July 27, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private military company, has been spotted in St. Petersburg, meeting with an African dignitary on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa summit, according to accounts associated with the mercenary group.

CNN has been unable to identify the dignitary but he was wearing a lanyard that matched the ones being worn by other officials at the summit. The dignitary is part of the Central African Republic delegation to the Russia-Africa summit, the accounts say.

This is the first time Prigozhin has been seen in public inside Russia since he led an armed mutiny last month. Since the rebellion, Prigozhin had only been seen in public on July 19, when he seemingly appeared in in a video inside Belarus, apparently greeting Wagner fighters to a base in Asipovichy.  

The video was grainy and filmed in low light so CNN cannot definitively say the speaker is Prigozhin or when it was filmed, but CIA Director Bill Burns subsequently confirmed the Wagner founder was in Minsk.

Wagner has had a presence in the Central African Republic for several years now, as previously reported by CNN. 

CNN was able to geolocate the photograph of Prigozhin and the dignitary to the Trezzini Palace Hotel in St. Petersburg, where the Wagner founder has kept an office, according to Russian media. The hotel was one of the locations searched by Russian authorities on July 6, after he led a recently failed insurrection.

Delegations from Russia and China — North Korea’s key allies in the Korean War — gathered in Pyongyang this week to celebrate North Korea’s “Victory Day” in the war that ravaged the Korean Peninsula seven decades ago as they align over another very contemporary conflict – Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine.

At a state reception for Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian delegation, in a reference to the war in Ukraine, North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam expressed Pyongyang’s full support “for the just struggle of the Russian army and people to defend the sovereignty and security of the country,” according to a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

In remarks of his own, Shoigu then said the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has “become the strongest army in the world” and pledged continued cooperation to keep it that way.

Shoigu’s presence at "Victory Day" celebration is "particularly notable: a sign of just how close Pyongyang and Moscow have become since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year,” said Ankit Panda, Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But the gathering in Pyongyang illustrates a weakness too, said Blake Herzinger, a research fellow at the United States Studies Center in Australia. “It’s really representative of how short both China and Russia’s lists of friends are, and the willingness of both to show support for a rogue regime,” Herzinger said.

Read more about the meeting here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukrainian forces have suffered heavy losses during an intensified effort to break through Russian defenses in southern Ukraine.

Putin was speaking on the margins of the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg.

He said that in the last few days “we confirm that hostilities have intensified and in a significant way,” and that the main clashes took place in the Zaporizhzhia region.

His comments come as US officials tell CNN that Ukraine appears to be ramping up its counteroffensive and has committed additional resources in this area in recent days.

Putin said that “without any exaggeration, I can say that our soldiers and officers have demonstrated the best examples of mass heroism. The enemy used a large number of armored vehicles - this is 50 units. Of these, 39 units, including 26 tanks and 13 armored vehicles, were destroyed….The enemy was not successful in any of the areas of clashes. All counteroffensive attempts were stopped, and the enemy was driven back with heavy losses.”

Putin added: “Today they tried to pick up abandoned wrecked equipment, the wounded and the bodies of the dead, which they left yesterday on the battlefield…The enemy has very heavy losses of personnel — over 200 people. Unfortunately, we did not do without losses, but the difference is colossal, at times - more than ten times less than our enemy. “

Some key context: There has been little independent evidence of the state of the front lines in the south, but Russian military bloggers and official Ukrainian accounts suggest that Ukrainian forces have cut a path through at least one of the many minefields laid by the Russians and made modest territorial gains in the area of Robotyne, south of the town of Orikhiv.

After two months of painstakingly slow progress on the battlefield, Ukraine appears to be ramping up its counteroffensive, deploying extra troops to the southern front and signaling a new phase of the operation, US and Russian officials said.

Ukraine has committed more forces to the southeast of the country, a sign that Kyiv has identified potential weaknesses in Russian defensive lines, two US officials told CNN.

The Ukrainian military had been holding large numbers of trained troops, some equipped with more powerful Western weapons, back since the operation started in early June. While it still maintains some combat power in reserve, it has now deployed the “main bulk” of the forces committed to the counteroffensive forces, one of the US officials said.

The thrust appears to have brought some results. The counteroffensive has broken through some elements of Russian defensive lines in the southeast, the US official said, and the reserve units have come in to capitalize on the opportunity.

A Russian military official admitted that Ukraine forces have been able “to wedge in” three sections of Russia’s first line of defense in the Zaporizhzhia front line on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s military did not comment in detail on the situation in the area beyond saying its offensive operations along the southern front were “gradually advancing.”

Rogov went on to say Russian forces were using their full arsenal, including aviation strikes, to push back against the Ukrainian units carrying out the assault, which he claimed were Western-equipped and trained.

“The fighters of these brigades have been trained abroad, and the brigades themselves are equipped with Western military equipment, including Leopard tanks and Bradley [infantry fighting vehicles],” he wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s 47th Brigade, which is involved in the offensive, confirmed to CNN it was pushing ahead, saying: “Infantry is advancing. Artillery covers. Bradley crews destroy enemy infantry and their equipment.”

Read more here.

One of the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Tomoko Akane, who issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country's children's ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova, has been added to the Russian Interior Ministry's criminal wanted list. 

According to the database entry of the Ministry seen by CNN, Akane is "wanted under the article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation," although the specific article is not specified.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Lvova-Belova on March 17, accusing them of involvement in war crimes related to the illegal deportation of people, including children, and their transfer to Russia. In response, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case against ICC prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, as well as judges Rosario Salvatore Aitala, Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez, and Tomoko Akane.

The Russian authorities asserted that their actions are illegal due to the lack of valid grounds for bringing charges against the Russian president and Russia's children's ombudsman. Karim Khan and Rosario Aitala were charged and added to the wanted list in May, according to state news agency TASS.

More background: Moscow rejected the warrant when it was issued in March. Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs, said the court has “no meaning” for the country, “including from a “legal point of view.” Russia withdrew from the ICC treaty under a directive signed by Putin in 2016.

CNN's Rob Picheta and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed reporting to this post.

The Russia-Africa summit is underway in St. Petersburg, discussing topics ranging from food security to a “multipolar world order.” Yuri Ushakov, assistant for foreign affairs to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said ahead of the summit that all but five African states would be sending representatives, including 17 heads of state. 

That turnout, however, is far lower than the 45 heads of state who attended the last summit in 2019 – in a sign of unease among African leaders around aligning themselves too closely with Russia.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles south of St. Petersburg, Ukraine has sent more forces to its counteroffensive in its southern regions, drawing on units previously held in reserve. Two US officials said Ukraine has now deployed the "main bulk" of its forces committed to the counteroffensive.

Here are the latest developments:

Russia launched a missile attack overnight into Thursday on the port infrastructure of the southern region of Odesa, killing one person, Ukraine's Operational Command South said on Facebook. 

"Kalibr missiles were launched from a submarine in the waters of the Black Sea at a critically low altitude, which made detection difficult," the statement said.

"A civilian employee was killed when one of the administrative buildings of the port was hit," it said.

Production equipment in one of the cargo terminals was damaged, it added. 

Oleh Kiper, the head of the region's military administration, said on Thursday the employee who died was a security guard born in 1979. The guard building and two vehicles were also destroyed, he said.

In a separate update on Thursday, the Ukrainian Air Force said it had recorded two Kalibr missiles from a submarine in the Black Sea and eight Shahed-136/131 drones from the direction of Prymorsko-Akhtarsk. 

It said the Kalibr missiles were not intercepted, but all eight drones were destroyed by the Air Force in the Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropertovsk and Donetsk regions.

Ukrainian troops have made small gains along the Orikhiv-Melitopol axis of the southern front line, according to Kyiv officials.

“They had tactical successes, are entrenching themselves in the achieved frontiers and conducting reconnaissance on the areas of further actions," he added.

The Ukrainian claims come after reports of fierce clashes in the area emerged early on Wednesday, with Russian officials and military bloggers reporting a scale-up in operations by Kyiv, with dozens of armored vehicles deployed to the front.

What Russia says: On Thursday, the head of the press center for Russia’s Vostok forces said an attack “attack in the direction of Rabotino (Russian for Robotyne) was repulsed.”

“Army aviation strikes and artillery fire destroyed enemy tanks and infantry,” he said in a briefing posted on the Russian Ministry of Defense social media accounts.

Another official, the Russian-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, claimed Moscow’s forces had been able to hold their positions.

“Our units repulsed offensive attempts, breaking enemy units,” he wrote on Telegram.

Their claims differ from the accounts of some well-connected Russian military bloggers who reported some Ukrainian advances in the Zaporizhzhia region.

“In the Zaporozhye (Russian for Zaporizhzhia) direction, Ukrainian units, after massive shelling, managed to advance northeast of Rabotino (Russian for Robotyne),” one blogger, known as “War Gonzo” wrote. “Russian troops are now holding defenses on the northern and eastern outskirts of the village.”

Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said many African countries and Russia share the same “moral codes” and are ready to defend them, in remarks during a plenary session at the Economic and Humanitarian Forum in St. Petersburg on Thursday. 

“Over the last 10 years the world has changed beyond recognition. I am not talking only about political matters but about this dangerous moral climate which is being formed sometimes in aggressive manner by some Western countries,” he said, adding “the cult of freedom which is totally wrong and the annihilation of the traditional family.”

Patriarch Kirill said the mutual understanding of “the basics of the human life” and “moral codes” bring Russia and African countries closer together.