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Morning Headlines
Reuters: A Russian missile struck a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding 56, emergency services said, as rescue crews combed the rubble in search of casualties.
Reuters: The liberation of a group of villages under Russian occupation in recent weeks were "not the main event" in Kyiv's planned attack, Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine defence minister, told the Financial Times.
Reuters: Taiwan spotted two Russian warships off its eastern coast on Tuesday and sent its own aircraft and ships to keep watch, the island's defence ministry said.
AP News: The Wagner Group brutalizes civilians in the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere to crush dissent and fend off threats to their leaders’ power. In exchange, Russia gains access to natural resources and ports through which weapons can be shipped, and receives payments that enrich the Kremlin and help it fund operations elsewhere, including the war in Ukraine.
Bloomberg: The 24-hour mutiny in Russia is likely to bolster those in Washington seeking to boost support for Ukraine’s war effort.
The Guardian: Jens Stoltenberg says alliance has strengthened eastern flank and will protect ‘every inch of Nato territory’ after Prigozhin move.
WSJ: Recriminations and finger-pointing could create a power vacuum in the Kremlin following the Wagner Group’s short-lived revolt against Russia.
Meduza: Before Yevgeny Prigozhin cemented his legacy as an insurrection leader, he built an empire in St. Petersburg of propaganda and catering enterprises. This is what he leaves behind in Russia with his exile to Belarus.
ISW: Putin is trying to present Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin as corrupt and a liar to destroy his reputation among Wagner personnel and within Russian society. The ongoing Putin-Lukashenko-Prigozhin powerplay is not yet over and will continue to have short-term and long-term consequences that may benefit Ukraine.
More News
Al Jazeera: China’s envoy to the European Union has suggested that Beijing could back Ukraine’s aims of reclaiming its 1991 territorial integrity, which includes Crimea – the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
The Insider has confirmed that Russia has made efforts to revive the Soviet Lourdes Signal Intelligence station in Cuba. Disguised as diplomats, "eavesdroppers" from the GRU have been secretly redeployed to the island.
AFP: The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions aimed at disrupting gold mining activities that fund the Wagner Group in Africa, vowing to hold the mercenaries accountable for abuses days after they staged a mutiny in Russia.
Foreign Policy: Putin’s stability was always a myth. Prigozhin’s revolt has exposed the rotten foundations of a mafia state.
Meduza: Russian military police apprehended the head of a Wagner Group unit in the Syrian city of As Suwayda, the Saudi-owned news channel Al-Hadath has reported, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
RFE/RL: Critics are accusing Bulgaria's top broadcast and new-media regulator of falling for the Kremlin's hybrid warfare after Sonia Momchilova likened UN-backed evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine to anti-Putin "propaganda."
AFP: Russia's National Guard may be equipped with tanks and armored vehicles, it said Tuesday, after the army announced it was receiving military hardware from Wagner mercenaries following their failed uprising.
AFP: The mutiny by Wagner mercenaries last weekend shows that Putin placed Russia's security on the line by invading Ukraine, Germany's foreign minister said on Tuesday. The revolt illustrates that Russia's war on Ukraine "is not only an attack on Ukraine" but that Putin has "also put the security of his own country in danger," Annalena Baerbock said in a visit to South Africa.
AFP: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow had paid out last year just over $1 billion to the Wagner mercenary group, which last week staged a failed mutiny.
Bloomberg: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that the challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Wagner mercenary group over the weekend showed that he has become “isolated” and “slow to make decisions.”
AP News: China’s muted reaction to the Wagner mercenary group uprising against Russia’s military belies Beijing’s growing anxieties over the war in Ukraine and how this affects the global balance of power.
AFP: Russia has summarily executed 77 civilians being held in arbitrary detention during its war in Ukraine, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
Novaya Gazeta Europe: Russian schools and kindergartens have held 200,000 military-themed patriotic events since the war in Ukraine began. In Novaya-Europe's new data investigation, they study how Russia militarises its education system.
The Defense Post: Bulgaria beefed up security at its ammunition and weapons factories Monday, following a weekend fire at an arms depot that its owner said was suspicious.
CBC: In Putin's speech, he praised Russian citizens for their patriotism and civic solidarity, but over the weekend as a Wagner convoy travelled hundreds of kilometres toward Moscow, shooting down Russian aircraft on the way, there was no strong show of support for the president on the street.
Bloomberg: Russia’s Wagner Group has played a central role in a campaign of killings, torture and rape in the Central African Republic and has driven civilians away from areas where its affiliated companies have been awarded mining rights, US nonprofit the Sentry said in a report.
AP News: Some convicts recruited by Russia's private military contractor Wagner to fight in the war in Ukraine are coming home and committing new crimes.
worth mentioning
After Wagner mutiny, jailed Kremlin critic Navalny asks who is the real extremist?
False patriots, rebels, and traitors - The Kremlin’s media guidelines
Russia and China hold talks anti-missile defence
Russian court fines Google an additional $47 million
Russia's VTB plays down impact of aborted mutiny on financial stability
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