Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin from making a “harsh decision” against Yevgeniy Prigozhin, suggesting that Putin planned to kill the Wagner mercenary group leader for leading an insurrection, The Washington Post reported. Lukashenko’s version of events could not be verified.
In eastern Ukraine, the death toll from the bombing of a pizza restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk has risen to eight, with 56 injured. The dead included three children, emergency services said.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Wagner rebellion aftermath
Analysis from our correspondents
Prigozhin in Belarus is bad news for pretty much everybody: The Kremlin decided to move the Wagner Group chief to Belarus as part of a deal that saw him punishment in Russia. But Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s arrival presents challenges for everyone, Emily Rauhala reports. NATO and Ukraine are on higher alert because of his presence. There’s no guarantee that Lukashenko, Belarus’s leader, can control a man who marched a column nearly to Moscow.
“The primary victim of this situation is the Belarusian people,” said Franak Viacorka, the chief adviser to the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Prigozhin “will come in with criminals; he will bring the culture of violence,” he continued. “It will create instability in the country and at its borders, too.”