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Update June 26, 2023

Under the cut:

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”. In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

The US is expected to announce another military aid package to Ukraine totaling approximately $500 million, a US official told CNN.

Ukraine's military intelligence chief accused Russia on Tuesday of "mining" the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine's south.

EU countries on Monday agreed to increase the maximum size of a fund used to finance military aid for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) to 12 billion.

Russian intelligence services are investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny by Wagner mercenary fighters on Saturday, the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday.

Frontlines across Ukraine have seen heavy combat over the past two days, with more than 20 engagements occurring in areas in the Donetsk region – chiefly Lyman, Marinka and Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian military.

In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.

“We stopped at that moment, when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”

He once again accused the Russian defence ministry of targeting his troops with artillery fire, calling it the “trigger for us to move out immediately”.

“The goal of the march was to not allow the destruction of the Wagner private military company and hold to account the officials who through their unprofessional actions have committed a massive number of errors. Society demanded it.”

Prigozhin acknowledged that his troops had killed Russian airmen during their uprising, saying they “regretted that they were required to carry out strikes against aircraft but they were hitting our forces with bombs and rocket strikes”.

He also claimed that the troops movement into Russia was a “masterclass” in how Russia should have carried out its 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which failed to achieve its goal of taking Kyiv.

-The Guardian

The US is expected to announce another military aid package to Ukraine totaling approximately $500 million, a US official told CNN.

The aid, which is expected to be announced on Tuesday, will include additional Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, the official said, and will be provided to Ukraine via Presidential Drawdown Authority. Ukraine lost several armored vehicles in the early days of its counteroffensive, which US officials believe Ukrainian forces launched earlier this month.

The package comes as US officials continue to assess what impact the Wagner rebellion inside Russia will have on Russia’s war in Ukraine. US and western officials told CNN last week that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not been meeting expectations, with Russian lines of defense proving well-fortified. Russian forces have also had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively.

The last package, announced earlier this month, was valued at about $325 million and included new air defense and rocket systems for Ukraine.

The US has provided more than $39 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion in February 2022, including $22 billion in presidential drawdowns.

-CNN

Ukraine's military intelligence chief accused Russia on Tuesday of "mining" the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine's south.

The six-reactor complex, Europe's biggest nuclear plant, has been under occupation since shortly after Moscow's forces invaded in February last year.

"...Most terrifying is that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was additionally mined during that time... namely the cooling pond was mined," Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR agency, said on television, without providing evidence for his assertion.

Reuters requested comment from the Russian defence ministry.

The two sides have accused each other of shelling the plant and its environs, and international efforts to establish a demilitarised zone around the complex have failed so far.

Ukraine's Defence Ministry, meanwhile, dismissed as "null and void" a Russian suggestion that it could be building a "dirty bomb".

The ministry said the suggestion, made on Monday by Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, was first advanced by Moscow last year.

The move was, a ministry statement said, aimed at "diverting attention from the clear defeats by occupation forces at the front and sowing distrust among Ukraine's Western allies".

"If Russia is talking about a 'dirty bomb', its use by Russia could be a real threat," the ministry said.

Naryshkin had called on the U.N. nuclear watchdog and the European Union to investigate the dispatch of "irradiated fuel" from the Rivne nuclear plant in western Ukraine for disposal at a spent fuel storage facility in Chornobyl.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said it had reported this month on the transfer of spent fuel from Rivne to Chornobyl and taken full account of the material.

-Reuters

EU countries on Monday agreed to increase the maximum size of a fund used to finance military aid for Ukraine by 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) to 12 billion.

The European Peace Facility (EPF), which EU countries contribute to according to the size of their economies, has already allocated some 4.6 billion euros in military aid for Ukraine. It is separate from the EU's budget, which is not allowed to finance military operations.

"Today's decision will again ensure that we have the funding to continue delivering concrete military support to our partners' armed forces," the bloc's top diplomat Josep Borrell, who had requested the increase, said in a statement.

"The facility has proven its worth. It has completely changed the way we support our partners on defence. It makes the EU and its partners stronger," he said.

Hungary on Monday said it would not lift a block on a 500 million euro tranche of the existing fund until Kyiv removes Hungarian bank OTP (OTPB.BU) from a list of companies it deems "international sponsors" of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Hungary has branded the bank's inclusion "scandalous".

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, speaking in Luxembourg, said that Budapest was ready to change its mind if Ukraine dropped the blacklisting.

The EPF, established in 2021, was conceived for the EU to help developing countries buy military equipment. But the 27-member union quickly decided to use it also to get weapons to Ukraine after Russia's invasion in February last year.

The fund allows EU countries that supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine and claim back a portion of the cost.

-Reuters

In an interview with Russian RT television, Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy had spoken to Russian representatives on Sunday and given "signals" that the United States was not involved in the mutiny and that Washington hoped that Russia's nuclear arsenal would be kept safe, TASS said.

Lavrov also quoted Tracy as saying the mutiny was Russia's internal affair.

Several Western leaders have said the incident shows that instability is growing in Russia as a result of President Vladimir Putin's decision to send his armed forces into Ukraine early last year.

Asked whether there was any evidence that neither Ukrainian nor Western intelligence services were involved in the mutiny, Lavrov replied:

"I work in a department that does not collect evidence about illegal actions, but we have such structures, and I assure you, they already understand this."

Doubts over Wagner's future have raised questions about whether it will continue its operations in African countries such as Mali and the Central African Republic, where its forces have played a big role in long-running internal conflicts.

Since the war in Ukraine undermined Russia's ties and trade with the West, the Kremlin has also been underlining its commitment to Africa.

Lavrov told RT that Mali and CAR both maintained official contacts with Moscow alongside their relations with Wagner, adding: "Several hundred servicemen are working in the CAR as instructors; this work, of course, will be continued".

A presidential advisor for CAR's president told Reuters on Monday that nothing had changed since the weekend events in Russia.

Fidele Gouandjika said Wagner was not officially established in the country, and that the military cooperation agreement they signed was with the Russian Federation, which deploys contingents of its choice.

"The first one (is) made of Russian instructors to train our security forces … the second contingent are soldiers that the West calls Wagner," he said.

"Russia sent us Wagner but we signed with Russia and so if they sent us private militias that's their choice. We keep working with the soldiers that Russia sent," he said.

Lavrov also said Ukrainian allegations that Russia plans to stage an attack involving a release of radiation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine were "nonsense", TASS reported.

-Reuters

In its operational update, the General Staff said the Russians also carried out 25 air strikes over the past day.

There had been heavy Russian artillery and mortar fire in the Kupyansk area of Kharkiv, where the Russians have been trying to break through for over a month, the Ukrainians said.

The General Staff insisted all Russian efforts to take territory had been foiled. Across the Donetsk frontlines, the fighting was characterized by exchanges of indirect fire, but with little movement.

However, the Ukrainians say they are on the front foot around Bakhmut.

“(Troops) hold the initiative, continue assault operations and push the enemy back. Over the last day, the Ukrainian forces advanced 600 to 1,000 meters on the southern and northern flanks around Bakhmut,” said Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces. Nearly 200 Russian soldiers had been killed in the last day, and a variety of Russian equipment had been destroyed, according to Cherevatyi.

CNN cannot verify Ukrainian claims of battlefield gains, or casualties.

In the south, where Ukrainian forces have attempted to break through Russian lines, the General Staff said a Russian effort to regain lost positions in the area of Novodarivka had also failed.

Russian artillery continued to strike about 30 settlements along the frontlines in the Zaporizhzhia region, it said.

In Kherson, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in the south, said the Russians struggled to regain positions on the east bank of the river Dnipro, which was flooded by the recent damage to the dam at Nova Kakhovka.

“Their work is complicated by the spread of intestinal infections,” Humenyuk said.

-CNN

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