Welcome to our live policy of the war in Ukraine, with updates of the day.
The aftermath of the plane crash that killed Eugene Prigozhin and nine others continues, with U. S. intelligence claiming an intentional explosion caused leader Wagner’s plane to crash.
Here’s what you most want to know in the last 24 hours:
By Diana Magnay, Moscow correspondent
In front of a glass-fronted center, a little away from the center of St. Petersburg, mourners kept coming.
Until a few weeks ago, this construction was known as the Wagner Center. Its official opening took place last November, a sign of the rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his personal military company, which in the language they refer to as “the musicians” or “the orchestra”. Today, it was as if either had been put to rest. What a difference ten months can make!
“It’s like wasting a father, he’s everything to us,” said one Prigozhine fan. “Everyone was waiting to hear what Uncle Zhenya would say. “
“I lost my son in Artyomsk (Bakhmut),” said another. For me it is vital to come and pay tribute to Prigozhin as a hero of Russia. “
An inconsolable woman, her hands clenched against her face as she sobbed. We thought he had lost someone he loved, but he said he was crying for Russia’s future.
“I suffer a lot because this user (Prigozhin) didn’t have the possibility to do everything he wanted,” he said. “These other people wanted to repair order and now, how can we communicate about order?Our government is corrupt. ” It’s my last hope, a long-term replacement and now I’m hopeless. The oligarchy and that’s it. “
A five-hour drive from the crash site near Tver, investigators were still searching for the wreckage. “Lately investigations are ongoing. It will take time,” President Putin said wisely.
No doubt in the end a report will be presented with explanations that will not satisfy anyone who tries to hide the truth. Such was the case with the lengthy investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov before the Kremlin in 2015, or the symbolic investigation carried out across Russia into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020. Both Nemtsov and Navalny were completely different men from Yevgeny Prigozhin, with Kremlin critics speaking out in favor of democracy and civil society, as opposed to a Kremlin lackey who has become too big for his boots. But the precept remains the same, it seems: cross the Kremlin, whoever you are, and it may not end well.
An old video, broadcast in February on pro-war Telegram channels, is now circulating on social media. They are Prigozhin and his deputy, Dmitry Utkin, who were also killed in a verbal exchange with a Russian army blogger.
“Death is the end, just the beginning of anything else,” says Utkin, off-camera.
“We will all go to hell, in hell we will be the best,” Pripasszhin added.
After the Wagner Group’s march on Moscow in June, Yevgeny’s Prigozhin Star fell a bit, says Sky’s Dominic Waghorn.
Tonight, others laid flowers, messages and teddy bears at a makeshift memorial dedicated to Wagner’s mercenary leader, Eugene Prigozhin, near the former PMC Wagner Center in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The crowd also formed a line outside the building to pay their respects.
Ten bodies were discovered at the crash site of a Russian airliner, state media said, with several prominent members of the Wagner mercenary organization on board.
Seven passengers and three crew members were on board the Embraer plane and all died, the Russian government said, although the death of Wagner’s boss, Eugene Prigozhin, has yet to be officially confirmed.
The plane was heading from Moscow to St. Petersburg before crashing near the village of Kuzhenkino Tver.
Sky News examines who appears on the plane’s manifest, published through Russia’s civil aviation regulator:
Russians paid tribute to Eugene Prigozhin after it was reported that Wagner’s leader died yesterday among 10 others in the crash of a private plane near Moscow.
On Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson takes an in-depth look at what this means for Vladimir Putin to remain in power, the war in Ukraine and this is the end of the Wagner Group.
Niall joins through our international affairs editor, Dominic Waghorn, and military analyst, Sean Bell.
Click to subscribe to Sky News Daily anywhere you get your podcasts
The United States has imposed sanctions on thirteen Americans and entities it believes are similar to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.
It is taking steps to impose visa restrictions on three Russian-installed governments for their involvement in human rights violations against Ukrainian minors, the State Department said.
Ukraine estimates that the Russian government has deported and/or forced the transfer of more than 19,500 young people from their homes since the invasion began last February.
“We will continue to draw attention to this issue, we will continue to identify Americans and the institutions involved and we will clarify it until those young people are reunited with their families or in a network that reflects their education,” O’Brien said. the State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination said today.
Among those affected by the sanctions is Artek, which the United States says is a “summer camp” owned by the Russian government and located in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The summer camp welcomes young Ukrainians who are then placed in “patriotic re-education programs” and returned to their families.
The director of Artek was also among those sanctioned.
The targets were the adviser to the Governor of Belgorod, the commissioners for the rights of the child of the Kaluga and Rostov regions and the President of the Government of the Chechen Republic, among others.
Russia claimed to have pulled thousands of children out of Ukraine but said it did so exclusively to protect orphans and abandoned children in the war zone.
Following reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had nothing to do with the incident.
Speaking earlier in the day at a news conference, he cryptically claimed that “everyone understands who is involved. “
The Russian government claims Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of the downed plane and that there were no survivors.
But they have still shown their death.
Asked if there is any data to suggest Prigozhin did not board the plane, army expert Justin Crump says there is a lot of mystery surrounding the mercenary chief over the years, and that he may stay with him “almost to the grave. “
“There is a 10 per cent chance that he executed a brilliantly clever plan here, but it is unreasonable for the Russians not to know who boarded this plane,” he told Sky News.
He added that given the degree of oversight they would exercise over the Wagner Group, they would know whether he participated or not.
Crump said that because Prigozhin travels a lot, “he can feel a certain degree of security. “