Uncovering the Reality Behind the Accusations in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

In the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, a recent development has shaken the region, as Russian generals have accused a prominent mercenary leader of attempting to mount a coup. This accusation has sparked a wave of speculation and concern, further fueling the tensions between the two nations. In this article, we delve deep into the events surrounding this accusation, analyze its potential implications, and provide an objective perspective on the matter.

By David OmogbaiPublished 10 months ago • 67 min read

Background of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Before we delve into the recent accusation, let us first understand the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The conflict emerged in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula previously under Ukrainian control. Since then, tensions have escalated, resulting in numerous clashes, territorial disputes, and geopolitical complexities.
The Accusation: Mercenary Leader's Coup Attempt
Recently, Russian generals made a startling claim, asserting that a prominent mercenary leader, whose identity has not been disclosed, was involved in a plot to mount a coup within Russia.
The accused individual allegedly sought to exploit the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict to further their own political agenda.

Unraveling the Allegations

While the specific details of the alleged coup attempt remain undisclosed, it is crucial to examine the circumstances and motivations that might have prompted such an accusation.

The volatile nature of the conflict and the involvement of various external actors have created an environment ripe for manipulation and power struggles.

Influence of External Actors

It is widely acknowledged that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has attracted the attention of international players, with several countries providing support to Ukraine or aligning themselves with Russia. The presence of external actors introduces complexities and raises questions regarding their influence on the region's stability.

The Role of Mercenaries in Modern Warfare

Mercenaries have played a significant role in conflicts throughout history. These non-state actors often operate outside traditional military structures, making them difficult to track and regulate.

While some mercenaries may genuinely fight for ideological or political causes, others are motivated by personal gain or opportunistic objectives.

Assessing the Accusation's Impact

The accusation leveled against the mercenary leader has far-reaching implications for both Russia and Ukraine, as well as the broader international community. The following points shed light on the potential consequences:

1. Escalation of Tensions

Accusations of a coup attempt by a mercenary leader can significantly escalate tensions within the region. Such claims intensify the atmosphere of suspicion, creating a breeding ground for further hostilities and military actions.

2. Damage to Mercenary Reputations

If the allegations are proven true, the reputation of mercenaries as actors within conflicts could suffer a severe blow. It may lead to increased scrutiny, regulations, and a negative perception of their involvement in future conflicts.

3. Implications for Geopolitical Stability

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has wider implications for global stability, particularly in terms of geopolitics. Accusations like these have the potential to strain relations between nations and influence the dynamics of future alliances and international cooperation.

The Importance of Diplomatic Efforts

Amidst the heightened tensions and accusations, diplomatic efforts play a crucial role in maintaining stability and working towards a peaceful resolution. Dialogue, negotiation, and a commitment to finding common ground are essential components in mitigating the risks associated with the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In conclusion, the accusation made by Russian generals regarding a mercenary leader's alleged coup attempt during the Russia-Ukraine war has triggered widespread speculation and concern. By understanding the background of the conflict,

the motivations behind the accusation, and the potential consequences, we can gain valuable insights into the complex dynamics at play. It is imperative for all involved parties to prioritize diplomatic efforts, fostering dialogue and seeking peaceful resolutions to prevent further escalation and promote regional stability.

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Brutalities committed during the Russia-Ukraine War

Mercenary Leader is Accused by Russian Generals of Trying to Mount a Coup

Russia drove armored trucks through Moscow's streets and into a nearby Ukrainian city. Following his accusation that Russian forces had attacked them, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenaries, was ordered to be arrested by Russia's top security agency.

ImageIn a photo issued by his press office, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, is seen standing between two men brandishing firearms and wrapping an arm around each of them. Helmets are worn by all three.

In a photo supplied by his press office, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin is seen last month in Bakhmut, Ukraine, with Wagner warriors. Credit: Reuters and Concord Press Service

For real-time updates on the conflict in Ukraine, follow.

The leader of a Russian mercenary group dismisses the invasion as a "racket" to benefit the ruling class.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, was accused of trying to overthrow Russian President Vladimir V. Putin by Russian generals late on Friday, as the Russian authorities launched an inquiry into Mr. Prigozhin for "organizing an armed rebellion."

The long-running dispute over the conflict in Ukraine between Mr. Prigozhin and the Russian military has now turned into an open confrontation,

posing Mr. Putin with the largest challenge to his power since he began invading Ukraine 16 months ago.

Videos that were extensively shared on social media revealed that the national guard and military were armored

Vehicles had been placed in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia close to the Ukrainian front line where Mr. Prigozhin's forces had been engaged in combat.

On Friday, armored vehicles could be seen on a roadway in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia.

In a series of recordings broadcast to social media, Mr. Prigozhin on Friday claimed that his Wagner mercenary soldiers had been attacked by the Russian military.

He also promised that his men would retaliate. In response, Russian authorities charged Mr. Prigozhin with attempting to incite an uprising despite Mr. Putin having long accepted his criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry.

Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy head of Russia's military intelligence agency, warned Mr. Prigozhin's soldiers in a video appeal to put an end to any uprising, saying, "This is a stab in the back of the country and the president." A coup has occurred.

Although Mr. Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group has proven crucial to the Russian war effort in Ukraine, he has regularly criticized Russia's top brass in recent months for alleged corruption and disregard for the deaths of regular soldiers.

He escalated his charges on Friday night by asserting that Wagner encampments had been targeted by the Russian military, which resulted in the deaths of "a huge number of fighters."

Mr. Prigozhin (pree-GOH-zhin) made a number of statements, one of which said, "The evil carried by the country's military leadership must be stopped."

“The evil borne by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” Mr. Prigozhin (pronounced pree-GOH-zhin) said in one of a series of voice recordings posted to the Telegram social network after 9 p.m. Moscow time.

Minutes later, he suggested that his Wagner mercenary force was prepared to go on the offensive against Russia’s own Defense Ministry, saying, “There’s 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country.”

He denied that the actions were a “military coup.”

“This is a march for justice,” he said in another audio message on Telegram. “Our actions aren’t interfering with the troops in any way.”

Just past midnight Moscow time, Russia’s prosecutor general announced that Mr. Prigozhin was being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion” and would face as much as 20 years in prison if prosecuted.

The Wagner leader then defiantly took to Telegram again, saying his fighters were approaching the city of Rostov-on-Don and adding: “We are going farther. We will go to the end.”

Mr. Prigozhin’s whereabouts remained unclear, and there was no immediate confirmation that his forces were actually approaching the city.

While President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had yet to comment as of Friday night, one of his advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, warned on Twitter that “tumultuous times are coming” for Russia.

White House officials said they were following the events, but would not say much more. “We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments,” said Adam Hodge, a National Security Council spokesman.

Image

Mr. Prigozhin and President Vladimir Putin at one of Mr. Prigozhin’s factories in St. Petersburg in 2010. Mr. Prigozhin accused the Russian military of attacking his forces, vowed to retaliate, on Friday.

Mr. Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg restaurateur who leveraged his personal connections with Mr. Putin into lucrative government contracts, gained international prominence after his online “troll factory” interfered in the 2016 American presidential election — and after his Wagner fighters were deployed in Syria and across Africa as a shadow force believed to be fighting for Kremlin interests.

For months the Russian war effort has been hampered by the bitter feud between Mr. Prigozhin and top military leaders, whom he has accused in scathing terms of incompetence in conducting the war. He has asserted that Russia’s top brass have refused to provide Wagner forces with needed ammunition even as they fought alongside the Russian military for control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

But never before had Mr. Prigozhin accused Russia’s military leaders of attacking his forces, nor asserted in such stark terms that the Kremlin’s stated justification for the war was nonsense.

In a 30-minute video released on Friday, Mr. Prigozhin had described his country’s invasion of Ukraine as a “racket” perpetrated by a corrupt elite chasing money and glory without concern for Russian lives.

He also accused the Russian minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu, of orchestrating a deadly attack with missiles and helicopters on camps to the rear of the Russian lines in Ukraine, where his soldiers of fortune were bivouacked. And he accused Mr. Shoigu of overseeing the strikes himself from the town of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, near Ukraine.

The mercenary leader’s claims could not be immediately verified. The Russian defense ministry denied the allegations, saying in a statement that the messages Mr. Prigozhin had posted about supposed strikes on Wagner camps “do not correspond to reality.”

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said that Mr. Putin was “aware of all events around Prigozhin,” according to Interfax, a Russian news agency.

Mr. Prigozhin’s accusations created a ripple effect among Russian pro-war activists, who fear that an open conflict between the army and Wagner forces could threaten the Russian front lines during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. In Ukraine, some viewed his statements as more evidence of internal divisions within the Russian war effort.

In an earlier videotaped speech, Mr. Prigozhin did not explicitly impugn Mr. Putin, instead casting him as a leader being misled by his officials. But in dismissing the Kremlin’s narrative that the invasion was a necessity for the Russian nation, Mr. Prigozhin went further than anyone in Russia’s security establishment in publicly challenging the wisdom of the war.

“The war wasn’t needed to return Russian citizens to our bosom, nor to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine,” Mr. Prigozhin said, referring to Mr. Putin’s initial justifications for the war. “The war was needed so that a bunch of animals could simply exult in glory.”

Friday’s diatribes deepened the enigma of Mr. Prigozhin’s ambiguous role in Mr. Putin’s system. His Wagner troops, composed of veteran fighters as well as thousands of convicts whom Mr. Prigozhin personally recruited from Russian prisons, proved key in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May after a monthslong battle.

But, during the battle for Bakhmut, Mr. Prigozhin also emerged as a populist political figure, excoriating Russia’s military leadership for corruption. His angry recordings and videos posted to the Telegram messaging network cast top military and Kremlin officials as unaware and uncaring of the struggles of regular Russian soldiers.

So far, Mr. Putin has not reined in Mr. Prigozhin, even as Mr. Putin’s security forces have jailed or fined thousands of Russians for criticizing the military or opposing the war. Some people who know Mr. Putin have said they believe that he still sees Mr. Prigozhin as a loyal servant applying needed pressure on a sprawling military apparatus. Others theorized that the Kremlin had orchestrated Mr. Prigozhin’s tirades against Mr. Shoigu, the defense minister, to deflect blame from Mr. Putin himself.

But Friday’s statements complicated the picture, with Mr. Prigozhin going after not just Mr. Shoigu but also unnamed “oligarchs” around Mr. Putin, while casting the entire official rhetoric around the invasion as a sham. He said there was “nothing out of the ordinary” in Ukraine’s military posture on the eve of the February 2022 invasion — challenging the Kremlin’s justification that Ukraine was on the verge of attacking Russian-backed separatist territory in Ukraine’s east.

“Our holy war with those who offend the Russian people, with those who are trying to humiliate them, has turned into a racket,” he said.

Mr. Prigozhin also asserted in his video that Ukraine’s counteroffensive to gain back territory was going much more poorly for Russia than the government was letting on. On Telegram, pro-war commentators quickly pushed back against that claim, including Igor Girkin, a former paramilitary commander who himself has often criticized Russia’s top brass.

“Prigozhin already should have been handed over to a military tribunal for many things,” Mr. Girkin wrote. “Now also for treason.”

Julian E. Barnes and Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting.

Putin to address the nation, the Kremlin says, in a rare public comment during a crisis.

Image

President Vladimir V. Putin reads from a file at a desk.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia during a meeting with the Security Council, in Moscow, on Thursday.Credit...Sergey Ilyin/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will make a statement “soon,” the Kremlin says, in what would be a rare public comment in a time of crisis for a leader who prefers to exert his rule behind the scenes until the outcome — and the public messaging — is clear.

That has been the case from the terrorist siege of a school in southern Russia in 2004 to the weeks before the invasion of Ukraine last February.

On Friday, when a long-running feud between the Russian military and the paramilitary forces of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin escalated into what Russian generals have called a coup attempt,” Mr. Putin was nowhere to be seen.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reported that the Russian leader met “around the clock” with officials from the military, the Interior Ministry, the National Guard and the Federal Security Service. He was, Mr. Peskov said, issuing “directives in relation to the attempted rebellion.”

But on Saturday, as Mr. Prigozhin claimed that his fighters had taken control of Russia’s southern military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, Mr. Peskov said the Russian leader would soon address the nation, in a sign of the urgency of the situation.

Mr. Putin’s whereabouts over the course of the day were unclear, despite unverified reports of helicopters whisking him out of the Kremlin.

Videos showed military and national guard armored vehicles had been deployed in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don.

The governor of Russia's Lipetsk region said traffic was blocked along a stretch of the M-4, a major north-south highway that runs for hundreds of miles from Moscow to the Black Sea and passes through Rostov-on-Don. The governor, Igor Artamonov, said on Telegram that the blockage was at the border of the Lipetsk and Voronezh regions.

The governor of Voronezh, directly north of the Rostov region, said earlier that a convoy of military equipment was moving along the highway.

Debris from a downed Russian missile tears through Kyiv building, killing two.

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Russian forces fired more than 20 missiles at Ukraine’s capital in a predawn assault on Saturday that left at least three people dead.

Kyiv, the capital, found itself under attack for the eighth time this month as anxiety grew in Russia over a confrontation between Moscow’s military leadership and Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken founder of the Wagner mercenary group. The leadership accuses Mr. Prigozhin of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir V. Putin.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration, said air defenses had shot down more than 20 missiles around the capital but that falling debris had hit a high-rise building and started a blaze that destroyed three floors. In addition to the dead, 11 people were injured, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Just after dawn, smoke was still rising from the building as firefighters used a crane to observe damage to its 16th, 17th and 18th floors. Residents carefully stepped over the broken glass and building fragments that had scattered throughout the parking lot below.

Two women, their legs dotted with small wounds, walked out from the building. One was wrapped in a blanket; the other wore only a robe.

Residents of Kyiv had been shaken from their sleep just before 2:30 a.m. local time as air-raid sirens blared. The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, reported explosions as other officials said air defenses were working and urged people to take shelter.

Volodymyr and Iryna Kuts were awakened in their apartment on the 19th floor by a crash as debris tore through the stories below.

“I don’t know how we survived,” said Mr. Kuts, 65. Their windows were blown out and smoke filled the air.

“We were just hugging thinking we would suffocate,” Ms. Kuts, 62, said. They eventually made their way down the stairs, helped by police officers.

Outside the building, dozens of residents milled around, many looking toward the charred and gaping hole ripped into its side.

Dymytro Romanov, 42, lives in a neighboring high-rise and said it was a matter of chance that his building was unscathed.

“I also live on the 18th floor,” Mr. Romanov said as he pointed toward his building. “But I got lucky.”

Emergency workers were still on the scene, helping evacuate the wounded: an older couple, a woman on a stretcher and a man walking on his own, covered in dust and debris. One woman arrived at the scene, saying she had come to look for her son who lived on the 18th floor.

But there was “nothing left” on the 18th floor, a firefighter nearby said after she’d walked away.

Just before 6 a.m. the wail of an air-raid siren pierced the air again, sending residents racing for an underground shelter.

Another prominent critic of the Kremlin, the chess champion and activist Garry Kasparov, has weighed in on Twitter. He wrote that “whatever is happening now” indicates that President Vladimir V. Putin is no longer able to keep factional infighting “quiet or at least non-violent the way he mostly could before.”

“Do not let whatever mafia show that is now out in the open in Russia distract from the goal of Ukrainian victory,” Kasparov added. He has previously characterized the war as a fight for democracy itself.

The governor of the Rostov region, where Prigozhin said he had led his fighters, asked residents to not leave their homes and to stay away from the city center. Photos published by a Russian state news agency, Tass, showed armored vehicles and troops with rifles drawn in the city streets in Rostov-on-Don. The agency said they were troops with Prigozhin’s Wagner forces.

Two people have been confirmed dead in Kyiv after debris from a downed missile hit a high-rise building, according to the city’s military administration. Eight other people were wounded.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said security had been increased in Moscow in a post on his Telegram channel. That includes more security on roads and the possibility that events scheduled in the city would be limited, he said.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a critic of the Russian government who has lived in exile for years, expressed qualified support for Prigozhin on his Telegram page. “Prigozhin’s rebellion, despite its half-heartedness and unpreparedness, is the strongest blow to Putin’s reputation,” he wrote.

That Khodorkovsky would criticize the Kremlin is no surprise. He is a former oil tycoon who publicly broke with Putin in 2003 and was later arrested on tax evasion and fraud charges. He was imprisoned in Russia for 10 years and moved abroad after Putin pardoned him.

Volodymyr Kuts, who lives with his wife on the 19th floor of the Kyiv building hit by debris from an intercepted missile, said they were awakened by a massive crash.

He said their windows blew out and smoke filled the air. “I don’t know how we survived,” he said.

Firefighters used a crane to observe the damage to the 16th, 17th and 18th floors. Residents carefully stepped over the broken glass and building fragments that had scattered throughout the parking lot below. The blare of car alarms pierced the quiet of early morning.

The governor of Russia's Voronezh region said a convoy of military equipment was moving along the M-4 highway and asked residents to stay away. Voronezh is directly to the north of the Rostov region,

where Yevgeny Prigozhin said his Wagner fighters were approaching the city of Rostov-on-Don. The Voronezh governor did not give any additional details about the movement of the equipment, saying only that the situation was under control.

The ugly, personal feud between Russia’s defense ministry and ‘Putin’s chef’ has roots in the battle for Bakhmut.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, wearing winter coats, stand next to each other in front of a high brick wall.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu at a ceremony in Moscow in February.Credit...Pool photo by Pavel Bednyakovsputnik

Russia’s capture of Bakhmut in May ended the longest battle of the war, marking a victory for Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner paramilitary group.

For Mr. Prigozhin, whose mercenaries led the assault on Bakhmut, capturing the eastern Ukrainian city appeared to be a personal obsession. One facet of the battle’s legacy will be the public feud it set off between him, the man once known as “Putin’s chef,” and the Russian defense ministry.

Mr. Prigozhin is a businessman who amassed his wealth partly through securing catering contracts from the Kremlin, resulting in the “chef” moniker. His Wagner mercenary force has exerted influence on behalf of Moscow in Syria, Libya,

the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, and it is now a crucial force fighting on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine — though Mr. Prigozhin publicly acknowledged his connection to Wagner only last September.

Since then, he has built an aggressive social media presence, portraying himself and his forces as more ruthless and effective fighters than the Russian military,

and denouncing Moscow’s defense bureaucracy — all while maintaining a close alliance with President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Prigozhin’s pointed accusations about the competency of the Russian defense ministry, paired with his fighters’ advances in the grinding battle for Bakhmut, transformed him from a once-secretive figure into a political power player on the public stage.

The discord between Mr. Prigozhin and Russian defense officials became more exposed as the first anniversary of the war approached, in February of this year.

At that time, Mr. Prigozhin’s mercenary group was losing its ability to replenish its ranks.

His troops’ sheer numbers — bolstered by prison inmates personally recruited by Mr. Prigozhin — had enabled Wagner’s repeated, costly offensives in Bakhmut.

But news of Wagner’s astronomical casualty rate was spreading to Russian penal colonies, and Mr. Prigozhin said in early February that he would stop recruiting inmates, without giving a reason.

Not long afterward, he took aim at figures near the very top of Russia’s command structure, accusing the defense minister and the country’s most senior general of treason in vitriolic, profanity-laden audio messages on social media.

Mr. Prigozhin claimed that military officials were deliberately withholding ammunition and supplies from Wagner fighters in Bakhmut to undermine him, while, he said, Russian forces elsewhere faced failure after failure.

According to a classified U.S. intelligence document that was leaked online in April, the dispute grew so bad that Mr. Putin became personally involved, calling Mr. Prigozhin and Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, into a meeting believed to have taken place on Feb. 22.

“The meeting almost certainly concerned, at least in part, Prigozhin’s public accusations and resulting tension with Shoygu,” the document says, using an alternative transliteration of the minister’s name.

The public intensity of the dispute fluctuated over time. Mr. Prigozhin eventually said his fighters in Bakhmut had received the ammunition they needed, and in April, Russia’s defense ministry made a rare

acknowledgment of their cooperation, saying that Russian paratrooper units were covering Wagner’s flanks in the western part of the city.

But over the course of three weeks in May, Mr. Prigozhin issued a series of inflammatory statements.

He again accused Russia’s military bureaucracy of starving Wagner forces of the ammunition they needed to fully capture Bakhmut,

this time threatening to withdraw them from the city on May 10. He appeared to backtrack two days later,

as he had done before, this time saying he had received satisfactory promises of more arms. He undermined the Russian Army’s claims of a partial

“regrouping” of its forces in the city by declaring it a “rout,” and denied a report that he had offered to betray the Russian Army’s locations around Bakhmut if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from the area.

In late May, he declared that Bakhmut was fully under Wagner control.

Kyiv swiftly denied the claim. Several hours later, Russia’s defense ministry released a statement saying that the city’s capture “has been completed” as a result of Wagner’s actions with the support of traditional Russian forces.

Despite the recognition, Mr. Prigozhin soon went back to lambasting Russia’s military leadership — culminating in his allegations on Friday that Moscow’s generals said amounted to a coup.

The Institute for the Study of War, which has chronicled Russian military actions throughout the war, said Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion to force a change in Russian defense leadership is “unlikely to succeed.

” “An armed Wagner attack against Russian military leadership in Rostov-on-Don would have significant impacts on Russia’s war effort in Ukraine,” the group wrote Friday.

Just after dawn, smoke was rising from a high-rise apartment building in Kyiv’s western Solomyan district that local authorities said had been hit by debris from an intercepted missile in the early morning as a volley was fired on the capital.

State-run media in China — Moscow's most important diplomatic partner — is so far mute about the reports of an attempted armed rebellion in Russia, though Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders are sure to be paying close attention.

Xi has forged a close relationship with Putin, and during their most recent summit in March, Xi told the Russian leader that he was “sure that the Russian people will certainly continue firmly supporting you.”

Air defenses intercepted more than 20 missiles around Kyiv in the pre-dawn attack, Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration, said on Telegram.

Falling debris ignited a fire in a high-rise building in Kyiv, the city’s military administration wrote on Telegram, posting a video which showed flames shooting out from an upper floor.

Dust and debris covered cars on the ground outside as emergency response vehicles’ lights flashed in the area, a separate video it posted showed.

Several floors of the building caught fire and were destroyed, according to Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration. He said one person was hospitalized and another received medical attention on-site.

What to know about the paramilitary group Wagner.

The exterior of a large office building.

The PMC Wagner Center, an office building connected to the Wagner mercenary organization, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Credit...Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via Shutterstock

A long-running feud between Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a mercenary businessman, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia erupted into open confrontation on Friday.

Mr. Prigozhin, once a close associate of Mr. Putin’s, for years denied links to the Wagner paramilitary group until acknowledging in September that he was its founder.

Here’s what to know about Wagner:

How did Wagner get its start?

The entity first emerged in 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and has evolved over the years to become more of a private contractor for Russia’s military.

Mr. Prigozhin had been referred to as “Putin’s chef” because of his catering business, which has staged elaborate state banquets for Mr. Putin.

How did the group get its name?

The group reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a retired Russian military officer.

Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitler’s.

Despite the Kremlin’s denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin.

Where is the group based?

The group is not registered as a legal entity anywhere in the world. Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law.

Their shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, observers say.

“It operates in a situation of opacity, there’s a real lack of transparency and that’s the whole point,” said Sorcha MacLeod,

the leader of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries,

which has scrutinized the group. Their structure allows them to have plausible deniability and to create “distance between the Russian state and the group,” she said.

Why are the mercenaries in Ukraine?

Russia has suffered heavy losses in the war and has sent poorly trained recruits to the front lines as cannon fodder.

Wagner’s forces led the nearly yearlong assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut. After an estimated tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, Russia declared victory, though there is still fighting in the area.

Where do they recruit?

Wagner’s forces include veteran fighters and mercenaries, and the group had experience fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region for years before Russia’s full-scale invasion. But the use of convicts,

whom Mr. Prigozhin personally recruited from prisons, emerged prominently in the battle for Bakhmut.

U.S. officials have cited battlefield intelligence reports in crediting Russia’s success in Bakhmut in large part Wagner’s willingness to use those prisoners. Ukrainian soldiers,

though, have said that by the end of the battle prisoners were less prevalent, with Wagner’s professional fighters playing a bigger role.

Where have Wagner forces been deployed?

In addition to their involvement in Syria, Libya, Central African Republic and Ukraine, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Mali and Mozambique,

exerting Russian influence by proxy, doing the bidding of authoritarian leaders and, at times, seizing oil and gas fields or securing other material interests. They have become more formalized and have started acting more like Western military contractors.

“There’s a trend or pattern around what happens when Wagner is involved in an armed conflict,” Dr. MacLeod said. “The conflict is prolonged, involves heavy weaponry, civilians are impacted in a substantial way, human rights violations and war crimes increase substantially, and there’s no access to justice for victims.”

As the events played out in Russia, Ukraine’s armed forces posted a short message on Twitter: “We are watching.”

At close to 4 a.m., the governor of the Rostov region on the Ukraine border — where Prigozhin claims to have led his fighters — issued a statement addressing the public.

“The law enforcement authorities are doing everything necessary to assure the safety of the region’s residents,” the governor, Vasily Golubev, said in a Telegram post. “I’m asking everyone to stay calm and not leave their home without necessity.”

Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader Russia accused of mounting a coup?

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin in a black jacket and jeans, walking between two larger, similarly clad men.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, center, founder of the mercenary military group Wagner, attending the funeral of a Russian military blogger in Moscow, in April.Credit...Yulia Morozova/Reuters

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin became rich through his personal ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,

winning lucrative catering and construction contracts with the Russian government while building a mercenary force known as Wagner.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he threw his fighters into the fray, as their ranks swelled with prisoner recruits. In recent months,

Mr. Prigozhin (pronounced pree-GOH-zhin) has also emerged as a public power player, using social media to turn tough talk and brutality into his personal brand. At the same time,

though, he began launching accusations at Russia’s military leadership, blaming it for failing to provide his forces with enough ammunition and ignoring soldiers’ struggles.

But until Friday — when Russian generals accused Mr. Prigozhin of mounting a coup — Mr. Putin had not checked Mr. Prigozhin’s online accusations, despite jailing or fining many other critics of the war.

Spewing vulgarities, disregarding the law and displaying loyalty to no one but Mr. Putin, Mr. Prigozhin, a businessman known as

“Putin’s chef” because of his catering contracts with the Kremlin and Russian military, has become a symbol of wartime Russia:

ruthless, shameless and lawless. It was a significant turnabout for Mr. Prigozhin, who acknowledged only last fall that he had founded Wagner.

In Moscow, he has been dogged by open questions and criticism, with analysts expressing doubts that his recruitment of prisoners and endorsement of extrajudicial executions had broad appeal.

Mr. Prigozhin expanded Wagner’s presence in Ukraine after the Kremlin’s attempt to seize Kyiv, the capital, failed in the initial days of its invasion early last year.

The “private military company” was at that point largely active in Syria and Africa, where it operated both on behalf of the Russian government and in the service of Mr. Prigozhin’s own business interests.

He was also active elsewhere. In February 2018, Mr. Prigozhin was one of 13 Russians indicted by a federal grand jury for interfering in the American election through the Internet Research Agency,

a troll factory that spread falsehoods and waged information warfare against the United States, in support of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

The United States imposed sanctions against Mr. Prigozhin in December 2016.

Born in 1961 when St. Petersburg was called Leningrad, Mr. Prigozhin was sent to prison in 1981 for robbery and other crimes, according to Meduza, an online investigative publication.

After serving his nine-year sentence, he opened a hot-dog stand, eventually leading to an entrepreneurial career starting restaurants and convenience stores.

Video footage shared on the Telegram app showed heavy armored vehicles rolling through the streets of central Moscow late Friday night, apparently startling residents.

Fragments from a rocket hit the upper floors of a high-rise building in Kyiv, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. The Kyiv military administration posted an image on Telegram of what it said was the damaged building.

Prigozhin’s latest voice recording is only 10 seconds long: “A helicopter just opened fire on the civilian column.

It was shot down by Wagner Group crews.” It’s not clear what he means by “civilian column,” but this appears to refer to Wagner fighters. Again, we have no confirmation of any of this.

Mick Mulroy, a retired C.I.A. officer and a former Pentagon official, said that Yevgeny Prigozhin poses “a serious challenge”

to President Vladimir Putin. If Mr. Prigozhin’s threats materialize, the Russian military may have to refocus its efforts from countering the Ukrainian advance to the Russian government’s

“self-preservation” “Even if this attempted coup fails, it emphatically makes the point that those closest to this war know it was a terrible mistake,” Mulroy said.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, reported explosions in one area of the capital as the city’s regional military administration said air defences were working and urged residents to stay in shelters.

Russia blocks Google News amid growing feud with mercenary leader.

Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, sits across a small desk from Mikhail Oseyevsky.

Mikhail Oseyevsky, president of Rostelecom, meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow earlier this month.Credit...Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov

Several Russian internet service providers are preventing users inside the country from accessing Google News after Russian generals accused a mercenary leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, of attempting a coup.

At least five telecommunications companies — including Rostelecom, U-LAN and Telplus — have blocked Google News, which aggregates news from various sources,

according to an analysis from NetBlocks, an internet observatory. Several other internet service providers have begun reducing access as well, according to the analysis.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment.

Late Friday, Russian officials accused Mr. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization,

of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir V. Putin, with Russian authorities opening an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for “organizing an armed rebellion.”

Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in March 2022 that it would block Google News from the country’s internet users after the company paused advertising in Russia and took steps to block online content that spread false information to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Roskomnadzor is part of a larger tech apparatus that Mr. Putin has built over the years to exert control through technology channels. Apart from tightly supervising Russia’s internet,

authorities also use a domestic spying system that intercepts phone calls and internet traffic, spread online disinformation campaigns and hack other nations’ government systems.

After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, many Western technology companies pulled their services and products out of Russia or were blocked.

TikTok and Netflix suspended their services in the country. Facebook was blocked. Twitter was partly blocked and Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and others pulled back or withdrew entirely.

Prigozhin released a new voice memo. In it, he rejects the idea that his Wagner Group’s actions are preventing the Russian army from fighting in Ukraine. He adds: “We’re preventing criminals who killed close to 100,000 Russian soldiers from saving their asses — Gerasimov and Shoigu.”

Prigozhin has for months accused Gerasimov, the Russian military’s top general, and Shoigu, the defense minister, of starving his Wagner fighters of ammunition and of indifference to the lives of regular soldiers.

Prigozhin also claims that two Russian Air Force planes are in the air to fire at Wagner forces located in residential areas.

But he doesn’t specify where these forces are, and we still haven’t seen any evidence of clashes between Wagner and the Russian military.

The current standoff marks a stunning collapse in Prigozhin’s relationship with Putin. Just a month ago, the Russian president issued a statement congratulating Prigozhin’s

“Wagner assault units” on their role in Russia’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

At least five Russian telecommunications companies — including Rostelecom, U-LAN and Telplus — have blocked Google News, which aggregates news from various sources, according to an analysis from NetBlocks, an internet observatory. Several other internet service providers have begun reducing access as well, according to the analysis.

As questions swirled over the situation in Russia, air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine around 2:30 a.m. local time.

In Kyiv, it was the third time in less than 24 hours that the capital had been put under alert, with officials warning of an increased risk of Russian missiles.

Ukrainian officials, too, seemed to be closely tracking the developments about Prigozhin through the night.

While there was no immediate comment from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, one of his top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, warned on Twitter that “tumultuous times" are coming for Russia.

Even at 3 a.m. local time, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, was posting updates about the situation every few minutes on twitter.

Jitters among Russian officials are coming to the surface. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of the city of Sevastopol in Russian-held Crimea,

writes on Telegram that he’s “not sleeping, refreshing the news feed.” He adds: “A conflict of this level … is a bad thing of the highest order.”

Russian newswires are carrying another things-are-under-control statement from Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman. It says:

“The Defense Ministry, the F.S.B., the Interior Ministry and the National Guard are briefing Putin around the clock on the measures being taken regarding his directives in relation to the attempted rebellion.”

Prigozhin has issued yet another voice recording, now claiming that Russian Air Force pilots refused orders tonight to fire at a column of Wagner fighters. We’ve seen no verification of these claims, either.

The F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency and the main successor to the K.G.B., is playing a key role in trying to quell Prigozhin’s putative rebellion.

The normally secretive agency has made a series of public statements tonight, including one calling on Wagner fighters to detain Prigozhin.

White House officials say they are following the events in Russia, but will not say much more.

“We are monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments,” said Adam Hodge, a National Security Council spokesman.

Russia’s top prosecutor, Igor Krasnov, briefed President Vladimir V. Putin tonight on Prigozhin’s “attempt to organize an armed rebellion,” the Kremlin says.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, added that the prosecutor “also informed the Russian president of the legality of launching this kind of criminal case.”

The Russian business newspaper RBK reports that the ruble has fallen to 94.9 per dollar for customers looking to sell the Russian currency and buy U.S. dollars online at Tinkoff Bank. The ruble previously had been trading around 84 per dollar.

Prigozhin has issued a new voice recording on the Telegram messaging platform.

He says his fighters are approaching the city of Rostov-on-Don, which is in southern Russia, near Ukraine, and adds:

“We are going farther. We will go to the end.” There’s no confirmation that Prigozhin’s forces are actually approaching Rostov.

“We are not killing children, the person killing children is Shoigu,” Prigozhin said, accusing the defense minister of sending young, unprepared and poorly outfitted soldiers to the war.

He also addressed the members of the Federal Security Services who had brought charges against him, saying they understand

“nothing but betrayal.” He added: “If anyone stands in our way, we will destroy everything that stands in our way.”

Prigozhin accused the Russian defense ministry of dispatching young draftees to close the road as his forces approach the city of Rostov-on-Don.

Just past midnight Moscow time, Russia’s prosecutor general announced that Prigozhin was being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion” and would face as much as 20 years in prison if prosecuted.

The state news agency Tass says the authorities have blocked traffic on the M-4 highway outside Rostov-on-Don — a Russian city near Ukraine home to key Russian military facilities.

The government of the Krasnodar region, a swath of southwestern Russia bordering Ukraine, is urging the public not to panic. “The situation in the region is calm and is fully under control,

” the regional government said in a statement on Telegram. Footage circulating on social media shows the military deployed in the nearby city of Rostov-on-Don.

At this point, we still don’t know whether Mr. Prigozhin’s pledge to rebel against the Russian Defense Ministry has any teeth.

We haven’t seen any images of the Wagner fighters that Mr. Prigozhin has threatened to deploy against his own country’s military.

But the intense reaction by Russian officials — in particular the videos recorded by two generals pleading with Wagner fighters to stand down — show that the Kremlin appears to be highly concerned about the situation.

Russian stocks were down more than 3 percent in evening trading as of 11:30 p.m. Moscow time, the Tass state news agency reports.

At the end of the Channel 1 news bulletin, the anchor says: “Vladimir Putin has been informed about all events.”

Russian state Channel 1 has now ended the special news bulletin and returned to its regular programming: a sit-down interview with a Russian fashion designer.

A top Ukrainian commander says the main offensive push is ‘still ahead.’

Two Ukrainian soldiers run along a bush-lined pathway. One is looking behind him as he runs.

Soldiers from Ukraine’s 68th Brigade trying to avoid a Russian strike in Blahodatne, Ukraine, last week.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

After three slow weeks of only modest gains during Ukraine’s long-awaited counter offensive, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces told a British newspaper that he had yet to commit the main body of the country’s Western-trained offensive brigades to the fight and that his troops were still probing for weaknesses along Russia’s defensive lines.

“Everything is still ahead,” the commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, 57, said in an interview with The Guardian from a military base in eastern Ukraine. His statement echoed what many Ukrainian officials and independent military analysts have said about the counteroffensive’s inching progress.

Ukrainian officials say that only three of the 12 combat brigades supplied and trained by the U.S. and NATO allies so far have been engaged in fighting. Each brigade has about 4,000 troops.

“Real war is not a Hollywood blockbuster. The counteroffensive is not a new season of a Netflix show,” a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, wrote on Twitter. “There is no need to expect action and buy popcorn.”

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, also tried to tamp down expectations for the counteroffensive, saying the push to retake occupied territory from Russia was bound to be a tedious and slow process.

Still, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged that demonstrating progress was critical to motivating his own troops and reassuring foreign backers who have already poured billions of dollars into the war.

So far, Ukrainian forces say they’ve recaptured a string of villages in the south as they hunt for vulnerabilities along the 600-mile front line. As those forces advance, they are encountering extensive defensive fortifications.

The state of bomb shelters across Ukraine is poor, Zelensky says.

A woman with a white blouse and pink pants approaches a makeshift memorial of flowers, a photo and stuffed animals at the foot of a yellow brick building, near the spot in Kyiv where a 9-year-old girl died because a bomb shelter was locked.

A memorial for a 9-year-old girl who died when she was unable to get inside a bomb shelter in Kyiv in early June.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine castigated the management of Ukraine’s network of bomb shelters on Friday, saying many were in poor shape and promising a personnel shake-up to remedy what he called a “cynical and shameful” situation.

Mr. Zelensky had ordered an inspection of the shelters after a missile attack in Kyiv killed two women and a child — including a mother and her 9-year-old daughter —

who were not able to get into a locked bomb shelter in early June. The deaths prompted criticism, multiple criminal investigations and widespread mourning in Kyiv.

“Accessible and reliable shelters across the country should be and will be a priority for leaders at all levels,” he said on Friday. He called the situation particularly galling in cities, like Kyiv, that have significant financial resources.

Mr. Zelensky said that the prosecutor general had taken legal action to reopen shelters that had been illegally withdrawn from their communities. Authorities have launched an investigation into the circumstances of the June 1 attack,

detaining four people — a local government official, a security guard, the director and the deputy director of the clinic — for questioning.

In a city with hundreds of shelters that have experienced increasing aerial attacks in recent weeks, some Kyiv residents have found it difficult to find safety during bombardments.

In the days following the deadly June 1 explosion, residents grieved, erecting makeshift memorials of flowers, stuffed animals and candles where the three had been killed.

Ukraine’s interior minister found that nearly 900 of the 4,800 shelters checked at the time were unsuitable for use.

Many bomb shelters around the country are closed and there are few penalties for leaving a shelter locked, according to investigations by The Center for Civil Liberties,

the Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights organization, and volunteers at OZON, a watchdog monitoring Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and local government.

Zelensky’s warning of possible sabotage at a nuclear plant has some Ukrainians seeking iodine tablets.

The Zaprorizhzia Nuclear Power Plant on the banks of the receded Dnipro river. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warnings about potential nuclear sabotage by Russian forces has caused some Ukrainians to prepare for the worst.

KYIV, Ukraine — A day after President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of the potential for Russian sabotage at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, government agencies were laying out steps that residents could take to prepare for a nuclear disaster.

Though officials urged people to remain calm, at one pharmacy in the capital there was already a sharp uptick of people looking for potassium iodide pills.

“We are completely sold out,” said a worker at the Wholesale Prices Pharmacy, Denys Yakymenko, adding that one man had come in to buy seven boxes of the tablets in what Mr. Yakymenko saw as panic purchasing. “Last year, we had it as well.”

Another nearby pharmacy attached to a clinic, however, had not seen panic buying. Only one person had come looking for the medication, workers there said.

Potassium iodide is used to saturate a person’s thyroid with iodine so that radioactive iodine inhaled or ingested after exposure will not be retained by the gland. The tablets are one way to combat the effects of radiation exposure.

The Ukrainian capital is more than 340 miles from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, but there have been significant concerns about the safety of the plant, particularly in recent days, and a disaster there could affect an area of hundreds of miles.

On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukrainian intelligence “has received information that Russia is considering the scenario of a terrorist act at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — a terrorist act with the release of radiation.”

While Russia has denied the accusation, some in Ukraine were preparing for the worst.

Ukrainians have been through similar scares before, as escalations in the war led many to prepare for Russia to target the nuclear power plant or the deployment of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

A family at the Children’s Hospital in Zaporizhzhia collected medication last year to take in case of exposure to radiation.

A family at the Children’s Hospital in Zaporizhzhia collected medication last year to take in case of exposure to radiation.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Concerns about an accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have risen in recent weeks, as Ukraine has mounted a counteroffensive in the region and the Kakhovka dam was destroyed by an explosion,

draining a reservoir used to feed a key cooling pond at the plant. The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency warned earlier this week of an “extremely fragile” security situation at the plant.

Then came a cryptic warning on Wednesday from Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov,

that the Russians had mined the cooling pond, a charge that Moscow denied and that U.N. inspectors at the plant said they had seen no evidence of. Finally, Mr. Zelensky raised the alarm on Thursday.

Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said in a televised address on Friday that the government was convening engineers, representatives of the state emergency services,

the police and doctors to prepare for an attack or act of sabotage at the plant that might release radiation. He urged people to remain calm and follow instructions from the authorities.

“The radioactive background that may be present in the air after any events will last for about one day,” he said. “We will reduce the radioactive background by 80 percent within a day.”

Mr. Klymenko said that in the case of a radiation release or a nuclear attack residents who are not instructed to evacuate should lock themselves in their rooms, close windows and turn off air conditioners to limit their exposure to radiation.

“We will clearly give all the instructions and all the rules of behavior during this time,” Mr. Klymenko said.

He also noted that exercises would be held in the coming days to prepare, but added that equipment for measuring radiation levels in Ukraine was ready for use.

Attacks in Kherson complicate efforts to assess the toll of the Kakhovka dam disaster.

A woman is seen from the back amid debris.

A woman outside her burning house after a Russian attack in Kherson, Ukraine, this

KYIV, Ukraine — Shelling killed three municipal workers in Kherson on Friday morning, the latest deadly attack in a relentless Russian bombardment of the southern Ukrainian city that has complicated efforts to assess the toll of the Kakhovka dam disaster.

The attacks came as the authorities are still working to establish how many people died when the Kakhovka dam, which lies upstream from Kherson, was destroyed this month.

While the floodwaters unleashed by the dam’s destruction have receded significantly, the human toll remains unclear more than two weeks after the disaster.

As the ecological impact has started to come into focus, it has been extremely difficult to determine how many people were killed in the wide-scale flooding as waters rushed downstream and engulfed residential areas. At least 21 people have been confirmed dead and more than 100 people are still missing, according to Ukrainian officials.

But parts of the Kherson region are occupied by Russian forces, and the Ukrainian authorities say they do not have a clear picture of the human toll in those areas.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesman for the Kherson regional military administration, said that the number of victims could be very high in Russian-held areas, but that an accurate assessment had not been possible. Russian officials have released scant information about the conditions in these areas.

“All we can get is the number of dead from the hospital,” Mr. Tolokonnikov told Ukraine’s Radio Svoboda this week.

So far, about 11 people have been reported killed in the Russian-held town of Oleshky and the same number in Hola Prystan, a town farther south.

Constant shelling from Russian-held areas has complicated efforts to assess the losses on the Ukrainian-held side of the Dnipro River as well.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson regional military administration, initially said two city workers had been killed on Friday and five others hospitalized when a Russian bombardment hit their building on Friday morning.

A third man died later from his wounds, Mr. Prokudin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Battlefield Update: Ukraine says it stopped Russian advances in the direction of two areas in the east.

Two soldiers in uniform stand in a small trench surrounded by grass. One holds a smoking grenade launcher; the other, wearing a helmet, covers his ears.

Ukrainian soldiers from the 28th Mechanized Brigade south of Bakhmut, Ukraine, firing at Russian positions.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

OVERVIEW: Moscow’s forces have been trying to advance in eastern Ukraine even as they endeavor to hold off a Ukrainian counteroffensive to the south. In the Donetsk region, Russian troops have been aiming to push toward four municipalities,

according to Ukrainian defense officials: Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Lyman and Marinka. Ukrainian forces reclaimed Lyman in October; Russian forces seized Bakhmut last month after the war’s bloodiest battle; and Moscow has been fighting to take Marinka and Avdiivka for more than a year.

THE LATEST: Hanna Malyar, a deputy Ukrainian defense minister, said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had halted an attempted Russian push in the directions of both Lyman and Kupiansk, a Ukrainian-controlled town in the Kharkiv region in the country’s northeast.

“Our defense forces stopped the enemy’s offensive” in both directions, Ms. Malyar said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia did not immediately provide an account of fighting in the area, and it was not possible to verify Ukraine’s claim.

The Ukrainian Army’s general staff said on Friday that Russian forces had continued to focus on Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Lyman and Marinka, with over 30 clashes in those areas in the preceding day.

WHY IT MATTERS: Even as Ukrainian forces focus the initial phase of their counteroffensive in the southeast, aiming to retake areas occupied by Russian forces, they are still on the defensive in a number of areas in the east. The areas where Ms.

Malyar said Russian forces were trying to advance in Donetsk have been the scene of fierce fighting almost since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion 16 months ago.

All four have been deeply scarred by artillery and other fire, with only a handful of civilians remaining in each.

Because of the nature of the fighting, in which both sides have dug extensive trenches to withstand constant artillery attacks, military experts say that it is easier to defend ground than to advance.

As a result, while the Ukrainians may have the upper hand in defending their positions in the Donetsk region, they could face a harder task in trying to wrest back territory in the southeast.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that it will take time before their long-anticipated counteroffensive shows substantive results.

A 12-day NATO air power exercise has focused on communications.

Two jets on a runway.

Two Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft, of the United States Air Force, at Lechfeld Air Base during a media event this month.Credit...Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

LECHFELD AIR BASE, Germany — Flying a 50,000-pound attack jet while 10,000 feet above Earth may not be the best time for a language lesson. But it was part of the drills that Maj.

Greg Kirk of the Idaho Air National Guard had to decipher last week as he sought clarity on his mission from a heavily accented German military air traffic controller issuing the orders.

English is the lingua franca for most military air forces, and the German joint terminal attack controller was fluent, but with his accent he was hard to understand over the headset feedback in Major Kirk’s A-10 jet.

“I know what he’s trying to say now,” Major Kirk said three days into the exercises. “Training together with all of our NATO partners over the week — things are moving now, things are happening a lot more efficiently.”

The joint air power exercises, which end on Friday after a 12-day run, have been the largest in NATO’s history.

They involve 250 aircraft and around 10,000 personnel from 25 nations. Conducted in several places in Germany, they were planned well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago.

But the implications in the face of the current conflict, the largest in Europe since World War II, could not be more obvious.

“As we face the biggest security crisis in a generation,” said Oana Lungescu, the NATO spokeswoman, “we stand united to keep our countries and our people safe.”

Yet language barriers are not the only problem the air defense teams have been working on. Even the most fearsome warplanes and other weapons depend upon effective communications,

a particular problem when they can be drawn from any of the numerous alliance members who may use dissimilar encryption systems or instruments tailored differently even on the same aircraft. And flight instructions can vary from country to country.

Summer in Odesa was supposed to be different. The dam disaster changed that.

Image

A few people sit or walk on a beach with brown sand, as a boardwalk extends out into the water.

At a beach in Odesa, Ukraine, this month. The destruction of a faraway dam has dumped debris and dangers into the Black Sea.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

ODESA, Ukraine — Last summer, the beaches that ring the port city of Odesa in southern Ukraine were crowded with volunteers packing sandbags under bluffs where troops were positioned in machine gun nests as the threat of a Russian amphibious assault still loomed.

This summer was supposed to be different. In the first days of June, the sun was warm, the Black Sea was a shimmering blue and many Ukrainians were already packing the beaches despite an official ban on swimming.

A concrete pier jutting out into the sea with men and boys standing or jumping into the water.

After a year’s absence because of the Russian invasion, the sun seekers who typically throng the Odesa waterfront started to return before the dam broke.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Then the Kakhovka dam was destroyed.

It released a torrent of water rushing down the Dnipro River, washing over towns and villages across southern Ukraine. Thousands of houses and businesses were flooded, vast stretches of rich farmland were ravaged, and the full environmental and economic cost is likely to take years to measure.

The floods also carried mountains of debris out to the Black Sea — pieces of buildings, trees, appliances, boats, livestock carcasses and even instruments of war, like the land mines both Russian and Ukrainian forces had planted near the river. Now, the tides are carrying much of that to shore, along with a stew of toxic chemicals, fouling the famed beaches of Odesa and other coastal communities.

“The sea is turning into a garbage dump and animal cemetery,” Ukraine’s border guard agency warned last week. “The consequences of ecocide are terrible.”

Anna Lukinova and Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.

Biden and Modi pledge closer defense cooperation.

Mr. Modi, wearing light blue, and Mr. Biden, in a dark suit, sit in the Oval Office.

President Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the White House on Thursday.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautiously avoided mentioning Russia when speaking to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Thursday, instead declaring, "With the Ukraine conflict, war has returned to Europe."

The area is experiencing severe discomfort as a result. The results are serious because significant powers are involved, he stated without name them.

However, as Mr. Modi adhered to his nation's position of strict neutrality on the conflict in Ukraine during his four-day state visit to the United States,

Russia and its longstanding position as India's top arms supplier provided an important context for the two countries' promises of increased defense cooperation.

He launched a partnership for the coproduction of fighter aircraft engines in India alongside Vice President Biden;

The defense cooperation with the United States is also attractive to India because it will help the country toward its aim of strengthening domestic manufacturing and reducing dependence on foreign partners, whose supplies come with geopolitical strings.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, India has remained on the sidelines of efforts by the United States and its allies to isolate Russia economically and choke off its ability to fund the war. Mr. Modi has maintained military and economic ties with Russia and has stopped short of denouncing its war in Ukraine. India remains a major buyer of Russian oil.

At the same time, India has sought closer ties with the United States. Mr. Biden has called U.S. ties to India the “defining relationship of the 21st century,” and his administration has said it hopes to improve the countries’ economic and security relationship to help counter China’s growing influence.

When the United Nations voted in 2022 to condemn the invasion and remove Russia from its Human Rights Council, India abstained both times.

In April 2022, Mr. Biden urged Mr. Modi not to increase India’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. Even so, India’s oil imports from Russia have risen drastically. In a little over a year, it went from purchasing hardly any Russian oil to buying about half of what the country exports by sea.

A donors’ conference in London wraps up with pledges of nearly $66 billion for Ukraine’s recovery.

Image

James Cleverly, the British foreign secretary, and Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, stand on a stage in London with a crowd in the foreground. A sign above them reads Ukraine Recovery Conference.

Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, at a conference in London on Thursday.Credit...Pool photo by Henry Nicholls

Western allies raised almost $66 billion toward Ukraine’s economic recovery and stability over a two-day donors’ conference hosted by the British government that came to a close on Thursday.

“Ukraine will rebuild. But they cannot do it alone,” the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said in a speech concluding the conference. “So together, as governments, as international organizations, as businesses, as representatives of civil society, we have shown Ukraine and the Ukrainian people that we stand with them.”

During the conference, Britain pledged $305 million in direct economic assistance to Ukraine and $3 billion in World Bank loan guarantees for the country over the next several years. The funds will help Ukraine regain macroeconomic stability, Mr. Cleverly said.

In addition, the United States announced $1.3 billion in new economic aid, to be directed toward overhauling Ukraine’s heavily damaged energy infrastructure and modernizing its ports, railways and border crossings. The defense cooperation with the United States is also attractive to India because it will help the country toward its aim of strengthening domestic manufacturing and reducing dependence on foreign partners, whose supplies come with geopolitical strings.