Russia Ukraine war latest news Putin at risk of ‘revolution’ after Belgorod raid, Wagner chief claims

Russia said on Thursday it would shut Sweden’s consulate in St Petersburg and its own mission in Sweden’s second-biggest city Gothenburg, and expelled five Swedish diplomats in a tit-for-tat move after Stockholm expelled five Russians last month.

Stockholm said last month it had expelled the diplomats over espionage concerns. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the expulsions an “openly hostile step”.

It said it had withdrawn its consent for the Swedish consulate in St Petersburg from September.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said in a statement the news was “very regrettable” and “further confirmation of the negative political development in Russia and the country’s international isolation”.

“Russia has chosen to expel Swedish diplomats who acted within the framework of the Vienna Convention and conducted customary diplomatic activities in Russia. We also deeply regret the Russian announcement about the Consulate General in St Petersburg,” he said.

Relations between the two countries have worsened since Sweden last year announced its intention to join NATO following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian statement said ties had “reached an unprecedented low”.

Russia and Belarus signed a deal on Thursday to formalise the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear missiles on Belarusian territory, a step Moscow said was driven by rising tensions with the West.

“In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” TASS news agency quoted Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

The deployment of the missiles was first announced by President Vladimir Putin in March. Since invading Ukraine last year, Putin has said repeatedly that Russia would be ready to use nuclear weapons if needed to defend its “territorial integrity”.

NATO said at the time it did not see any need to adjust its own nuclear posture, though it said Putin’s nuclear rhetoric was “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Ukraine said Russia‘s ally Belarus had been “taken hostage” by Moscow.

Moscow will retain control over the weapons and any decisions on their use, Shoigu said.

TASS quoted him as saying that Iskander-M missiles, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, had been handed to the Belarusian armed forces, and some Su-25 aircraft had been converted for the possible use of nuclear weapons.

“Belarusian servicemen have received the necessary training in Russian training centres,” Shoigu was quoted as saying.

He added that the agreements signed with his Belarusian counterpart covered the procedure for establishing a “special storage facility for nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.”

Tactical nuclear weapons refer to lower-yield weapons designed for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic ones capable of wiping out entire cities. Russia has not disclosed how many tactical nuclear weapons it has.

Russia‘s Wagner mercenary group has started withdrawing its forces from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and transferring its positions there to regular Russian troops, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published on Thursday.

“We are withdrawing the units from Bakhmut. From today at five in the morning, May 25 until June 1, most of the units will rebase to camps in the rear. We are handing our positions to the military,” he said.

The video was posted on Telegram by his press service, and showed Prigozhin dressed in battle gear and standing beside a war-damaged residential block.

Prigozhin announced the capture of Bakhmut on Saturday after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

In the latest video Prigozhin, who has repeatedly voiced public criticism of senior Russian defence officials, said his forces would be ready to return to Bakhmut if the regular army was unable to manage the situation.

A senior Ukrainian presidential aide said on Thursday that Ukraine had nothing to do with a “strange and pointless” drone attack on the Kremlin and played down the findings of two U.S. media reports.

The New York Times reported that assessments by U.S. spy agencies showed that a drone attack on the Kremlin this month was probably orchestrated by one of Ukraine‘s special military or intelligence units. Moscow blames the attack on Ukraine.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, told Reuters in a statement that Russia was trying to reduce arms supplies to Kyiv by playing on Western fears of a possible escalation because of alleged Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday that the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus was driven by rising tensions with the West.

“In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” TASS news agency quoted him as saying.

The defence ministers of Russia and Belarus on Thursday signed a document on the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.

Separately, Russian media reported that Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said that the West was waging an “undeclared war” against Russia and Belarus.

Russia and Belarus, which are close allies over the conflict in Ukraine, agreed earlier this year to deploy part of Moscow’s tactical nuclear arsenal in Belarus.

Claim and counter-claim are flying between Moscow and Kyiv over the eastern city, writes Kim Sengupta. But there is one undisputed fact – the massive death toll and pain felt by those who have called it home.

Vladimir Putin declared victory in Bakhmut at the weekend, but Volodymyr Zelensky denied that the city has fallen and claimed that Ukrainians were in the process of encircling the enemy. The longest and bloodiest battle of this war continues with its lethal toll.

Around 70,000 people lived in this small city in Donbas before the Russian invasion 15 months ago. More than 100,000 have been killed and injured since then in the struggle for control which has been going on for 10 months, with entire neighbourhoods razed to the ground.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenary group has played a prominent role in the Bakhmut assault, announced that he will hand the city to the Russian military next week. Kyiv’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, has insisted he will be in no position to do so. The fierce struggle continues with Ukraine poised to seize “dominant heights on the flanks,” she has said.

The savage battle – yielding a daily supply of corpses – has led to international headlines of “Bakhmut Meat Grinder” and “Bakhmut Bloodbath” with both sides feeding soldiers and weapons into what has become one of the most totemic frontlines in this conflict. What has unfolded, according to both Ukrainian and Western officials, is like the Somme or Stalingrad.

The head of the Wagner mercenary group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has launched a scathing new attack on Vladimir Putin‘s invasion strategy, claiming that Russia could face a revolution similar to 1917 and lose the war in Ukraine unless changes are made by Kremlin leadership.

The Wagner chief, who was once a close ally of the Russian president, said Moscow’s invasion has seen Ukraine amass “one of the world’s strongest armies” with Western support.

“We made Ukraine a nation, known to everyone around the globe,” he said in an interview with prominent Russian pro-war blogger Konstantin Dolgov. “They are like Greeks at their peak, or Romans.”

Mr Prigozhin said Ukraine now has more tanks and more troops than it did at the start of the war. “We militarised it up to the brim,” he said.

Russia‘s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday it had detained two Ukrainian saboteurs who were plotting to blow up the power pylons of nuclear power stations in Russia, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

One of Ukraine’s special military or intelligence units was likely behind the dramatic drone attack on the Kremlin seen earlier this month, assessments by US spy agencies show.

The attack, which appears to be part of a series of covert operations, made officials in Washington uncomfortable, reported the New York Times.

The US assessment was based on intercepted Russian and Ukrainian communications, the paper said.

Officials in the US intercepted Ukrainian conversations in which officials said they believed their country was responsible for the attack and also intercepted Russian communications which indicated it was not some sort of false-flag operation by Russia, the report added.

It added that the US does not believe Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky signs off all covert operations and the extent of his awareness on such operations in advance remains unclear, the officials said.

While the Kremlin squarely blamed Ukraine for the attack and called it an attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, it also accused the US of being behind the incident.

Mr Zelensky swiftly denied Ukraine’s involvement, saying that the war-hit nation only carries out defensive operations on its own soil, and Washington dismissed Russia’s allegations as ridiculous.