July 15, 2023 Russia-Ukraine war news

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. You can read more about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine here, or scroll through the updates below.

Russian missiles have struck the city center of Kharkiv in the early hours of Sunday, according to the city’s mayor Ihor Terekhov.

One of the strikes was recorded in the Shevchenkivskyi district and did not cause any damage, Terekhov said.

Located in northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv is the country’s second-largest city and municipality and was considered a major target for the Russian military early in the invasion.

While admitting Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “slow” — with neither side making substantial advances on the ground — Kyiv said Western partners remain committed to its success on the heels of the NATO summit this week.

Meanwhile, the deadline to renew the Black Sea grain deal is fast approaching, with Russia signaling its reluctance to join again. The deal, which is viewed as vital to global food security, is set to expire on Monday.

Here are the latest developments:

On the battlefield: Russia is “investing everything” to stop Ukrainian forces on the southern and eastern front lines, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It’s difficult to measure which side currently holds the upper hand in the absence of significant territorial gains by either, according to one analyst.

A Ukrainian commander in the south, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, said that his troops were putting the pressure on Moscow’s forces and destroying equipment. In the east, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said Kyiv’s forces are storming the positions of Russian troops near Bakhmut. And a bit further north, Russia seems to be renewing firepower between the towns of Lyman and Kupyansk.

Patience will pay off, in Kyiv’s view: Senior Ukrainian officials and generals alike continue to describe tough fighting and limited progress as they look to drive Russian forces out of the country and turn the tide of the war.

Speaking to journalists Friday in Kyiv following his attendance at the NATO summit, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, admitted the counteroffensive — seen as being underway since the start of June — was “hard work.”

Asked by CNN if Ukraine’s Western allies were looking for quick results, Yermak said there was no such pressure from partner countries.

Grain deal deadline looms: Russian President Vladimir Putin has?threatened to let the Black Sea grain deal expire?Monday if his demands are not met. According to the Kremlin, Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa talked by phone about the initiative on Saturday. Experts say prices would rise if the grain deal is not renewed.

South Korean president meets with Zelensky: South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart. Yoon visited the site of the massacre in Bucha near Kyiv and pledged to increase assistance to Ukraine to?$150 million?this year. South?Korea?has repeatedly maintained its stance not to supply lethal weapons to?Ukraine?since Russia’s invasion.

Wagner fighters in Belarus: Members of the private military group are in neighboring Belarus, according to Andrii Demchenko, a spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. On Friday, the Belarusian defense ministry announced that Wagner fighters are training Belarusian troops near the town of Osipovichi, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the capital Minsk. After the group’s short-lived rebellion in Russia about three weeks ago, Belarusian leader?Alexander Lukashenko?had asked fighters from Wagner to come to his country to train members of the Belarusian military.

Could Ukraine be getting ATACMS next?: Presidential aide Yermak told journalists in Kyiv he believed the Biden administration was “very close” to making a decision on approving the transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to its arsenal of weapons. But Yermak stressed that a final decision had not yet been made.

Ukrainian leaders have had ATACMs close to the top of their wish list since the early months of the war.?The US-manufactured guided missile has a range of up to 300 kilometers (about 186 miles).

Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is, by its own accounts, a grueling slog.

Recaptured territory has not come easily in areas of southern and eastern Ukraine where Russia has created multi-layered defenses and heavily mined the land.

As has been the case for months, some of the fiercest fighting is centered on the eastern city of Bakhmut. The Russian private military group Wagner claimed it captured the city and handed it over to Moscow’s troops back in May, but in the time since, Ukraine has consistently reported modest gains in areas immediately surrounding Bakhmut.

Meanwhile, one of Kyiv’s most important strategic priorities can be found on the southern front. Analysts view reclaiming Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region as critical to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, because it could break Russia’s land bridge between annexed Crimea and the eastern Donetsk region — effectively separating the route between the territory Russia seized in 2014 and its new incursions in eastern Ukraine.

The map below shows the latest state of control for both militaries:

This week’s NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius provided a valuable reminder that during a war, the battle for communications is as important as anything happening on the ground.

On its own terms, the summit was a success: The main goals in Vilnius were to?reach an agreement that Sweden?could?join?the?security?alliance – which Turkey had blocked – and to strengthen support for Ukraine.

But officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels have expressed some frustrations that much of the coverage focused on the specific and thorny issue of Ukraine joining the alliance.

US President Joe Biden’s timing of saying that Ukraine could not be admitted to NATO while war was raging on its territory — and then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s blistering tweet criticizing NATO as “absurd” for not offering a clearer path to membership — gave Russia room to call the summit a failure.

One example: Sputnik, the Russian state-owned news agency, was able to publish a story headlined “NATO Summit Exposes Fractures in Alliance Over Support for Ukraine.” The article contains a quote from an analyst stating that “the decision by the USA to quietly pull the plug on the Ukrainians is only natural and certainly not ‘absurd.’ The game is up.”

Given the millions of dollars the US and its allies have provided to Ukraine since the start of the war and the commitment to send even more money and arms, this is a dubious claim.?But Biden’s comments, combined with Zelensky’s public anger, provided space for the claim to be made.

A senior NATO official told CNN that Biden’s comments were “not helpful” at a time when the bloc is in a “comms war” with Russia.

A Western diplomat also told CNN that NATO desperately needs to “fix and double down on a communication strategy to explain all the good things we are doing.” The fear?of?this diplomat, and?of?others?who spoke with?CNN, is that NATO “cannot win the communication war on membership that Russia wants to turn this into. There isn’t anything feasibly more we could have done on Ukraine’s membership at this time.”

This might feel like nitpicking over things that are trivial while a nation is under invasion. But Russia has historically been better than the West at spinning events to fit a narrative. These information wars are not just for the benefit of Russian audiences at home, but for people who live in NATO territories who might be susceptible to misinformation.

Read the full analysis here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa talked by phone Saturday about?the soon-expiring deal that allows grain to be exported from Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea.

While global food supplies are not as tight as they were last year, traders say prices would rise if the Black Sea grain deal is not renewed — and Putin has threatened to let the deal expire Monday if his demands are not met.

Though Russia has renewed the deal three times, it has repeatedly complained that a separate agreement with the United Nations to facilitate shipments of Russian fertilizers and grain, which was brokered as part of the package last July, has not yielded results.

United Nations Secretary-General António?Guterres?sent a letter to Putin this week outlining a proposal to keep the deal alive and seeking to address another key demand from Moscow — access to some of the international financial mechanisms that sanctions have cut it off from.

More background: The Black Sea grain deal was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022 after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and blockaded its ports, sparking fears of a global famine. Proponents say it was vital to addressing world hunger, as Ukraine is one of the world’s leading grain exporters.

Summit approaches: Putin and Ramaphosa also agreed to hold a separate meeting at the upcoming BRICS summit — a meeting of leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — for more discussion of the countries’ direct relations and international priorities, the statement said.

The BRICS summit is scheduled for August 22-24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, but the Kremlin has yet to confirm whether Putin will attend in person.

CNN’s Sophie Tanno and Tim Lister contributed to this report.

Residents walk by a school that was damaged by Russian shelling in Kamyshevakha, Ukraine, on July 2.

Along the southern front — seen as perhaps Ukraine’s main strategic priority, with the aim of breaking Russia’s land bridge to Crimea by punching through to the Sea of Azov — reports continue to suggest Ukrainian and Russian forces involved in very heavy fighting.?

Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation that is operating on a large section of the southern Ukraine front, told Ukrainian television Saturday morning his soldiers were “systematically driving the enemy from their positions.”??

He listed 33 pieces of Russian equipment destroyed in the latest Ukrainian attacks, including armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces and an anti-aircraft missile system, among others. Those encouraging words, from Ukraine’s perspective, are yet to translate into long lists of liberated towns and villages, however.?

Russian military blogger Rybar also claimed further Ukrainian pressure on Russian positions near the Zaporizhzhia region village of Robotyne, which is south of Orikhiv in an area that has seen small gains by Ukrainian forces over the last week.

Which side has the advantage? Analyst Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, says it is difficult to measure which side currently holds the upper hand in the absence of significant territorial gains by either.

“Both sides are taking attrition right now … but it is not clear which side can sustain it better,” he told the Geopolitics Decanted podcast.?

One part of Ukraine’s current campaign that does seem to be achieving tangible results is strikes on targets behind front lines. These are aimed at disrupting and degrading Russian supply lines as well as targeting Russian command bases and soldiers’ barracks.

In his comments Saturday morning, Tarnavsky told Ukrainian TV viewers that nine Russian ammunition depots had been destroyed in the last day. He did not say where the depots were located, but it is likely they were a substantial distance from the front lines.???

Earlier this week, a senior Russian general was killed when a Ukrainian missile hit the base of Russia’s 58th?Combined Arms Army in the occupied port city of Berdiansk.?

A Ukrainian serviceman fires a self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on July 5.

Senior Ukrainian officials and generals alike continue to describe tough fighting and limited progress on the battlefield as they look to drive Russian forces out of the country and turn the tide of the war.

Just days after Ukraine’s key partners met at the NATO summit in Lithuania, pledging even deeper security ties — albeit without specifying any timetable for Ukraine’s potential membership in the alliance — Kyiv insists it does not feel under pressure to deliver quick results.?

Counteroffensive is “slow”: Speaking to journalists Friday in Kyiv following his attendance at the NATO summit, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, admitted the counteroffensive — seen as being underway since the start of June — was “hard work.”

Asked by CNN if Ukraine’s Western allies were looking for quick results, Yermak said there was no such pressure from partner countries. Instead, he said, they just ask: “What else do you need to expedite victory?”

Near Bakhmut: One of the more encouraging areas for Ukraine’s offensive appears to be around the battered city of Bakhmut in the east, though without any reports of significant breakthroughs.?

“The Bakhmut direction remains one where our defense forces have the initiative. Our defense forces are pushing the enemy on the southern and northern flanks, storming their positions,” military spokesperson Serhii Cherevatyi said on Ukrainian television Saturday, adding that “the enemy is putting up fierce resistance.”

Ukrainian soldiers reload shells near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on July 10.

Mapping by DeepStateMap.Live, which updates changes on the ground daily and is widely used by analysts, has suggested almost no shifts in the front line around the city for many days, even as Ukrainian forces continue efforts to regain villages like Klishchiivka to the southwest and Berhivka to the northwest, where fighting has raged for weeks.

Further to the north, in the roughly 100-kilometer (about 62-mile) stretch of land between the towns of Lyman and Kupyansk, Cherevatyi said Russian forces were “actively attacking.”

The area was held by Russia for almost six months last year before being recaptured in a Ukrainian offensive in October; in recent weeks, it has become a renewed focus of Russian firepower.

What Russian accounts say: According to Russian military bloggers, one of the areas where Moscow’s forces have been concentrating their efforts is around the village of Novoselivske in northeastern Ukraine.?On Telegram, the popular Rybar account described Russian advances through forested areas to the south of the village, as well as the digging of a new defensive line close to a nearby railway line.

It is not possible for CNN to immediately verify claims of territorial gains or losses by either side.?

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 15.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and first lady Olena Zelenska during a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, Zelensky said in a message on Twitter.?

“During this visit, the first in the history of our relations, we are discussing everything that is important for the normal and safe life of people, for the rules-based international order,” Zelensky said.?

They also discussed the deportation of Ukrainians to Russia, his 10-step peace formula and a global peace summit, food and energy security, and economic cooperation, according to the Ukrainian president.

“I am sure together we will give more strength to our nations and the global positions of Ukraine and the Republic of Korea,” Zelensky said.

South Korea has pledged to increase its assistance to Ukraine from?$100?million to?$150 million?this year,?the leaders announced at a news conference after their meeting. Zelensky said Seoul is sending Ukraine special-purpose vehicles and equipment, including machines for removing landmines.

South Korea will also continue helping with various recovery efforts, including the rebuilding of schools, hospitals, homes and businesses, the Ukrainian president said.

Earlier Saturday, Yoon visited Bucha — ?the town just north of Kyiv that has become synonymous with Russian atrocities and alleged war crimes — and met with Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.?

Kostin said they visited Bucha “to see the aftermath of Russia’s atrocious policy of targeting Ukrainian civilians.”

“In 33 days of occupation, Bucha has faced brutal war crimes, including torture, shooting civilians and evacuating vehicles, conflict-related sexual violence,” Kostin said. “The Kremlin regime must be held accountable for these atrocities and the most effective way to achieve this is through the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression.”?

Fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner have arrived in Belarus from Russia, a Ukrainian official said.

On Friday, the Belarusian defense ministry announced that Wagner fighters are training Belarusian troops near the town of Osipovichi, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the capital Minsk. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko had previously asked fighters from Wagner to come to his country to train members of the Belarusian military.

Lukashenko was responsible for brokering a deal between the Kremlin and Wagner that saw the mercenary group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, end a short-lived armed insurrection against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Now you see Wagner, now you don’t.

Weeks after?an armed uprising?by the Russian mercenary group Wagner revealed cracks in Russia’s system of one-man rule, the Kremlin has been on a PR offensive. The message is simple: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is firmly in control, now please move along.”

In an interview Thursday with the Russian business daily newspaper Kommersant, Putin described a three-hour meeting with Wagner commanders, including the group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, just days after the private military company (PMC) made its abortive march on Moscow last month.

Putin put a positive spin on the meeting, but made a curious admission.

“Wagner PMC does not exist,” Putin said when asked if Wagner would be kept on as a fighting unit. “We do not have a law for private military organizations. It simply does not exist.”

Putin, who is a trained lawyer, reiterated the point during the interview: “There is no such legal entity,” he said.

Technically, Putin is correct. Article 359 of Russia’s Criminal Code outlaws mercenary activity. The law states that “recruitment, training, financing or other material support of a mercenary, as well as their participation in an armed conflict or military operations” carries heavy criminal penalties.

Putin went on to explain in the interview that the State Duma — Russia’s parliament — should consider legislation to legalize PMCs, conceding, “It’s not an easy question.”

This legalistic answer, however, raises more questions than answers. If Wagner was technically an illegal entity all this time, who authorized its use? Who trained and equipped them? And who signed off on their budget?

The issue is about more than Putin’s cavalier approach to the rule of law. It also serves as a reminder that Putin is the pioneer of a post-truth world.

Read more about the rift between the Kremlin and Wagner here:

Related article Wagner 'does not exist': Why Putin claims a rift in the mercenary group | CNN

Yoon?Suk?Yeol, President of South Korea, attends a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 12, 2023.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, a senior aide for Yoon said in a statement.

Yoon visited the?site of the massacre at Bucha before heading to Irpin, a civilian residential area near the capital of Kyiv that has been subject to large-scale missile attacks, the statement said. Yoon also plans to lay a wreath at a?war memorial and then hold a meeting with Zelensky.

The visit comes after Yoon attended the NATO summit in Lithuania this week and traveled to Poland for an official visit.

What Seoul is giving Kyiv: South?Korea?has repeatedly maintained its stance not to supply lethal weapons to?Ukraine?since Russia’s invasion. However, Yoon’s government has provided non-lethal aid, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense told CNN on Monday.

A view of an explosion of a drone in the city during a Russian drone strike in?Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 13, 2023.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr?Zelensky?said Russia is applying its maximum efforts to stop Ukraine’s advance as Kyiv pushes ahead with its summer counteroffensive.

Despite Zelensky’s positive spin, Ukraine’s western allies have expressed concern that Ukraine’s forces have not been able to push Russian troops back at a quicker rate.

The front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine have not moved much over the past months, giving Russian troops plenty of time to dig in and prepare for a counteroffensive.

Russian strikes target Zaporizhzhia: The southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia saw several buildings damaged overnight Friday into Saturday as a result of Russian strikes, a local Ukrainian military official said.

The official added that one 62-year-old man was wounded.

As Zelensky alluded to in his comments, the south is a key focus of Ukraine’s campaign.

An early version of an Army Tactical Missile System is tested on December 14, 2021, at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

One of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s most senior aides has expressed optimism Kyiv might soon be adding Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) to its arsenal of weapons. The US-manufactured guided missile has a range of up to 300 kilometers (about 186 miles).

Andriy Yermak told journalists in Kyiv he believed the Biden administration was “very close” to making a decision on approving the transfer of the missiles to Ukraine, though he stressed that a final decision had not yet been made.

Ukrainian leaders have had ATACMs close to the top of their wish list since the early months of the war. The missiles’ longer range would bring more Russian targets into view, including some in occupied Crimea, as well as in Russia itself, a fact that has worried the US.

Key among the Russian targets Ukraine is looking to hit are ammunition dumps and fuel depots, as well as buildings housing Russian soldiers far behind the frontlines.

In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up these strikes in what are described as shaping operations, aimed at disrupting and degrading enemy supply lines ahead of ground offensives. Reports suggest Ukraine has begun to make effective use of Storm Shadow missiles, which were donated by the UK in May and have a range of about 250 kilometers (155 miles).

Yermak’s comments follow a report in The New York Times that described a “quiet debate” inside the Biden administration over whether to send the missiles to Ukraine, thereby reversing the US position that Ukraine does not need them.

Sergei Denisenko has been charged with the “premeditated murder” of Stanislav Rzhitsky and illegal arms trafficking, the?Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement Friday.

Denisenko, a Ukrainian citizen, was?detained earlier this week in connection with the murder of Rzhitsky, a former submarine commander in Russia’s Black Sea fleet.?Rzhitsky was killed early Monday morning as he was running through a park in Krasnodar.

Russia’s Investigative Committee previously posted a video showing the suspect, who they have now named as?Denisenko, being walked through the scene of the murder.?It is not clear whether Denisenko was under duress as he spoke at the scene, in a Krasnodar park.

International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during a UN Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters on July 13, in New York City.

South Africa should do “the right thing” and follow international law if Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the BRICS bloc summit in Johannesburg next month in person,?International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN on Friday.?

The term BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2001 to describe the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The BRIC bloc had its first summit in 2009 in Russia, and South Africa joined in 2010.

Some background: ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and?Russia’s?children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March over the war crime of unlawful deportation of children. Russia – like the US, Ukraine and China – is not a member of the ICC.

As the court?does not conduct trials in absentia, Putin would either have to be handed over by Moscow or arrested outside of Russia. Most countries on Earth – 123 of them – are parties to the treaty, and the ICC statute states that all state parties have the legal obligation to cooperate with the court. It means that they’re obliged to execute arrest warrants.

However, South Africa — the host for this year’s BRICS summit —?has issued diplomatic immunity to all officials attending a summit in August, meaning Putin might be able to travel to the country despite the ICC warrant for his arrest.

South?African officials insist that this is standard protocol and it may not override the ICC arrest warrant. South Africa has not received any confirmation as to whether Putin would attend the summit, according to Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s Minister for International Relations.

“South Africa has felt a crime against humanity for decades, the crime of apartheid, I don’t think they need lessons from me,” he said. “They are voluntarily a state party to the ICC, they know what the law is, and I think they would do the right thing. And we will assess what actually happens at the BRICS summit and respond accordingly,” Khan, the ICC prosecutor, told CNN.

“I am a prosecutor, I need to be prudent and prepared for different scenarios with the tools I have available,” he added. “South Africa, and I’ve said it before, and I mean it, is a respective state party. Whenever I look at South Africa, I recall the greatness of the great Mandela. And I think all South Africans will look to him, not to me, about what would the great Nelson Mandela do.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin?during the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow on July 13.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed to Wagner fighters that a senior mercenary named?Andrey Troshev now command the private military group, according to comments?the Russian leader made to the Kommersant newspaper that were published Friday.

Putin appears to have created a split between senior fighters from the mercenary group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose whereabouts are currently publicly unknown — at least in terms of the narrative emerging from his comments to Kommersant. The paper was reporting on a meeting held by the Russian president five days after Wagner’s short-lived rebellion collapsed at the end of June – a meeting also attended by Prigozhin and several dozen senior Wagner combatants.

Responding to a question from Kommersant, Putin said Wagner “does not exist” under Russian law, adding that the Russian government needs to determine how to handle the organization legally.

According to the paper, Putin outlined a number of options for the future of Wagner mercenaries, including continuing to fight under their direct commander, a man going by the call sign “Sedoy,” meaning “Gray Hair.”

So who is?“Gray Hair”??Sedoy is the call sign of?Andrey Troshev, a retired Russian colonel and a founding member and executive director of the Wagner Group, according to sanctions documents published by the European Union and France. He has also been sanctioned by Ukraine.

Troshev served as the group’s?chief of staff for its previous operations in Syria, according to EU sanctions from December?2021.

“He was particularly involved in the area of Deir ez-Zor,” sanctions documents state, referring to an eastern city where Wagner fighters have had direct encounters with the US military during the Syrian civil war. “As such, he provides a crucial contribution to (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad’s war effort and therefore supports and benefits from the Syrian regime.”

United Kingdom sanctions from June 2022 also identify Troshev as a chief executive with the private military group who “has repressed the civilian population in Syria.”?

Troshev is associated with top Wagner Group leaders, including founder?Dmitriy Utkin,?a former Russian GRU military intelligence officer, according to EU sanctions.

“Gray Hair” is a veteran of the wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan, for which he was awarded several medals, according to Russian media.?

Troshev was among those invited to a reception at the Kremlin in December 2016.?A photograph, believed to be from that 2016 reception, emerged in Russian media and shows Putin alongside?Troshev?and?Utkin, who are both wearing several medals.?

Troshev was born in April 1953 in?Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the former Soviet Union, according to sanctions documents.?

CNN’s Andrew Carey and Josh Pennington contributed reporting to this post.

The number of Russian military personnel in Belarus has greatly decreased, according to?the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine on Friday.?

Ukraine recorded around 2,000 Russian?military personnel stationed at Belarusian training grounds until recently, but at the moment “almost all Russian troops have been withdrawn from the territory of Belarus,” said spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine?Andrii Demchenko.

“However, we cannot rule out the possibility that in some time, as part of the rotation, regular units may be brought back to the territory of Belarus,”?Demchenko noted in a media briefing while emphasizing that the?situation on the border with Belarus “remains fully under control.”

Ukraine’s Border Guard Service also said they have not?observed “the organized deployment of Russian mercenaries” in?the territory of Belarus.

However, that comment follows the?Belarusian Defense Ministry announcing on Friday that Wagner private mercenary group fighters are training Belarusian fighters near the town of Osipovichi, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the capital Minsk.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said an alleged Russian saboteur has been given a 10-year prison sentence for a foiled plot to blow up transportation infrastructure in the western Ukrainian region of Rivne, according to a statement on Friday.?

The SBU said a Ukrainian court found the person guilty of “committing crimes against the state security of Ukraine.”?

According to the SBU, the unnamed saboteur was preparing to blow up two transport infrastructure facilities in the Rivne region when he was detained by security service officers carrying out a “multistage operation” in February.

Ukrainian investigators identified him as a former militant who fought against Ukraine’s?Anti-Terrorist Operation in eastern Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

The saboteur was?a member of “terrorist groups” and the Russian military intelligence apparatus before the war, according to the SBU statement.

After the war broke out, the saboteur allegedly took an “active part” in fighting against Ukrainian troops in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson before receiving “an assignment from a Russian GRU to covertly arrive in Rivne region to commit sabotage at transport infrastructure facilities.”