Russia hits out at Biden’s ‘unacceptable’ Wagner boss dig at Putin – Ukraine war live

The United States sees viable routes to export Ukrainian grain through the country’s territorial waters and overland after Russia withdrew from the grain deal, a senior U.S. official said.

James O’Brien, head of the State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, said the US aims to return to exporting at prewar averages from Ukraine over the next months.

He added: “I think we see there are viable routes through Ukraine‘s territorial waters and overland, and we are aiming … over the next couple of months to return to exporting at kind of prewar averages from Ukraine.”

Ukraine is a global major grain grower and exporter and normally ships millions of metric tons of food from its deep-water Black Sea ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv, but has had to rely on its Danube River ports after Russia pulled out of the deal last month.

A senior agricultural official said on Monday that Ukraine is considering using its newly tested wartime Black Sea export corridor for grain shipments after other cargo ships follow the first successful evacuation of a vessel on the route last week.

Russia has blockaded Ukrainian ports since it invaded its neighbour in February 2022, and has threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets after pulling out of a UN-backed safe passage deal.

The flight recorders from the jet crash in Tver where Yevgeny Prigozhin was allegedly killed, Russia’s Investigative Committee has said.

According to Russian authorities, the private jet crashed on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board.

Although, experts have doubted the Kremlin’s official line and many suspect it was a state-sanctioned hit after the Wagner chief challenged Putin’s authority.

Germany’s top security official says she hopes prosecutors will find sufficient evidence to indict whoever carried out an attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year. Pipelines were damaged after explosions on September 26, 2022. The pipelines were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany.

The sabotage added to tensions over the war in Ukraine as European countries moved to wean themselves off Russian energy sources, but the culprit remains a mystery. Germany, Sweden and Denmark have investigated the attack though been tight-lipped about their findings. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published Friday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said: “I hope that the (German) federal prosecutor will find enough clues to indict the perpetrators. “We must bring such crimes to court,” she said. “It also strengthens citizens’ confidence in the state of law when it succeeds in clearing up such complex cases.”

Pictures have emerged of workers removing the debris of a private jet that crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region that supposedly had Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin onboard.

US intelligence assessment has found that the plane crash was intentionally caused by an explosion.

The Kremlin said that Western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie” while declining to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday that he had warned Russian mercenary chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and he insisted that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus.

Yevgeny Prigozhin had twice dismissed concerns raised by the Belarusian leader about possible threats to his life, Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko said that during the mutiny he had warned Prigozhin that he would “die” if he continued to march on Moscow, to which he said Prigozhin had answered:

“‘To hell with it – I will die’.”

The Belarus president dismissed claims that Putin was responsible for the plane crash that reportedly killed Prigozhin.

Lukashenko, both an old acquaintance of Prigozhin and a close ally of Russia, said: “I know Putin: he is calculating, very calm, even tardy.

“I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is to blame. It’s just too rough and unprofessional a job.”

The whole of Ukraine has been issued an air raid alert, it has been reported.

According to Sky News, the sirens were first sounded over an hour ago before the all-clear was given.

Now the whole country has been issued an alert.

A makeshift memorial has appeared in Moscow for Dmitry Utkin, who was a fellow passenger believed to be onboard a plane that crashed in Tver along with Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Utkin was a shadowy figure who managed the Wagner Group’s operations. He also allegedly served in Russian military intelligence and was renowned for his brutality and has been implicated in several war crimes.

Wagner was named after his codename, which he named in honour of Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer. He had prominent Nazi emblems tattooed on his neck and other parts of his body including the swastika and the SS symbol.

Utkin served in two wars in Chechnya in 1994-2000 and is believed to have been in the mercenary Wagner group since its early days in 2014.

In recent years, Utkin was said to have been Prigozhin’s right-hand man.

Dutch brewer Heineken has completed its withdrawal from Russia, 18 months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The business in Russia sold for just 1 euro, the company announced Friday. Heineken said it would incur a total loss of 300 million euros ($325 million) for the sale to Russian manufacturing giant the Arnest Group.

Heineken had faced criticism for the slow pace of its exit in the wake of the outbreak of war, but insisted it was seeking to look after its local employees in Russia.

In March last year, Heineken had said it was quitting Russia as its business there was “no longer sustainable nor viable in the current environment,” but added that it wanted to ensure an “orderly transfer” to a new owner.

“While it took much longer than we had hoped, this transaction secures the livelihoods of our employees and allows us to exit the country in a responsible manner,” Heineken CEO Dolf van den Brink said in a statement.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday that he had warned Russian mercenary chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and he insisted that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus.

Yevgeny Prigozhin had twice dismissed concerns raised by the Belarusian leader about possible threats to his life, Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko said that during the mutiny he had warned Prigozhin that he would “die” if he continued to march on Moscow, to which he said Prigozhin had answered:

“‘To hell with it – I will die’.”

The Belarus president dismissed claims that Putin was responsible for the plane crash that reportedly killed Prigozhin.

Lukashenko, both an old acquaintance of Prigozhin and a close ally of Russia, said: “I know Putin: he is calculating, very calm, even tardy.

“I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is to blame. It’s just too rough and unprofessional a job.”

Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas faced pressure to resign on Friday after reports that her husband has part ownership of a company that has kept operations in Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Two major Estonian newspapers called on her to resign and two opinion polls found a majority of respondents thought she should step down. Kallas has said she does not believe her husband’s companies have done anything wrong, while her husband said he was selling his stake in the company in question.

Kallas, who has urged European businesses to cut ties with Moscow, has been a leading critic of Russia in the European Union and Nato, and was considered by some to be a potential future secretary general of the military bloc.

Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported this week that Stark Logistics, an Estonian company in which Kallas’ husband Arvo Hallik indirectly owns a 25% share, has been supplying an aerosol container factory in Russia, owned by another Estonian company.

It has earned 1.5 million euros from serving the factory since the beginning of the war, Estonian daily Eesti Paevaleht reported.