Poland and the Baltic states will close their borders with Belarus entirely if a “critical incident” involving Wagner mercenaries takes place, the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, said on Monday.
Ukraine said on Monday its troops had liberated the south-eastern settlement of Robotyne and were trying to advance farther south in their counteroffensive against Russian forces, Reuters reports.
Three people were killed in an overnight Russian missile strike on Ukraine, and a fourth was killed in shelling on Monday morning, Ukrainian officials have said.
A Russian-born Swedish citizen has reportedly been charged with collecting information for the Russian military intelligence service GRU for almost a decade.
Russian air defences downed two Ukrainian drones over Russian-annexed Crimea on Monday, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of the region, wrote on Telegram.
Moscow said on Monday it had detained a Russian citizen and former US consulate employee in Vladivostok for allegedly passing information about the war in Ukraine to US diplomats.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he will ask parliament in the coming week to increase penalties for those found guilty of corruption during wartime.
Russia’s investigative committee, which looks into serious crimes, said it had confirmed that the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was among the people killed in Wednesday’s plane crash. After forensic testing, all 10 bodies recovered at the site had been identified, and their identities “conform to the manifest”. The committee did not offer any details as to what might have caused the crash.
A senior Ukrainian government official has confirmed the safe passage of a second vessel through the Black Sea from Ukraine’s port of Odesa, after Russia’s withdrawal in July from a UN-brokered deal allowing the export of grain.
Russia’s defence ministry said it sent a fighter plane in response to a US air force reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea. The Tass news agency said the drone had not breached Russia’s state border.
