Russian Ukraine war latest: Putin ‘paralysed and unable to act’ as Wagner coup unfolded

Vladimir Putin was reportedly left “paralysed” when the Wagner coup began and no orders were given that day.

The mercenary group launched its short-lived mutiny on 24 June, driving its forces towards the Kremlin and preaching open rebellion against Russia’s military leadership – only to abandon its mission just hours later.

Now, security officials from Ukraine and other parts of Europe have spoken out, claiming the Russian president was unable to act when he first heard the news.

According to intelligence assessments shared with the Washington Post, Mr Putin got a warning from Russian security services that the leader of the Wagner Group Yevgeniy Prigozhin was possibly planning a rebellion, two or three days before it began.

A UK parliamentary report has suggested Russia’s economy is being kept afloat by “critical” gold-smuggling operations by the Wagner mercenary group led by its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The report by the foreign affairs committee said that Mr Prigozhin’s Wagner Group is smuggling “significant” quantities of the precious metal out of Sudan.

The private military company (PMC) has been simultaneously supporting Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group and its army forces since conflict erupted between the military factions in April, the committee said.

The panel has called on Wagner to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and said its activities in Sudan were “mainly” non-combat.

Britain has “underplayed and underestimated” the threat posed by the Russian Wagner mercenary group and should ban it as a terrorist organisation, a powerful committee of UK lawmakers have appealed.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the sanctions imposed by Britain on Wagner are “underwhelming” and UK authorities have done little to track the private army’s activities beyond Ukraine, where it has fought as part of Russia’s invading forces.

“There are serious national security threats to the UK and its allies of allowing the network to continue to thrive,” said the committee, whose members come from both governing and opposition parties.

It said Britain should “urgently proscribe the Wagner Network as a terrorist organisation,” something the Conservative government has so far been unwilling to do.

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Trevor Reed, a former US Marine freed from a Russian prison last year, was injured while fighting as an international volunteer in Ukraine, according to US officials.

A pair of defence sources told The Messenger that Mr Reed, who came back to the US in a high-profile prisoner swap in April 2022, stepped on a land mine in Ukraine and was not in the country acting on behalf of the US government in any way.

“Since the beginning of the war, we have warned that US citizens who travel to Ukraine, especially with the purpose of participating in fighting there, that they face significant risks, including the very real risk of capture or death,” one of the officials said.

Vladimir Putin was reportedly left “paralysed” when the Wagner coup began and no orders were given that day.

Now, security officials from Ukraine and other parts of Europe have spoken out, claiming the Russian president was unable to act when he first heard the news.

According to intelligence assessments shared with the Washington Post, Mr Putin got a warning from Russian security services that the leader of the Wagner Group Yevgeniy Prigozhin was possibly planning a rebellion, two or three days before it began.

European Union agriculture ministers met Tuesday to discuss ways of moving grain vital to global food security out of Ukraine after Russia halted a deal that allowed the exports. At the same time, they want to protect prices for farmers in countries bordering the war-ravaged nation.

The ministers met in Brussels for the first time since Russia pulled the plug last week on the wartime deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty.

The deal provided guarantees that ships would not be attacked when entering and leaving Ukrainian ports, while a separate agreement facilitated the movement of Russian food and fertilizer.

Tetiana Khlapova’s hand trembled as she recorded the wreckage of Odesa’s devastated Transfiguration Cathedral on her cellphone and cursed Russia, her native land.

Khlapova was raised in Ukraine and had always dreamed of living in the seaside city. But not as the war refugee that she has become.

In only a week, Russia has fired dozens of missiles and drones at the Odesa region. None struck quite as deeply as the one that destroyed the cathedral, which stands at the heart of the city’s romantic, notorious past and its deep roots in both Ukrainian and Russian culture.

“I am a refugee from Kharkiv. I endured that hell and came to sunny Odesa, the pearl, the heart of our Ukraine,” said Khlapova, who has lived in the country for 40 of her 50 years.

Her neck still has a shrapnel scar from the third day of the war, when her apartment was hit. On Day 4, she fled to Odesa.

The boss Unilever has insisted that the company chose the “least bad” option by staying in Russia days after the consumer goods giant admitted it would allow its Russian staff to fight in Ukraine if they were called up.

The business, which is behind dozens of brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, was earlier this month named as an “international sponsor of war” by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention.

On a call with reporters on Tuesday, chief executive Hein Schumacher said that Unilever was guided by two main principles in how it runs its Russia business.

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office on Tuesday declared independent TV channel Dozhd to be an undesirable organization, continuing the country’s wide crackdown on news media and groups regarded as threats to Russia’s security.

The designation outlaws Dozhd from operating in Russia and exposes its journalists, staff and donors to potential criminal charges.

Dozhd, which is often critical of the Kremlin, closed its operations in Russia soon after the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, moving first to Latvia and then to the Netherlands. The prosecutor-general’s office said Dozhd had spread extremist material and discredited authorities.