Live Russia-Ukraine War: Kremlin blasts ‘unacceptable’ Wagner chief Biden Prigozhin’s criticism of Putin

Estonia’s prime minister faced pressure to resign on Friday, following reports that her husband owned part of a company that has maintained operations in Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Two major Estonian newspapers called for her to resign, and two opinion polls showed that the majority of respondents believed she should step down. Callas said she did not believe her husband’s companies did anything wrong, while her husband said he was selling his stake in the company in question.

Callas, who has urged European companies to sever ties with Moscow, has been one of Russia’s most vocal critics in the European Union and NATO, and some see him as a possible future general secretary of the military bloc.

Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported this week that Stark Logistics, an Estonian company in which Kalas’ husband Ervo Halleck indirectly owns a 25% stake, is supplying an aerosol container plant in Russia, owned by another Estonian company.

The Estonian daily newspaper Este Paivaleht reported that the company had earned 1.5 million euros from servicing the plant since the start of the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Kiev on Friday to discuss the Black Sea grain export deal that Russia withdrew from last month.

Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “Many important issues were discussed. (Ukraine) Peace formula. Preparations for the World Peace Summit (planned by Ukraine). The risks posed by the Russian blockade of the grain corridor in the Black Sea.

The agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain to the Black Sea. Ankara is trying to persuade Moscow to return to the agreement.

Today, Friday, social media channels linked to the mercenaries of the Russian Wagner Group said that a senior fighter in one of the group’s sub-units was arrested in Finland at Ukraine’s request.

Rosic, a Wagner sub-unit, has identified him as Jan Petrovski, a founding member and commander of the EU-US sanctioned unit since last year.

It said on the messaging app Telegram that Petrovsky, who has fought in Ukraine since 2014, was arrested a month ago and could now be extradited to Ukraine.

The Wagner Group, which fought for Russia in Ukraine and runs mercenary operations in many African countries, has been sanctioned by a number of Western countries for alleged atrocities.

Its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and several other prominent figures are presumed to have died in a plane crash this week, although the Kremlin has not definitively confirmed this.

Two high-ranking Ukrainian officials have been named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme involving the purchase of humanitarian aid, according to reports.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities have found evidence that Ukraine’s first deputy minister for agricultural and food policy and former deputy economy minister embezzled £1.3m.

according to PoliticoThe scheme included the purchase of foodstuffs that were intended to provide humanitarian aid to the regional military departments as well as to the residents of Donetsk, Kherson, Sumy, Zaporizhia, Kiev, Khmelnitsky, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava.

The investigation is ongoing. This comes as part of the wave of corruption that has swept Ukraine since the start of the war with Russia.

Russian investigators have confirmed the death of the pilot of the plane that crashed in the city of Tver, killing Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source added that they have not yet confirmed the genetic match.

An Embraer airliner, with Prigozhin on board as a passenger, crashed in the Tver region north of Moscow on August 23, according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.

Six other passengers are listed along with a crew of three, including pilot Alexei Levchin.

A source close to the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said investigators told Levshin’s family they had “documented evidence” of his presence on the crashed plane.

The source said Levchin’s family will undergo a DNA test later on Friday to confirm they are his relatives.

Many experts have speculated about whether the incident was in fact a blow of state approval caused by Prigozhin’s challenge to Vladimir Putin’s authority during his failed coup in June.

German prosecutors are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, one of three exiled Russian journalists who suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning.

Kostyuchenko, foreign correspondent with Medusa and ex Novaya Gazeta – who exposed alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine – experienced severe confusion, abdominal pain and swollen limbs on a train ride from Munich to Berlin last October.

“When I walked out at the train station, I realized I couldn’t figure out how to get home,” she wrote two weeks ago in the literary magazine. n+1. “I knew I needed to get on the subway, but I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.”

two weeks ago, Insider She reported that the doctors they consulted said her symptoms were consistent with poisoning, while two other Russian journalists—Natalya Arno, head of the Free Russia Foundation, and broadcast journalist Irina Pabloyan—suffered from poisoning in Prague and Tbilisi, respectively.

“We can confirm that the investigation into the attempted murder of Elena Kostyuchenko is still pending,” a spokesman for the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Berlin said on Friday.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had destroyed 73 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours.

This comes after reports that Ukraine launched dozens of drones over the southern Crimea peninsula in the early hours of this morning.

In this independent voices piece, our international editor Chris Stevenson He notes that “it is not surprising that the Russian authorities announced the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.” he is writing:

“Considering the attempted rebellion he led with the Wagner Mercenaries against Moscow, the assumption was that he might not stay long in this world. When it comes to President Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on his nation – if you come for the king, as the saying goes, you better not miss it.

But with speculation mounting about Prigozhin’s end and Putin’s embarrassment too much to bear, it might be easy to overlook the terrible things that Brogozhin’s mercenaries are believed to have done. Let’s be clear, Prigozhin deserved the end that all signs point to.

You can read his full analysis here:

A senior UK politician said, after the suspected death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, that Vladimir Putin’s back is “to the wall” and his days are “very numbered”.

Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the House of Commons defense select committee, told Sky News the lengths to which Putin appears to have gone to eliminate dissenting voices shows that “trust in the Kremlin’s inner circle has disappeared”.

Elwood said Putin was “now leading through fear rather than loyalty”, having suffered “severe humiliation on a number of fronts”. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was already going.

“When a Russian leader loses popularity among elites, Russian history shows that weakness is quickly and ruthlessly exploited,” said the conservative MP. “I suspect he will be replaced, maybe not in the short term, but the ball is certainly on the move now.

“I think Putin’s days are very numbered.”