories, a war crime.
Battleground updates
- One person was killed and 16 others injured in a drone attack on the city of Sumy in northern Ukraine, regional officials said Monday afternoon. According to the regional military administration, four Iranian-made Shahed drones were deployed in the attack, which damaged an office block and two apartment buildings.
- Ukrainian forces are engaged in “heavy fighting” on the eastern front lines and are making progress in the south, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Monday. On the eastern front, she said Russian forces fired almost twice as many shells in the past week as they did the week before.
- Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 13 out of 17 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched overnight, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.
- About 100 nuclear specialists have left Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the mayor of the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, told Ukrainian Radio. In recent weeks, senior Ukrainian officials have stepped up warnings that Russian forces plan to sabotage the plant, the largest such facility in Europe, The Washington Post has reported.
Global impact
- Russia’s navy chief, Adm. Nikolai Yevmenov, met with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in Beijing on Monday, China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. In a readout posted by Beijing officials, Li said military relations between the pair would “keep being deepened and consolidated, making new progress, and getting elevated to higher levels.” In March, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Moscow in a show of support for the countries’ growing alliance. U.S. officials have expressed concern that China will provide lethal aid to Russia.
- Former vice president Mike Pence reiterated his support for U.S. military aid for Ukraine after visiting Kyiv last week. “It’s in our national interest to give [Ukraine] what they need to win this fight and drive the Russian military out of Ukraine,” the Republican presidential candidate said Sunday during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
- Poland will deploy an additional 500 police officers to bolster security along its border with Russian ally Belarus, Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said Sunday on Twitter. Meanwhile, Poland and Germany haven’t agreed on a deal to open a maintenance center on Polish soil to repair Leopard tanks supplied to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.
- Russia has no need for a new wave of mobilization after the withdrawal of Wagner forces from Ukraine, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house, told Russian state news agency Tass.
From our correspondents
As war nears Crimea, Russian occupiers are trying to lure tourists: Tourism-dependent Crimea is looking ahead to a grim summer holiday season as the war grinds on, Francesca Ebel and Natalia Abbakumova report. Many visitors, concerned by recent attacks, are canceling their summer bookings to the Black Sea peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Crimea accounted for only 1 percent of Russian hotel bookings this year, according to the online portal Ostrovok.ru, down from 3 percent last year and 19 percent from the year before.
“There are indeed fewer people in Crimea than usual,” said Nikita Krimskiy, a tour guide in Yalta. “Many people were intimidated by military news and various ‘fakes.’ They have changed their plans and decided to not go to Crimea this season.” Some all-inclusive hotels have lowered their prices by as much as 60 percent. Others have simply decided not to open this summer. Sixty percent of Crimean tourism businesses lost money last year, official data shows, with combined losses of $10 million as tourist revenue dropped by about a third.
Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.