Fire department officials in Greece arrested two men Saturday for allegedly starting wildfires on purpose, while hundreds of firefighters battled blazes that have killed at least 21 people in the past week.

One man was arrested on the Greek island of Evia for allegedly setting fire to dried grass in the Karystos area. The fire department said the man confessed to having set four other fires in the area in July and August.

A second man arrested in the Larissa area of central Greece also was accused of intentionally setting fire to dried vegetation.

Officials blamed arson for several fires in Greece over the past week, although it was unclear what sparked the country’s largest blazes, including one in the northeastern region of Evros, where nearly all the fire-attributed deaths occurred, and another on the fringes of Athens.

“Some … arsonists are setting fires, endangering forests, property and above all human lives,” Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said Thursday. “What is happening is not just unacceptable, but despicable and criminal.”

The minister said nine fires were set in the space of four hours Thursday morning in the Avlona area in the northern foothills of Mount Parnitha, a mountain on the northwestern fringes of Athens that is one of the capital’s last green areas.

A major fire was already burning on the southern side of the mountain at the time, and it continued to burn Saturday.

“You are committing a crime against the country,” Kikilias said. “We will find you. You will be held accountable to justice.”

Later Thursday, police arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of arson for allegedly setting at least three fires in the Avlona area. A search of his home revealed kindling, a fire torch gun and pine needles, police said.

A daily outbreak of dozens of fires has plagued Greece over the past week as gale-force winds and hot, dry conditions combined to whip up flames and hamper firefighting efforts. Firefighters tackled 111 blazes Friday, including 59 that broke out in the 24 hours between Thursday and Friday evenings, the fire department said.

Although most new fires were controlled in their early stages, some grew to massive blazes that have consumed homes and vast tracts of forest.

Storms were forecast Saturday for some areas of Greece, and lightning strikes ignited several fires near the Greek capital. The fire department said 100 firefighters, including contingents from France and Cyprus, backed up by four helicopters, brought fires in four outlying areas near the Greek capital under partial control within hours.

The fire department called on the public “to be particularly careful” and to follow directions by authorities “given that intense thunderstorm activity is occurring in various parts of the country.”

The Evros fire, Greece’s largest current blaze, was burning for an eighth day Saturday near the city of Alexandroupolis after causing at least 20 deaths.

Firefighters found 18 bodies in a forest Tuesday, one Monday and another Thursday. With nobody reported missing in the area, authorities think the victims might have been migrants who recently crossed the border from Turkey.

Greece’s Disaster Victim Identification Team was activated to identify the remains, and a telephone hotline set up for potential relatives of the victims to call. A man reportedly trying to save his livestock from advancing flames in central Greece also died Monday.

More than 290 firefighters, backed by five planes and two helicopters, were battling the Evros blaze. Another 260 firefighters, four planes and three helicopters were tackling the Mount Parnitha fire.

With firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece called on other European countries for help. Germany, Sweden, Croatia and Cyprus sent aircraft, while dozens of Romanian, French, Czech, Bulgarian, Albanian and Slovak firefighters helped on the ground.

Greece imposes wildfire prevention regulations, typically from the start of May to the end of October, to limit activities such as the burning of dried vegetation and the use of outdoor barbecues.

Since the start of this year’s fire season, fire department officials have arrested 163 people on fire-related charges, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said Friday, including 118 for negligence and 24 for deliberate arson. The police made a further 18 arrests, he said.
…

Russia’s military cooperation with Iran will not succumb to geopolitical pressure, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday, following reports that Washington has asked Teheran to stop selling drones to Moscow.

“There are no changes, and cooperation with Iran will continue,” Ryabkov said, according to a report Saturday from Russian state news agency RIA. “We are independent states and do not succumb to the dictates of the United States and its satellites.”

The U.S. is pressing Iran to stop selling the armed drones, which Russia is using in the war in Ukraine, the Financial Times reported earlier this month, citing an Iranian official and another person familiar with the talks.

Russia began using the Iranian-made Shahed drones to attack deep inside Ukraine last year. The so-called kamikaze unmanned drones do not need a runway to launch and explode on impact.

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but said in the past they were sent before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has denied its forces used Iranian drones in Ukraine.

A White House official said in June that Iran had transferred several hundred drones to Russia since August 2022.
…

Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
…

Norway is rebuilding a dilapidated reindeer fence along its border with Russia in the Artic to stop the animals from wandering into the neighboring country — costly strolls for which Oslo has to compensate Moscow over loss of grassland.

Norwegian officials said Thursday that so far this year, 42 reindeer have crossed into Russia seeking better pastures and grazing land.

The reindeer barrier along the Norway-Russia border spans 150 kilometers (93 miles) and dates back to 1954. The Norwegian Agriculture Agency said a stretch of about 7 kilometers (4 miles) between the Norwegian towns of Hamborgvatnet and Storskog would be replaced.

The construction, with a price tag of 3.7 million kroner ($348,000), is to be completed by Oct. 1, the agency said.

The work is a challenge, however, as the workers have to stay on the Norwegian side of the border “at all times” during construction, “which makes the work extra demanding,” said Magnar Evertsen of the agency. If a worker crossed into Russian territory, without a Russian visa, that would amount to illegal entry. 

The reindeer crossings bring on a lot of additional bureaucracy. Russia has sent two compensation claims, the agency said.

One claims is for nearly 50,000 kroner ($4,700) per reindeer that crossed into Russia to graze in the sprawling Pasvik Zapovednik natural reserve in the Russian Murmansk region. The other claim is asking for a lump sum of nearly 47 million kroner ($4.4 million) in total for the days the animals grazed in the park, which consists mostly of lakes, rivers, forests and marshland.

The agency said that of the 42 animals that entered Russia this year, 40 have been brought back to Norway and the remaining two are expected to come back soon.

The returned animals have since been slaughtered out of fear that they may wander back to Russia, Evertsen said. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority may demand the carcasses be destroyed for safety reasons, the government body said in a statement.

The reindeer are herded by the Indigenous Sami people in central and Arctic Norway. Formerly known as the Lapps, the Sami are believed to have originated in Central Asia and settled with their reindeer herds in Arctic Europe around 9,000 years ago.

They traditionally live in Lapland, which stretches from northern parts of Norway through Sweden and Finland to Russia. Across the Arctic region, the majority live on the Norwegian side of the border. 
…

Russia hopes to increase its marine product exports to China in the wake of China’s ban on Japanese seafood imports after the release of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.

Russia is one of the biggest marine product suppliers to China, with 894 Russian companies allowed to export seafood, Rosselkhoznadzor, the Russian food safety watchdog, said in July.

In a statement late Friday, Rosselkhoznadzor said it was seeking to increase the number of exporters.

“The Chinese market in general is promising for Russian fish products. We hope to increase the number of certified Russian companies and ships, the volume of products and its range,” the Rosselkhoznadzor statement said.

To aid that effort, Rosselkhoznadzor plans to continue dialog with China on seafood safety issues and finish negotiations with China on regulations for Russian marine products supply to the country, the statement said.

China has already banned some food imports from Japan but Thursday’s total ban was prompted by concerns about the “risk of radioactive contamination” after it started releasing the treated water.

China was the destination for over a half of Russian aquatic products exports between January and August, the statement said without providing figures, dominated by pollock, herring, flounder, sardine, cod and crab.

Russia exported 2.3 million metric tons of marine products last year worth about $6.1 billion, around half of its overall catch, with China, South Korea and Japan being biggest importers, according to Russia’s fisheries agency.

Japan said criticism from Russia and China was unsupported by scientific evidence and pollution levels in the water will be below those considered safe for drinking under World Health Organization standards.

Still, Rosselkhoznadzor said it has tightened the screening of Japan seafood imports though the volumes are insignificant.

The regulator also said the direction of currents in the Russian Far East, where about 70% of Russia’s seafood is caught, “would prevent contamination” of marine products caught by Russian ships.

It has also tightened the radiological control of seafood caught in Russian waters which are relatively close to Fukushima and would test selected samples for radiation levels, Interfax reported on Thursday, citing Rosselkhoznadzor’s Pacific office.
…

The United States on Friday accused China and Russia of blocking a unified U.N. Security Council response to North Korea’s missile launches, including Thursday’s attempt by Pyongyang to put a spy satellite in space. 

During an emergency Security Council meeting, 13 of the 15 members — all but Moscow and Beijing — condemned Pyongyang’s second spy satellite test in three months, which used ballistic missile technology. 

“This should be an issue that unifies us. … But since the beginning of 2022, this council has failed to live up to its commitments because of China’s and Russia’s obstructionism,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield.  

“The DPRK’s nuclear threat is growing, and Russia and China are not living up to their responsibility to maintain international peace and security,” she added, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.  

Thomas-Greenfield also denounced the presence last month of Russian and Chinese officials at a North Korean military parade that showed off new drones and nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

“They are celebrating — celebrating — violations of Security Council resolutions and continuing to block council action,” Thomas-Greenfield said of Moscow and Beijing. 

In May 2022, China and Russia vetoed a resolution imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang, and no resolution or declaration by the Security Council on North Korea has been adopted since. 

The last unified Security Council action on North Korea took place in 2017. 

Chinese and Russian representatives said Washington was to blame for North Korea’s aggressive stance, pointing to ongoing U.S. military drills with South Korea. 

North Korea has long maintained its nuclear program is pursued in self-defense and said the same applies to its satellite program. 

“Our launch of the reconnaissance satellite is an exercise of the legitimate right to self-defense to deter ever-increasing hostile military acts of the United States,” said North Korean Ambassador Kim Song, adding that his country has never recognized U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea anyway. 

Thomas-Greenfield rejected that position. 

“We all know the truth: The DPRK puts its paranoia and selfish interests over the dire needs of the North Korean people,” she said. 

“The DPRK’s war machine is fueled by repression and cruelty,” Thomas-Greenfield added. “It’s shameful, and it’s a grave threat to global peace.” 
…

The rescue ship Ocean Viking has saved 438 migrants in distress in the Mediterranean over the last two days, the organization that runs it, SOS Mediterranee, said Friday.

The rescues took place in international waters off the coasts of Libya and Tunisia, the France-based NGO said.

Earlier in the day, the NGO said that Thursday it had “rescued 272 people” of 23 different nationalities from three boats in the central Mediterranean, the most perilous maritime crossing in the world for the migrants.

Those rescued included “32 unaccompanied minors, nine babies and five people with disabilities,” said the organization, which is based in Marseille, on the French Mediterranean.

Later Friday, it said it had rescued another 136 people when it “went to the aid of a number of boats in distress.”

Those onboard were evacuated “in coordination with the Italian coast guards in the search and rescue area between Tunisia and Lampedusa.”

The tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, located around 145 kilometers from Tunisia, is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to make the treacherous sea journey to Europe from North Africa.

In total, “438 rescued people are currently on board,” SOS Mediterranee said.

The Ocean Viking was “heading toward Genoa” in northern Italy because the Italian authorities had ordered them to go to the distant port to disembark the migrants, the group added.

At least 2,013 people have died or gone missing so far this year attempting to cross the central Mediterranean, according to the United Nations migration agency, the International Organization for Migration.

That is significantly higher than its figure for the whole of 2022, which was 1,417.

In June, one sinking alone in the western Mediterranean cost the lives of at least 82 people, one of the deadliest incidents involving migrants in the area.

In July, the Italian authorities detained the Ocean Viking for 10 days at Civitavecchia, after questioning the vessel’s safety standards, before finally releasing it. 
…

The Kremlin labeled as “an absolute lie” on Friday the Western conjecture that Russian President Vladimir Putin masterminded Yevgeny Prigozhin’s reported death.  

The chief of the mercenary Wagner Group reportedly was on the jet that crashed Wednesday evening just outside of Moscow.  

Prigozhin’s name was on the passenger manifest, and he reportedly was among the 10 people aboard who died in the crash. Putin cited “preliminary information” saying that Prigozhin and his top associates in the Wagner mercenary group all had been killed. 

Earlier on Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov scolded U.S. President Joe Biden for suggesting that the Russian president had orchestrated Prigozhin’s death.  

“It is not for the U.S. president, in my opinion, to talk about certain tragic events of this nature,” Ryabkov said Friday. 

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Biden said he was not surprised by Prigozhin’s reported death. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he said. 

Asked by The Associated Press whether the Kremlin has received an official confirmation of Prigozhin’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referenced Putin’s remarks from a day earlier.  

“He said that right now, all the necessary forensic analyses, including genetic testing, will be carried out. Once some kind of official conclusions are ready to be released, they will be released,” Peskov said. 

According to a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, the plane was downed by an intentional explosion. One of the U.S. and Western officials who described the assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.” 

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, did not offer any details about what caused the explosion. It is believed to be in retaliation for the mutiny in June that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s 23-year rule. 

Ukrainian, Turkish leaders confer

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks Friday in Kyiv with Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan regarding the Black Sea grain deal and other related topics.  

“Many important issues were discussed. [Ukraine’s] Peace Formula. Preparations for the Global Peace Summit. Risks posed by the Russian blockade of the Black Sea grain corridor,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. 

Turkey is trying to persuade Russia to return to the negotiating table regarding the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative that was guaranteeing the safety of cargo vessels passing through the Black Sea corridor.  

Russia has threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets after pulling out of a U.N.-backed safe passage deal. 

According to U.S. officials, since Russia’s exit from the grain deal, Ukraine, a major grain exporter, has resorted to overland and Danube River routes as effective ways to transport its grain.  

“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,” James O’Brien, head of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told Reuters in an interview. 

Ukraine has begun exporting through a “humanitarian corridor” along the sea’s western coastline near Romania and Bulgaria.  

A Hong Kong-flagged container ship stuck in Odesa port since the invasion was the first vessel to travel that route last week without being fired upon by Russia. 

US will train Ukrainians on F-16s 

Russia has updated to 73 the number of Ukrainian drones it says it has downed over the past 24 hours.   

Earlier, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 42 drones were destroyed over Crimea – nine shot down by air defense forces and 33 by electronic warfare.  Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014.    

There were no immediate reports of fatalities.   

The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday it will train Ukrainians to fly and maintain F-16 fighter jets.   

The Defense Department said in a statement the training will be held at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona, and will be facilitated by the Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing.     

The U.S. training is “in support of the international effort to develop and strengthen Ukraine’s long-term defenses,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder said.   

The training will begin in October, after the Ukrainians complete an English-language course set to begin in September.   

Meanwhile, Norway is donating F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said Thursday on a visit to Kyiv.   

The exact number of the donated jets was not immediately clear, but Gahr Stoere said it likely would be less than than 10.   

Norway is the third European country, after the Netherlands and Denmark, to announce donations of fighter jets to Ukraine for use in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.    

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.   
…

Ukrainian soldier Ilya Mikhalchuk was wounded near Bakhmut and captured by Wagner Group mercenaries in February. He had both arms amputated while in captivity and was released in April. Thanks to volunteers, he is now in the U.S. getting prostheses. Iryna Shynkarenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Kostiantyn Golubchyk.
…

The attacks range from the exotic — poisoned by drinking polonium-laced tea or touching a deadly nerve agent — to the more mundane of getting shot at close range. Some take a fatal plunge from an open window.

Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.

None, however, has been known to perish in an air accident. But on Wednesday, a private plane carrying a mercenary chief who staged a brief rebellion in Russia plummeted into a field from tens of thousands of feet after breaking apart.

Assassination attempts against foes of President Vladimir Putin have been common during his nearly quarter century in power. Those close to the victims and the few survivors have blamed Russian authorities, but the Kremlin has routinely denied involvement — as it did on Friday by saying it was “a complete lie” it had anything to do with the jet crash.

There also have been reports of prominent Russian executives dying under mysterious circumstances, including falling from windows, although whether they were deliberate killings or suicides is sometimes difficult to determine.

Some prominent cases of documented killings or attempted killings:

Political opponents

In August 2020, opposition leader Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane landed in the city of Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized in a coma. Two days later, he was airlifted to Berlin, where he recovered.

His allies almost immediately said he was poisoned, but Russian officials denied it. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden confirmed Navalny was poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent known as Novichok, which he reported had been applied to his underwear. Navalny returned to Russia and was convicted this month of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison, his third conviction with a prison sentence in two years on charges he says are politically motivated.

In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a founder of the protest group Pussy Riot, fell severely ill and also was flown to Berlin, where doctors said poisoning was “highly plausible.” He eventually recovered. Earlier that year, Verzilov embarrassed the Kremlin by running onto the field during soccer’s World Cup final in Moscow with three other activists to protest police brutality. His allies said he could have been targeted because of his activism.

Prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza survived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017. He nearly died from kidney failure in the first instance and suspects poisoning, but no cause was determined. He was hospitalized with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma. His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned. Kara-Murza survived, and his lawyer says police have refused to investigate. This year, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The highest-profile killing of a political opponent in recent years was that of Boris Nemtsov. Once deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, Nemtsov was a popular politician and harsh critic of Putin. On a cold February night in 2015, he was gunned down by assailants on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin as he walked with his girlfriend. His death shocked the country. Five men from the Russian region of Chechnya were convicted, with the gunman receiving up to 20 years, but Nemtsov’s allies said their involvement was an attempt to shift blame from the government.

Former intelligence operatives

In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, felt violently ill in London after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210, dying three weeks later. He had been investigating the shooting death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as well as the Russian intelligence service’s alleged links to organized crime. Before dying, Litvinenko told journalists the FSB was still operating a poisons laboratory dating from the Soviet era.

A British inquiry found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably with Putin’s approval, but the Kremlin denied any involvement.

Another former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018. He and his adult daughter Yulia fell ill in the city of Salisbury and spent weeks in critical condition. They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill.

Authorities said they both were poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok. Britain blamed Russian intelligence, but Moscow denied any role. Putin called Skripal, a double agent for Britain during his espionage career, a “scumbag” of no interest to the Kremlin because he was tried in Russia and exchanged in a spy swap in 2010.

Journalists

Numerous journalists critical of authorities in Russia have been killed or suffered mysterious deaths, which their colleagues in some cases blamed on someone in the political hierarchy. In other cases, the reported reluctance by authorities to investigate raised suspicions.

Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose death Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006 — Putin’s birthday. She had won international acclaim for her reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya. The gunman, from Chechnya, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Four other Chechens were given shorter prison terms for their involvement in the murder.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, another Novaya Gazeta reporter, died of a sudden and violent illness in 2003. Shchekochikhin was investigating corrupt business deals and the possible role of Russian security services in the 1999 apartment house bombings blamed on Chechen insurgents. His colleagues insisted that he was poisoned and accused the authorities of deliberately hindering the investigation.

Yevgeny Prigozhin and his lieutenants

Wednesday’s plane crash that is presumed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin and top lieutenants of his Wagner Group private military company came two months to the day after he launched an armed rebellion that Putin labeled “a stab in the back” and “treason.” While not critical of Putin, Prigozhin slammed the Russian military leadership and questioned the motives for going to war in Ukraine.

On Thursday, a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment found that the crash that killed all 10 people aboard was intentionally caused by an explosion, according to U.S. and Western officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. One said the explosion fell in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, rejected allegations the Kremlin was behind the crash. “Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie,” he told reporters Friday.

In his first public comments on the crash, Putin appeared to hint there was no bad blood between him and Prigozhin. But former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said: “Putin has demonstrated that if you fail to obey him without question, he will dispose of you without mercy, like an enemy, even if you are formally a patriot.”
…

Russia said early Friday that it has downed dozens of drones launched from Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 42 drones were destroyed over Crimea – nine shot down by air defense forces, 33 by electronic warfare. Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014.

There were no immediate reports of fatalities.

The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday that it will train Ukrainians to fly and maintain F-16 fighter jets.

The Defense Department said in a statement that the training will be held at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona, and will be facilitated by the Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing.

The U.S. training is “in support of the international effort to develop and strengthen Ukraine’s long-term defenses,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said.

The training will begin in October, after the Ukrainians complete an English-language course set to begin in September.

Meanwhile, Norway is donating F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on a visit to Kyiv on Thursday.

The exact number of the donated jets was not immediately clear, but Gahr Stoere said that it would probably be fewer than 10.

Norway is the third European country, after the Netherlands and Denmark, to announce donations of fighter jets to Ukraine for use in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Also Thursday, the U.S. announced sanctions on 11 individuals and two entities involved with the deportation and indoctrination of Ukrainian children.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the sanctions were imposed “for their roles in the forcible transfer and deportation of Ukraine’s children to camps promoting indoctrination in Russia and Russia-occupied Crimea and who have imposed Russian indoctrination curriculums in those regions of Ukraine.”

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: “The United States will not stand by as Russia carries out these war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Ukraine believes more than 19,500 children have been deported since Russia’s invasion.

Thursday also marked Ukraine’s Independence Day.

“Today we are all celebrating the 32nd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. Thirty-two years of uninterrupted independence, which will endure. Which we will not allow to be torn apart. And which Ukrainians will not lose grip on,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address.
…

The president of the Spanish football federation faces an emergency meeting of its general assembly on Friday amid media reports that he will hand in his resignation following an uproar for kissing a Women’s World Cup champion.

Luis Rubiales is expected to stand before representatives of Spain’s regional federations, clubs, players, coaches and referees in Madrid at noon local time, and local media say he is stepping down.

The federation has refused to comment on repeated requests from The Associated Press for confirmation of Rubiales’ decision to go that was reported late Thursday.

Rubiales, 46, is under immense pressure to leave his post since he grabbed player Jenni Hermoso and kissed her on the lips without her consent during the awards ceremony following Spain’s 1-0 victory over England on Sunday in Sydney.

FIFA, football’s global governing body and organizer of the Women’s World Cup, opened a disciplinary case against him on Thursday. Its disciplinary committee was tasked with weighing whether Rubiales violated its code relating to “the basic rules of decent conduct” and “behaving in a way that brings the sport of football and/or FIFA into disrepute.”

That move by FIFA came after Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that Rubiales’ attempt to apologize, which came after he initially insulted his critics, was unconvincing and that “he must continue taking further steps” to be held accountable.

Spain’s Higher Council of Sports, the nation’s governing sports body, pledged it would act quickly to consider various formal complaints filed against Rubiales to see if he had broken Spain’s sports law or the federation’s own code of conduct that sanction sexist acts. If so, Rubiales would face being declared unfit to hold his office by Spain’s Administrative Court for Sports.

As if the forced kiss was not enough, Rubiales had shortly before grabbed his crotch in a lewd victory gesture from the section of dignitaries with Spain’s Queen Letizia and the 16-year-old Princess Infanta Sofía nearby.

The combination of the gesture and the unsolicited kiss has made Rubiales a national embarrassment after his conduct was broadcast to a global audience, marring the enormous accomplishment of the women who played for Spain.

Hermoso, a 33-year-old forward and key contributor to Spain’s title, said on a social media stream “I did not like it, but what could I do?” about the kiss during a locker-room celebration immediately after the incident.

The first attempt to respond to the scandal was a statement it released in the name of Hermoso in which she downplayed the incident. Later, a local media report by sports website Relevo.com said that the federation had coerced her into making the statement. The federation has denied this to The AP.

On Wednesday, Hermoso issued a statement through her players’ union saying it would speak on her behalf. The union said it would do all it could to ensure that the kiss does “not go unpunished.”

Rubiales has received no public support from any major sports figure and united political parties from both the left and right are calling for him to resign.
…

The Pentagon says the military will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets inside the United States beginning in October.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told reporters on Thursday that the training would involve “several” Ukrainian pilots and dozens of Ukrainian ground staff who will provide maintenance of the aircraft given to Kyiv.

The training is part of a U.S. and European effort to provide advanced fighter jets to Ukraine for long-term defense.

Ryder stressed that the F-16s are not intended for the current counteroffensive underway against Russian forces.

The flight training will be conducted at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona. Prior to this training, the pilots will conduct English-language training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, “given the complexities and specialized English that’s required to fly these aircraft,” Ryder said.

Training typically lasts about eight months for a new F-16 pilot in the United States, but an experienced pilot could complete the training within about five months, according to Ryder.

Courses include centrifuge training to learn how to cope with gravitational forces, basic fighter maneuvers and weapons employments.

Ukraine has repeatedly asked for advanced fighter jets to help defend its cities from Russian forces. Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands have announced they will supply the F-16s to Ukraine.

The U.S. military’s top general warned in May that F-16s won’t act as a “magic weapon” for Ukraine, but the U.S. fully supports those leading the F-16 training and transfer process.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also warned the cost to get these aircraft to Ukraine and sustain them would be high.

“Ten F-16s is a billion dollars. You add the sustainment costs, that’s another billion dollars. So, you’re talking about $2 billion for 10 aircraft [while] the Russians have 1,000 fourth- and fifth-generation fighters,” he said.
…

On Thursday, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency confirmed the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian mercenary organization known as the Wagner Group. Prigozhin was on the passenger manifest of the plane that crashed northwest of Moscow on Wednesday. Anna Rice has the story. Contributor: Lilily Anisimova.
…

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that the plane crash presumed to have killed Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was intentionally caused by an explosion, U.S. and Western officials said Thursday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin eulogized the man who staged the biggest challenge to his 23-year rule.

One of the officials said the initial assessment determined that it was “very likely” Prigozhin was targeted, and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, did not offer details on what caused the explosion, which was believed to have also killed several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants, to avenge a mutiny that challenged Putin’s authority.

U.S. officials had no information to suggest a surface-to-air missile was launched against the private aircraft, according to one official.

Details of the U.S. assessment surfaced as Putin expressed his condolences to the families of those who were reported to be aboard the jet and referred to “serious mistakes” by Prigozhin.

10 people on board

The founder of the Wagner Group military company and six other passengers were on the jet that crashed Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow with a crew of three, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority. Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Prigozhin was dead. But there has been no official confirmation.

President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said he believed Putin was behind the crash, although he acknowledged that he did not have information verifying his belief.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”

The passenger manifest also included Prigozhin’s second-in-command, as well as Wagner’s logistics chief, a fighter wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Syria, and at least one possible bodyguard.

It was not clear why several high-ranking members of Wagner, including top leaders who are normally exceedingly careful about their security, were on the same flight. The purpose of their joint trip to St. Petersburg was unknown.

At Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, lights were turned on in the shape of a large cross, and Prigozhin supporters built a makeshift memorial, piling red and white flowers outside the building Thursday along with company flags and candles.

In his first comments on the crash, Putin said the passengers had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine.

“We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” the president said in a televised interview with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader of Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk region.

Putin recalled that he had known Prigozhin since the early 1990s and described him as “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman.”

Russian state media have not covered the crash extensively, instead focusing on Putin’s remarks to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, via video link and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Several Russian social media channels reported that the bodies were burned or disfigured beyond recognition and would need to be identified by DNA. The reports were picked up by independent Russian media, but The Associated Press was not able to independently confirm them.

Prigozhin supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane was deliberately downed, including suggesting it could have been hit by a missile or targeted by a bomb on board. Those claims could not be independently verified.

Sergei Mironov, leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia Party and former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, suggested on his Telegram channel that Prigozhin had been deliberately killed.

“Prigozhin messed with too many people in Russia, Ukraine and the West,” Mironov wrote. “It now seems that at some point his number of enemies reached a critical point.”

Russian authorities have said the cause of the crash is under investigation.

Opponents and critics meet untimely demise

Kuzhenkino resident Anastasia Bukharova, 27, said she was walking with her children Wednesday when she saw the jet. “And then — boom! It exploded in the sky and began to fall down.” She said she was scared it would hit houses in the village and ran with the children, but the plane crashed into a field.

“Something sort of was torn from it in the air, and it began to go down and down,” she said.

Numerous opponents and critics of Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts. U.S. and other Western officials long expected the Russian leader to go after Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended the June 23-24 mutiny.

“It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while acknowledging that the facts were still unclear.

“We know this pattern … in Putin’s Russia — deaths and dubious suicides, falls from windows that all ultimately remain unexplained,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also pointed the finger. “We have nothing to do with this. Everyone understands who does,” he said.

Soon after the plane went down, people on social media and news outlets began to report that it was a Wagner plane. Minutes after Russian state news agencies confirmed the crash, they cited the civil aviation authority as saying Prigozhin’s name was on the manifest.

Prigozhin was long outspoken and critical of how Russian generals were waging the war in Ukraine, where his mercenaries were some of the fiercest fighters for the Kremlin. For a long time, Putin appeared content to allow such infighting — and Prigozhin seemed to have unusual latitude to speak his mind.

But Prigozhin’s brief revolt raised the ante. His mercenaries swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot. They then drove to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of Moscow and downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen Russian pilots.

Putin first denounced the rebellion — the most serious challenge to his 23-year rule — as “treason” and a “stab in the back.” He vowed to punish its perpetrators, and the world waited for his next move, particularly since Prigozhin had publicly questioned the Russian leader’s justifications for the war in Ukraine.

But instead, Putin made a deal that saw an end to the mutiny in exchange for an amnesty for Prigozhin and his mercenaries and permission for them to move to Belarus.

Now many are suggesting the punishment has finally come.

“The downing of the plane was certainly no mere coincidence,” Janis Sarts, director of NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, told Latvian television.

The Institute for the Study of War argued that Russian authorities likely moved against Prigozhin and his top associates as “the final step to eliminate Wagner as an independent organization.”

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, said Putin had to step in because by carrying out the mutiny and remaining free, Prigozhin “shoved Putin’s face into the dirt in front of the whole world.”

Failing to punish Prigozhin would have offered an “open invitation for all potential rebels and troublemakers,” Gallyamov said.

Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone showed a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting wildly as it fell, one of its wings apparently missing. A free-fall like that typically occurs when an aircraft sustains severe damage, and a frame-by-frame AP analysis of two videos was consistent with some sort of explosion midflight.
…

Slower than expected but still moving forward, frontline soldiers say the Russian defenses are fierce in southern Ukraine as they take villages after brutal fights. From Makarivka, a recently re-captured village in Ukraine, VOA’s Heather Murdock reports with Videographer Yan Boechat.
…

A Moscow court on Thursday extended by three months the pre-trial detention of jailed U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich. He will now stay behind bars on espionage charges until at least the end of November, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was detained at the end of March while on assignment in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Moscow has accused him of spying, which he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The State Department has classified him as wrongfully detained.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War.

Gershkovich, 31, arrived at the Moscow court Thursday in a white prison van and was led out handcuffed. He appeared in court to hear the result of the prosecution’s motion to extend his arrest from August 30.

This is the second time his pre-trial detention has been extended, both times by three months.

Reporters were not allowed to witness Thursday’s proceedings in the court. Tass said it took place behind closed doors due to the classified nature of some details in the case.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal said in a statement, “Today, our colleague and distinguished journalist Evan Gershkovich appeared for a pre-trial hearing where his improper detention was extended yet again. We are deeply disappointed he continues to be arbitrarily and wrongfully detained for doing his job as a journalist. The baseless accusations against him are categorically false, and we continue to push for his immediate release. Journalism is not a crime.”
…

A Russian missile attack wounded at least seven people early Thursday in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor, said on Telegram that six of the injured were hospitalized.

Lysak said Ukrainian air defenses shot down one Russian missile but that strikes from others destroyed a transport facility and damaged a dozen other buildings including a bank, a hotel and two residential buildings.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down three Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

The ministry said two of the drones were shot down in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.  The third drone was destroyed in the Kaluga region, located southwest of Moscow.

Ukraine has conducted daily drone attacks targeting Russian territory during the past week, with Russia reporting it shot down the aircraft or brought them down by way of electronic jamming.  In some cases, falling debris has caused damage on the ground, including crashing into a building in Moscow.

Russia has used Iranian-made drones through much of its invasion of Ukraine, while also using missiles in aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  
…

Mykola and Natalia Navrotsky are from the small town of Dymer, about 48 kilometers from Kyiv. They last saw their son, Oleksandr, in March 2022, when the 33-year-old man tried to lead his family out of the then Russian-occupied region.

“Our son was taken by the military of the Russian Federation at the Dymer checkpoint when he was driving his wife and son from the village of Havrylivka to Hlibivka. They found something in the phone and detained him. His wife and son were released, they came home at night in freezing cold,” the Navrotskys said.

Dymer and neighboring towns in the Kyiv region had come under Russian occupation on Feb. 26, 2022. Roadblocks, arbitrary arrests and the torture of civilian prisoners quickly followed, according to the locals and Ukrainian officials.

“They took him away on March 8, 2022, they were severely beating him, they tortured him, then they took him to Hostomel,” Mykola and Natalia Navrotsky said in an interview, relating what they had learned from a neighbor who also was arbitrarily detained in the same prison until the Russian forces retreated.

According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), made up of Ukrainian journalists who investigate alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Russian forces created two prisons in Dymer, a town of about 7,000 people. In just more than a month of occupation, about 500 prisoners went through those prisons and about 50 of them are still in Russian captivity.

Navrotsky was kept at an industrial facility in Dymer until the retreating Russian forces transported him to Belarus, and finally to Russia, his parents said, based on information Ukrainian military prisoners of war who met their son in the prison in Russia.

“He is still in captivity. At the moment, we don’t know anything about his condition, what happened to him, or how and when he will return home — we don’t know anything at all,” the Navrotskys said.

Their son was able to send a note to them through the Red Cross last year.

“We know about his whereabouts as of August 29 [2022] — there was a note written almost a year ago, in April: ‘Hello. I am alive and well, everything is fine,'” the Navrotskys told VOA. They assume he hasn’t been moved since he wrote the note.

Several other residents of Dymer, whose relatives disappeared during the Russian occupation, told VOA similar stories.

Russian intimidation

About 25,000 civilians, like Navrotsky, have been taken from the occupied territories of Ukraine, according to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament commissioner for human rights.

“These are civilian hostages, citizens of Ukraine, who were arrested by the Russian Federation and kept in captivity with no legal grounds. And more continue being detained en masse,” Lubinets said.

He said the arbitrary arrests and torture of civilians started during the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, “and all this continues.”

He said this is a “systemic pressure on the population” intended to intimidate Ukrainians and suppress the will to resist.

“This is their preventive work against everyone who may pose any danger to the Russian occupation authorities — former law enforcement officers, pro-Ukrainian people, former volunteers,” the Ukrainian ombudsman said.

Russian authorities do not comment on the detention of Ukrainian civilians. Russia does not differentiate between civilians and prisoners of war. Both are considered by the Russian authorities as those who were “detained for counteracting the SVO,” or special military operation, according to Ukrainian human rights lawyers interviewed by the BBC.

Russia rarely replies to queries from attorneys but  Russian human rights lawyer Alexei Ladukhin did receive one while working for the family of another Ukrainian detained by the Russian occupying forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry told Ladukhin in a letter that information about “persons detained for countering a special military operation” is classified and cannot be shared with third parties.

The letter was signed by Major General Vitaly Kokh, the deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Military Police of the Ministry of Defense.

Widespread torture

The Navrotskys say their son was beaten by the Russian soldiers so badly that the soldiers had to seek medical aid for him when he was still in Ukraine. His parents learned of this, as they have much of what happened to him, from one of the prisoners who was freed by the Russian soldiers.

The former prisoner said the Russians kept them in the dark, blindfolded to prevent them from finding out who was around them and where they were being taken.

Numerous former civilian prisoners, including some who spoke to VOA, said that people are kept without food and water in the Russian prisons and that torture is widespread, including with electric current.

A United Nations report published in June says civilians were often detained during so-called filtration procedures in the occupied territories because of their perceived support for Ukraine.

“We documented 864 individual cases of arbitrary detention by the Russian Federation, many of which also amounted to enforced disappearances,” Matilda Bogner, head of the U.N. Monitoring Mission, told journalists in Geneva while presenting the report.

The report documented 77 executions of civilian prisoners and one death due to torture.

According to documents obtained by The Associated Press dating from January, Russia plans to build 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centers in occupied Ukraine by 2026 in addition to at least 40 detention facilities in Russia and Belarus, and 63 makeshift and formal ones in occupied Ukrainian territory.

Civilian exchanges

Desperate relatives are trying their best to attract the attention of authorities and international organizations to help get their loved ones returned from captivity.

“We appealed to all authorities, wherever we could, we went on a peaceful rally, we went on a peaceful march to attract the attention of society, the world community, to help bring our relatives back home, all those who are in captivity,” the Navrotskys said.

Lubinets said exchanges of prisoners do take place. They started after Russia first occupied Ukrainian territory in 2014 and continued until February 2022.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as of the beginning of June 2023, Ukraine has gotten back about 2,500 of its citizens from Russian captivity, including about 400 children and 150 civilians.

He explained that was it is difficult to negotiate the return of civilians because “you exchange military personnel for military personnel. … We do not have very many [Russian] civilians that we can exchange for civilians.”

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service. 
…

China and Russia used the second day of the BRICS Summit of emerging economies to criticize the West, while also throwing their support behind the proposed expansion of what’s seen by some as an alternative power bloc.

The leaders of Brazil, India, and China are all in South Africa — which is hosting the event — while Russian President Vladimir Putin is participating virtually to avoid arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant over war crimes in Ukraine.

Via video link, Putin — who ordered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year — said the West’s actions had led to that conflict by trying to “promote their hegemony,” “exceptionalism,” and policies of “neo-colonialism.” 

“Our actions in Ukraine are guided by only one thing, to put an end to the war that was unleashed by the West,” said Putin, speaking through a translator. 

Meanwhile, the leaders of Brazil and South Africa stressed the need for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine war — though there were no words of criticism for Moscow. 

For his part, Chinese leader Xi Jinping noted the world was undergoing major shifts and had entered a new period of “turbulence and transformation.” He blamed countries that form “exclusive blocs” for the problems. 

“The cold war mentality is still haunting our world and the geopolitical situation is getting tense,” he said through a translator. 

Xi had baffled China-watchers the day before by failing to turn up when the leaders each made a first-day address, instead sending his commerce minister to fill in for him. 

Paul Nantulya, a researcher at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said one could only speculate. 

“What I think is happening is there are some headwinds back home in China …which are upsetting the domestic dynamic, and I think something must have erupted that required the president’s attention,” he said. 

In other developments, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw his support behind the group expanding, after reports India was only lukewarm about the idea. 

High on the agenda of this summit is possible expansion of the BRICS group — with Argentina, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia among the countries that have applied to join. 

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also expressed support for expansion. However, he said BRICS must not aim to rival the U.S., and Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, also stressed BRICS was not in opposition to anyone. 

“While firmly committed to advance the interests of the Global South, BRICS stands ready to collaborate with all countries that aspire to create a more inclusive international order,” he said. 

Another theme of the summit is de-dollarization and a move towards greater use of the BRICS currencies. Xi said he would like to see reform of the international financial system. 

The summit concludes Thursday, with a final statement from the group expected. 

 
…