Russia-Ukraine: Putin wanted to ‘wipe out’ Wagner’s Prigozhin, says Belarus president

US president Joe Biden said Wednesday that Vladimir Putin has become “a pariah” around the world but it is hard to say if he has been weakened by recent events involving the head of the militant Wagner Group.

Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House prior to departing on a trip to Chicago, said Putin was clearly losing the war in Ukraine and “he’s losing the war at home, and he has become a bit of a pariah around the world.”

Volodymyr Zelensky said today that Ukraine understood it could not join NATO while the war with Russia was ongoing, but that Kyiv wanted to receive a signal that it can join the military alliance after the war ends.

“We understand that we cannot be a member of NATO during the war, but we need to be sure that after the war we will be,” Zelensky told a press conference with the visiting Polish and Lithuanian presidents.

“That is the signal we want to get – that after the war Ukraine will be a member of NATO”.

Reiterating Kyiv’s stance before a NATO summit in Lithuania next month, he said Ukraine also wanted security guarantees for the period until it can join the alliance.

“We would want a third signal at the NATO summit that Ukraine will get security guarantees – not instead of NATO but for the time until we are in the alliance,” he said.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said he persuaded Vladimir Putin not to “wipe out” Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, in response to what the Kremlin cast as a mutiny.

Putin initially vowed to crush the mutiny, comparing it to the wartime turmoil that ushered in the revolution of 1917 and then a civil war, but hours later a deal was clinched to allow Prigozhin and some of his fighters to go to Belarus. Prigozhin flew to Belarus from Russia on Tuesday.

While describing his Saturday conversation with Putin, Lukashenko used the Russian criminal slang phrase for killing someone, equivalent to the English phrase to “wipe out”.

“I also understood: a brutal decision had been made (and it was the undertone of Putin‘s address) to wipe out” the mutineers, Lukashenko told a meeting of his army officials and journalists on Tuesday, according to Belarusian state media.

“I suggested to Putin not to rush. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Let’s talk with Prigozhin, with his commanders.’ To which he told me: ‘Listen, Sasha, it’s useless. He doesn’t even pick up the phone, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone’.”

Switzerland has expanded financial and travel sanctions against Russian entities and persons in step with the most recent sanctions imposed by the European Union.

Among those targeted are people, companies and organisations that support the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a statement said.

They also include members of the Russian armed forces, leading representatives of state-controlled Russian media and members of the Wagner mercenary group. The sanctions include asset freezes and a ban to travel to and transit through Switzerland.

However, the Swiss Federal Council also said it had rejected a request by Swiss defence firm Ruag for the trade of 96 Leopard 1 A5 main battle tanks for use in Ukraine, with the cabinet warning that such a sale would be contrary to the war material act and would entail an adjustment of Switzerland’s neutrality policy.

My colleague Chris Stevenson has this extensive report on the strike on a restaurant in Kramatorsk:

The Pizza RIA restaurant was popular with both locals, as well as aid workers and journalists – and was said to be crowded when it was hit on Tuesday evening.

“I ran here after the explosion because I rented a cafe here…. Everything has been blown out there,” said Valentyna, a 64-year-old woman who declined to give her surname. “None of the glass, windows or doors are left. All I see is destruction, fear and horror. This is the 21st century,” she told Reuters.

Police said at least 61 people were injured in the strike, which turned the restaurant into a pile of twisted beams. Emergency services posted pictures online of rescue teams sifting through the site with cranes and other equipment.

The Donetsk regional governor – the area where Kramatorsk is located – Pavlo Kyrylenko told national television that people were visible under the rubble. Their condition was unknown, he said, but “we are experienced in removing rubble”.

Video footage on military Telegram channels showed one man, his head bleeding, receiving first aid on the pavement.

Eight people had been rescued alive from the rubble and at least three more were believed to be trapped, Md Bakhal, the spokeswoman for the Donetsk region emergency services said.

The attack also damaged 18 multi-story buildings, 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, an administrative building and a recreational building, the regional governor, Mr Kyrylenko, said.

Volodymyr Zelensky has described Russia’s political and military leaders as bandits, as he ruled out any peace plan that would turn the war on Ukraine into a “frozen” conflict.

The Ukrainian president made his remarks in a speech to parliament on Ukraine’s Constitution Day, and warned that Russia’s leaders must not escape justice for waging war on his country, which he declared was “on the way to victory”.

“The political and military leadership of the Russian Federation should not escape justice due to the fact that they supposedly have immunity, like state leaders,” Mr Zelensky said.

“They are not the leaders of the state – they are bandits who seized control of the state institutions of Russia … and began to terrorise the whole world.”

While Urkainian officials initially blamed the strike in Kramatorsk on an S-300 missile, a surface-to-air weapon that Russia’s forces have repurposed for loosely targeted strikes on cities, the National Police later said Iskander short-range ballistic missiles were used.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will not accept any peace proposal that turns Russia’s war on Ukraine into a frozen conflict.

The president’s remarks, made in a speech to parliament on Ukraine’s Constitution Day, signalled that he remains opposed to any peace plan that would freeze any territorial gains made by Russia.

“Ukraine will not agree to any of the variants for a frozen conflict,” he said.

Mr Zelensky has drawn up a 10-point peace “formula” that includes restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops and the restoration of Ukraine’s state borders.