As the war enters its 488th day, these are the main developments.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagners, and his mercenaries left Rostov-on-Don and the Voronezh region of Russia when Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, brokered a deal to put an end to their brief armed rebellion.
- According to the arrangement, Prigozhin will live in exile in Belarus and the Wagner soldiers who took part in the uprising won’t face charges.
- Sunday morning, Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin spoke over the phone, according to the Belta news service of Belarus. On Saturday, the two men conversed at least twice.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and his defense minister claimed to have spoken on the phone with a number of important friends, including the US, to discuss Putin’s “weakness” and Ukraine’s upcoming offensive moves.
- The brief uprising against the Kremlin, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, revealed “real cracks” in Putin’s control.
- The Russian leadership’s “divisions” and the “fragility of its military and auxiliary forces” were exposed, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who also criticized the uprising.
- The foreign ministry stated that Beijing supported Russia in “protecting national stability” and added that the matter was an “internal matter” for Russia in its first public comments on the uprising.
Fighting
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, Serhiy Cherevatyi, claimed that Kyiv’s army had made gains of between 600 and 1,000 meters (3,281 and 2,000 feet) the day before near Bakhmut, a city that Wagner forces captured in May after months of combat.
According to the Russian defense ministry, it successfully withstood many fresh offensives by Ukrainian forces in four frontline locations in eastern Ukraine, including 10 assaults just near Bakhmut.
In addition to maintaining confidence in the success of its plans for what it refers to as a “special military operation” in Ukraine, Putin told state television that he was in daily communication with the defense ministry.
After two more bodies were discovered inside a severely damaged high-rise structure, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that the death toll from a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s capital on Friday night had increased to five.
