Both sides extend ceasefire agreement for 72 hours
RSF says army launches attacks
Army says RSF convoys destroyed
Saudi Arabia, UAE contact army's Burhan
Canada ends evacuations over 'dangerous conditions'
KHARTOUM, April 30 (Reuters) - Sudan's rival military forces accused each other of fresh violations of a ceasefire on Sunday as their deadly conflict rumbled on for a third week despite warnings of a slide towards civil war.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands wounded since a long-simmering power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into conflict on April 15.
Both sides said a formal ceasefire agreement which was due to expire at midnight would be extended for a further 72 hours, in a move the RSF said was "in response to international, regional and local calls".
The army said it hoped what it called the "rebels" would abide by the deal but it believed they had intended to keep up attacks. The parties have kept fighting through a series of ceasefires secured by mediators including the United States.
The situation in Khartoum, where the army has been battling RSF forces entrenched in residential areas, was relatively calm on Sunday morning, a Reuters journalist said, after heavy clashes were heard on Saturday evening near the city centre.
The army said on Sunday it had destroyed RSF convoys moving towards Khartoum from the west. The RSF said the army had used artillery and warplanes to attack its positions in a number of areas in Khartoum province.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
In an apparent bid to boost its forces, the army said on Saturday that the Central Reserve Police had begun to deploy in southern Khartoum and would be deployed gradually in other areas of the capital.
Sudan's police said that the force had been deployed to protect markets and property that had been subjected to looting. The RSF on Saturday warned it against becoming involved in fighting.
The force is a large and heavily armed division of Sudan's police force that has fighting experience from conflicts in the western region of Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains in southern Sudan.
In March 2022, the United States imposed sanctions on the reserve police force, accusing it of using excessive force against protesters who were demonstrating against a 2021 military coup.
'NO DIRECT NEGOTIATIONS'
The fighting in Khartoum has so far seen RSF forces fan out across the city as the army tries to target them largely by using air strikes from drones and fighter jets.
The conflict has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing across Sudan's borders and prompted warnings the country could disintegrate, destabilising a volatile region and prompting foreign governments to scramble to evacuate their nationals.
The United States has sent a navy ship to take its citizens, two U.S. officials said, as Britain announced it had arranged an extra evacuation flight from Port Sudan on the eastern Red Sea coast on Monday.
Nearly 1,000 Americans have been evacuated since the violence began, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement, adding that a government convoy arrived in Port Sudan to take U.S. citizens and other eligible people to Saudi Arabia for further transit assistance.
But, underlining the extent of the instability, Canada said it was ending its evacuation flights because of "dangerous conditions".
The prospects for negotiations have appeared bleak.
"There are no direct negotiations, there are preparations for talks," U.N. special representative in Sudan, Volker Perthes, told journalists in Port Sudan, adding that regional and international countries were working with the two sides. Perthes told Reuters on Saturday the sides were more open to negotiations than before.
Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said he would never sit down with RSF chief General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who in turn said he would talk only after the army ceased hostilities.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, whose government has played a part in mediating the ceasefires, met Burhan envoy Daffalla Al-Haj Ali in Riyad and called for calm, the Saudi foreign ministry said.
Adding to the diplomatic pressure, United Arab Emirates' Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed had phoned Burhan, state news agency WAM reported.
AID
With the United Nations reporting only 16% of health facilities in Khartoum operating as normal, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivered 8 tonnes of medical aid.
But while approval had been given for the supplies to go to Khartoum, negotiations were ongoing with the sides to facilitate delivery within the city, where hospitals, convoys and ambulances have been attacked, he said.
U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Sunday that he is traveling to the region to "explore how we can bring immediate relief to the millions of people whose lives have turned upside down overnight."
He urged safe passage for civilians fleeing hostilities and for combatants to stop using medical personnel, transport and facilities "as shields."
At least five aid workers have been killed in the fighting.
A third of Sudan's 46 million people needed humanitarian aid before the fighting began.
The conflict has derailed an internationally backed political transition aimed at establishing democratic government in Sudan, where former autocratic President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was toppled in 2019 after three decades in power.
At least 528 people have been killed and 4,599 wounded, the health ministry said. The United Nations has reported a similar number of dead but believes the real toll is much higher.
Reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz and Eltayeb Siddig in Sudan; Aidan Lewis, Nafisa Eltahir and Hatem Maher in Cairo Writing by Tom Perry Editing by Frances Kerry
Mark Galeotti's "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine."Osprey Publishing
Most countries' special forces emphasize physical fitness, determination and aggression.
Russia's Spetsnaz are certainly no exception, although apparently they are not necessarily quite as dedicated to overt displays of machismo as the VDV, for whom any open day seems incomplete without paratroopers breaking wooden beams with their heads or throwing a sharpened sapyorka — the Russians' distinctive short-handled entrenching tool — while leaping through a ring of fire.
As one Spetsnaz veteran once told me, "precision and silence beats strength and courage, any day." When he was asked why he seemed to be disparaging courage, he paused, and said that the Spetsnaz were more concerned with determination: "courage is the willingness to die trying to reach the objective; determination is the will to find a way to get there, without dying."
Much is written and claimed about the Spetsnaz. Rather less is known for sure, despite what is now quite an industry in Russian-language books on them, from memoirs to survival skills guides. Apart from the fact that much is historical, and some purely fantastical, it often misses the point about quite who the Spetsnaz are and, more to the point, what they are meant to do.
The mythology around the Spetsnaz is thus as often misleading as it is extensive. In the West, much of this dates back to the writings of the Soviet defector Vladimir Rezun, who wrote a series of supposed exposés under the pseudonym "Viktor Suvorov." When it came to the Spetsnaz, which he portrayed as an implacable and uniformly lethal threat to NATO, he was full of engaging detail: they tested their unarmed combat skills on convicted criminals, whom they would kill; they had boots with reversed tread so their footprints would appear to lead the wrong way; they used a knife with a powerful spring that would shoot its blade at an enemy. Much has since been debunked as either not quite right (they did, for example, sometimes use the NRS-2 "shooting scout knife" which didn't launch its blade, but did incorporate a single- shot gun in the hilt) or downright wrong, but nonetheless, the image of the remorseless Soviet Terminators proved to have an awful appeal.
Special people, for special tasks
Members of the Russian military's 16th Separate Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in 2018.Yevgeny Polovodov/Russian Defense Ministry/Mil.ru
The evolution of Russia's special forces has been shaped by an emphasis on mass war and the primacy of strategy coming from the top of the system over individual prowess by the men at the base. Their name is a contraction of Spetsialnoye Naznacheniya, "of special designation" or "of special purpose." This is quite a significant detail: they are not "special forces" as such in the Western sense, which places the emphasis on the "specialness" of the operators themselves. Instead, what is distinctive is the special role which is assigned to these troops. After all, until recently, many or even most Spetsnaz have been conscripts, and while "more special" than regular soldiers, even paratroopers and the like, they can hardly be considered in the same elevated terms as the Western elite forces with which they were often misleadingly compared, such as Britain's SAS or America's Seals and Green Berets.
A further source of confusion is the way all sorts of other units are also formally or informally known as Spetsnaz, from the genuinely elite anti-terrorist commandos of the FSB's Special Designation Centre (TsSN: Tsentr Spetsialnovo Naznacheniya) to the not-quite-so-formidable rapid response units of the Federal Forestry Agency. Of the more serious, the Foreign Intelligence Service's Zaslon ("Screen") is primarily tasked with protecting VIPs and diplomatic facilities in high-risk environments, but also with covert operations overseas. Then there are forces that overlap much more closely with the military Spetsnaz. The National Guard Interior Troops Spetsnaz include the Moscow-based 33rd Special Purpose Detachment "Peresvet" as well as a series of local Special Rapid Response Detachments (SOBR: Spetsialny Otryad Bystrovo Reagirovaniya) that largely provide armed response to the police, but were, like the Interior Troops, also deployed in Chechnya and Ukraine. In Syria, we know operators from the FSB's TsSN were deployed because four men killed by a mine during an ambush near Latakia in February 2020 turned out to be from its Directorates S (its main counter-terrorist unit) and K (responsible for operations in the North Caucasus). They had been scouting a potential meeting area for Turkish and Syrian military leaders. Operators from the National Guard and Zaslon have also served in Syria, while in February 2020, the Ukrainian government released video footage of TsSN operators in the Donbas.
The main role of the Spetsnaz is as scouts and saboteurs, though, deployed for battlefield reconnaissance and also behind-the-lines operations against enemy chains of command and lines of supply and, in particular, NATO tactical nuclear weapons. After all, the modern Spetsnaz are really products of the Cold War, (re)created in 1957 within the GRU as battalion-strength units able to range behind NATO lines to locate and, ideally, destroy weapons such as the Matador intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Matador had a maximum range of 700 miles, but as new systems were introduced, the Spetsnaz mission grew, and so did the distance they were expected to penetrate into Europe. In 1962 the five battalions became six brigades, and in 1968 they began to acquire their own specialized training facilities.
As Moscow's imperial ambitions became more expansive, it also needed forces able to project power globally and also surgically respond to troubles within the existing "empire." Spetsnaz trained elite forces in Cuba, protected Soviet shipping from South African saboteurs in Angola and played crucial roles in the suppression of the rising against the puppet regime in Hungary in 1956 and the liberal "Prague Spring" in 1968. In Afghanistan in 1979, they not only led the initial coup de main that removed existing leader Hafizullah Amin and installed a new regime, but they then raided rebel supply caravans, hunted US-supplied Stinger SAMs, guarded visiting VIPs, and sometimes simply ended up pressed into service as infantry. Even so, being better than most of the Soviet army's miserable and recalcitrant conscript forces did not make most of them truly special, special forces. It was precisely a need for such elite operators that forced the Soviets to start standing up ad hoc units drawn from KGB sabotage specialists (who formed Zenit, the unit that led the mission to assassinate Amin), and then increasingly create informal elements within the Spetsnaz comprising only professional NCOs and officers who could be tasked with especially difficult missions.
This was again the case in the 1990s, when the Spetsnaz were once more (mis)used as infantry in Chechnya. For some missions, scratch teams of professional soldiers were created for particular operations. Nonetheless, it was getting harder to recruit and retain good soldiers. While some units managed to retain a degree of their old esprit de corps, others responded to the years of low wages, broken promises and corrupt hierarchies with a slide into criminality and indiscipline, as journalist Dmitry Kholodov discovered to his cost when he investigated claims that they were moonlighting in the mafia (see Chapter 3). They bounced back relatively quickly under Putin, though, and have also benefited especially from the new drive to recruit kontraktniki. As of 2020, only some 20% were conscripts, and not only is this proportion continuing to decline, but those draftees are absolutely the pick of the crop, typically young athletes and graduates of school-age military skills training programmes (and fully half enlist as volunteers at the end of their compulsory term).
Tip of the spear
Members of Russia's 2nd Separate Special Purpose Brigade, a Spetsnaz GRU brigade, during an exercise.Konstantin Morozov/Russian Ministry of Defense/Mil.ru
The Spetsnaz traditionally filled a gap between regular military reconnaissance forces and the intelligence-gathering assets and units of the intelligence and security agencies. Their sabotage mission, though, has expanded in the modern world of "active measures" and "political warfare," and they have acquired a much wider role as the Kremlin's politico-military instrument of choice. The Kremlin sees in the Spetsnaz a flexible (and even sometimes deniable) weapon, which it can use as easily to fight guerrillas here as to support an insurgency there, the tip of the spear in its new adventures. They fought in Georgia; in Crimea, they led the operation; in the Donbas they provided crucial special capacities to the insurgents; in Syria, they likewise helped ensure Russian airpower hit its targets. In the scrappy, messy security environment of the 21st century, a hundred well-trained Spetsnaz can prove more usable and effective than a whole armoured brigade.
There are some 17,000 Spetsnaz and they thus fill a role similar to, if more covert than, those of the VDV and MP (and it is worth remembering that the paratroopers have their own Spetsnaz unit, the 45th Guards Independent Order of Kutuzov, Order of Alexander Nevsky Special Purpose Brigade). This is still not a force that as a whole could be considered "Tier One" special forces, and they are perhaps best understood as spearhead expeditionary light infantry, roughly analogous to the US 75th Ranger Regiment, the British 16th Air Assault Brigade or the French Foreign Legion, although admittedly a new Special Operations Forces Command (KSSO: Komandovaniye Sil Spetsialnalnykh Operatsii) was established in 2012, which must be considered comparable to other "best of the best."
Precisely for this reason, they have been a bone of contention in the kind of inter-service rivalry that has been a particular problem for the Russians. After the 2008 Georgian War, the GRU was politically weak, having been blamed (largely unfairly) for the lacklustre Russian performance. Thus in 2011, the army made a successful takeover bid, and on 24 October 2010 — the very day when the Spetsnaz were celebrating their 60th anniversary — Ground Forces Deputy Chief of Staff for Reconnaissance Col. Vladimir Mardusin announced that the Spetsnaz were being transferred from being a strategic asset of the GRU (or GU as it had become) and instead would be subordinated to the Military Districts. The idea was that the GU should concentrate on spying and the Spetsnaz would be battlefield assets. However, the spooks were not going to take this lying down, and when the ailing former GU head was succeeded at the start of 2011 by the much more vigorous and politically savvy Lt. Gen. Igor Sergun, they began lobbying for the old status quo. Meanwhile, the GU fought a bureaucratic rear-guard action, nominally transferring the Spetsnaz to the Ground Forces but in practice delaying the move on all kinds of practical and procedural grounds. The appointment of Shoigu and Gerasimov proved decisive, as both saw the need for these forces as strategic-level assets able to be used in political-military operations. In 2013, they were formally returned to the GU (if they had ever really left).
Putin's Spetsnaz
Members of Russia's 14th Separate Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in February 2017.Russian Ministry of Defense/Mil.ru
The Spetsnaz comprise seven regular brigades of various sizes, in total constituting perhaps 19 battalion-size units called Independent Special Designation Detachments (OOSN: Otdelny Otryad Spetsialnovo Naznacheniya), each with around 500 personnel. The relatively small 22nd Brigade has just two OOSN, the 173rd and the 411th, for example, while the large 14th Brigade — which is responsible for the whole Eastern VO — has fully four, the 282nd, 294th, 306th and 314th. Each OOSN is divided into a command and staff company and three company-strength units of some 140 personnel, each in turn divided into four 14-man units, a command team, and extensive support elements including medical and technical personnel. The four Independent Spetsnaz Naval Reconnaissance Points (OMRPSN: Otdelny Morskoy Razvedyvatelny Punkt Spetsialnovo Naznacheniya), the marine equivalent of the brigades, require greater technical support because they deploy in anything from light boats to underwater sleds and are instead built around three, slightly larger companies (again, with four 14-man teams of operators), the first optimized for land missions, the second for coastal reconnaissance, the third "combat divers" especially configured for mining enemy vessels and installations underwater.
These brigades are responsible to the GU's Fifth, or Operational Reconnaissance Directorate, although in the field they are subordinated to operational commanders. Beyond that, there are three other separate Spetsnaz elements. One, the 100th Independent Brigade, is often used as a testbed for new ideas and equipment. Two others were created in 2011–12 as part of the security preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympics in southwestern Russia: the 25th Independent Regiment, especially trained and equipped for operations in the turbulent North Caucasus, and the 346th Brigade, a truly elite force closer to an OOSN in size, which ended up becoming the main operational element of a new special forces command.
SPETSNAZ
Special Operations Forces Command (KSSO)
346th Brigade (Kubinka-2)
VDV
45th Guards Independent Special Designation Brigade (Kubinka-2)
Navy
42nd Naval Reconnaissance Special Designation Point (Vladivostok; Pacific Fleet)
420th Naval Reconnaissance Special Designation Point (Severomorsk; Northern Fleet)
431st Naval Reconnaissance Special Designation Point (Sevastopol; Black Sea Fleet)
561st Naval Reconnaissance Special Designation Point (Kaliningrad; Baltic Fleet)
Recruits are generally expected to be at least 160 centimetres tall, and weigh around 75–80 kilograms, fit and healthy with good eyesight, hearing and balance. However, the main criteria are tested through a series of gruelling ordeals, including a 30-kilometre forced march carrying a 30-kilogram load. Naval Spetsnaz, who face particular demands, must also prove that they can swim through a narrow space simulating a torpedo tube, as well as demonstrate their nerves by diving underwater, removing their mask such that water fills the helmet, then replacing the mask and bleeding out the water from the helmet through a special valve before returning to the surface. So stressful is this that potential recruits get two tries before failing.
While they may not be as obsessed with physical prowess as the VDV, the Spetsnaz nonetheless maintain an arduous fitness regime, with the usual route marches in full kit and exercise sessions leavened with regular hand-to-hand combat sessions. In particular, they train in Sambo, a distinctive Russian martial art whose name is a contraction of Samozashchita Bez Oruzhiya, "self-defence without weapons," but which in its combat form has developed into something akin to a mixed martial art, in which the fighters can use not just hands and feet but weapons or indeed anything that comes to hand. Of course, they also train with an extensive range of weapons, including at least some familiarity with those used by potential enemies, such as the American M-16 rifle family.
As well as getting first access to new weapons and kit, the Spetsnaz also have increased freedom both to customize their equipment and outfit and also to experiment with new ideas and vehicles. They are typically deployed in regular army-issue APCs and IFVs, although they are also increasingly using UAZ Patriot jeeps and other light vehicles. For example, they have been enthusiastic adopters of quadbikes and buggies, and an unconfirmed but persistent rumour is that they are seeking individual combat platforms described by one source as an "all-terrain Segway."
Spetsnaz are not all parachute-trained, though about one-third are, and every OOSN has at least one fully airdroppable company. They do all receive training in operating from helicopters, though, including rappelling from hovering ones on ropes. As Naval Spetsnaz are expected not only to carry out the same missions as their land-based comrades, including spotting for naval artillery bombardments and scouting or sabotaging enemy coastal installations, but also to conduct landing and naval mining operations, they also receive additional training for such missions.
The special operations command
Members of Russian's 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in November 2017.Russian Ministry of Defense/Mil.ru
As the Spetsnaz became more professionalized, and also as the demands likely to be put on them became increasingly specialized, moves were finally made to establish a proper special forces command as part of the Serdyukov/Makarov "New Look" programme. The GRU had long had a training base called Senezh (named for the nearby lake, although often simply known by its military post box number, V/ch or Unit 92154) at Solnechnogorsk, north-west of Moscow. In 2009, it was decided that this was going to become the base for a new special forces unit which — as this was a time when the agency was in the doghouse — would no longer be subordinated to the GRU, but directly to the General Staff. The first commander charged with setting up the unit was Maj. Gen. Igor Medoyev, who was soon replaced by Lt. Gen. Alexander Miroshnichenko. Tellingly, both of them were veterans of the rival FSB's Alfa anti-terrorist commando force.
The idea was that Senezh would become the base of a new Special Operations Forces Command (KSSO: Komanda Sil Spetsialnovo Naznacheniya) built around an OOSN outside the regular brigade structure and dedicated air assets. Its missions would range from counter-terrorist operations in peacetime — especially with an eye to the forthcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — to sabotage and assassination in war. When Shoigu and Gerasimov assumed control of the military, there were some concerns as to whether the KSSO project would continue, or whether the role of FSB veterans meant that the force would be transferred to them. They need not have worried. In March 2013, Gerasimov made a point of using a meeting with foreign military attaches to signal an acceleration of the project meant to build on the best practices of other nations.
By the end of the year, the KSSO had been stood up, on the basis of the 346th Brigade, deliberately kept under-strength (just one and a half OOSNs, in effect) to allow it to be manned purely with the very best of the Spetsnaz's contract soldiers. Senezh became more of an operational command centre, and the KSSO acquired additional training facilities at Kubinka-2, west of Moscow, where the VDV's 45th Brigade is also based. The KSSO has priority claim to a squadron of Il-76 heavy-lift transport aircraft, and also a mixed helicopter attack and transport squadron at Torzhok airbase, many of whose pilots are actually instructors at the 344th Army Aviation Combat Training Centre when not flying missions for the KSSO.
Their first operational use was in Crimea, and since then they have appeared in the Donbas, Syria and Ukraine. They have also expanded from their original strength of around 500 to 2,000–2,500, although this includes trainers and support personnel, and maybe 1,000 are actual operators. The command unit (Unit 99450) is based at Senezh, then there are three operational detachments (Units 01355, 43292, 92154) largely operating out of Kubinka-2 and a further naval one based at Sevastopol (Unit 00317) under the auspices of the 561st Emergency Rescue Centre. Each comprises 200–300 operators. The KSSO is still a strategic asset under the direct subordination of the General Staff rather than the GU, but it nonetheless shares with the regular Spetsnaz an orientation towards both battlefield operations and military-political "active measures." Some KSSO operators, for example, have transferred to the GU's Unit 29155, its dedicated assassination and subversion force. This connection — which mirrors the way the other intelligence agencies have their own special force units, the Special Designation Centre for the FSB and the rather smaller Zaslon ("Screen") unit for the SVR — emphasizes their role as also a covert subversion and sabotage force. Although analogies can be misleading, this would suggest they are in some ways comparable to the US Army's Intelligence Support Activity, the CIA Special Operations Group or the British Special Air Service's E Squadron. The KSSO is undoubtedly intended for a key role in the shadowy "grey zone" wars of the future.
Mark Galeotti is a scholar of Russian security affairs with a career spanning academia, government service, and business. He heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy and is an Honorary Professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies as well as holding fellowships with RUSI.
King Charles' Coronation: The ceremony is set to have several sections, including the anointing and crowning of King Charles III.
Prince William will have a special role in King Charles' coronation which is scheduled to take place on May 7. The ceremony is set to have several sections, including the anointing and crowning of King Charles III. Throughout the event, Prince William is set to have a significant role although his brother Prince Harry- who has stepped down from royal duties- will watch the ceremony without taking part.
Prince Harry: Britain's Prince William and Prince Harry are seen. (AP)
Prince William will take part in a section known as ‘The Homage of Royal Blood’, in which he will swear his loyalty to King Charles, The Mirror reported. Prince William will recite the following, “I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you and faith and truth I will bear unto you, as your liege man of life and limb. So help me God.”
He will also have a significant role in ‘the Robe and Stole Royal’ section. He will enter as the stole and robe will be brought to King Charles. The Bishop of Durham will vest King Charles in the stole while Prince William will assist bishops.
Prince William will also follow behind the monarch in the royal procession with his wife Kate Middleton and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Prince Harry will watch all the proceedings from the side lines at Westminster Abbey while being seated with other non-working members of the royal family, including Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie and their husbands.
Prince Harry does not have a role in the event and will not take part in the King’s procession, the coronation procession to and from Buckingham Palace.
Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin attends the funeral of his fighters at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 24, 2022.AP Photo
Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened to withdraw Wagner Group fighters from Bakhmut over shell shortages.
He issued an ultimatum to Russia's defense minister and gave him 24 hours to respond.
Prigozhin has previously sparred with Russia's military brass over complaints of a lack of support.
The founder of Russia's paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, escalating his rift with Russia's military leadership.
Prigozhin issued an ultimatum to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu over ammunition shortages in an interview with Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov published Saturday.
"Every day, we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home," Prigozhin said, per Al Jazeera's translation.
"If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced – in order not to run like cowardly rats afterward – to either withdraw or die," he said.
Prigozhin warned that if Shoigu does not respond to his requests for more ammunition, Wagner fighters will withdraw from Bakhmut.
"We are patriots, and we will go to Bakhmut while we have the last cartridge, but these cartridges are left not for weeks, but for days," he said according to the video's subtitles, shared by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine's internal affairs minister, on Twitter.
He issued the deadline on April 27 and said the defense minister had 24 hours to reply, which has now passed. It is not clear whether Shoigu responded.
Wagner mercenaries have played a key role in the bloody 10-month battle for the city of Bakhmut, where fighting rages on as Russian forces try to cut off Ukraine's supply lines.
Prigozhin has complained that Wagner receives only 800 of the 4,000 shells per day that it currently requests, according to Washington DC-based think tank, The Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
He said that Wagner actually needed about 80,000 shells per day, which was its shell allowance before apparent Russian Ministry of Defense efforts to reduce Wagner's influence, the ISW said.
"Shell hunger"
In this handout photo taken from video and released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, a Russian army's howitzer fires at Ukrainian troops at an undisclosed location.Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
In recent months Prigozhin has often complained about the lack of ammunition, which he has described as "shell hunger," and accused Russia's defense ministry of deliberately depriving his fighters.
He went as far as sharing a graphic image showing dozens of dead soldiers piled up in eastern Ukraine, which he blamed on the ammunition shortages.
His latest comments stoke the long-running feud with Russia's regular army leaders over his allegations of lacking support for his fighters and debates over credit for Russian victories in the war.
A huge fire erupted in Moscow-annexed Crimea after a suspected drone attack hit an oil depot on Saturday, as fighting intensified on the southern Ukrainian front and shelling deprived Russian border villages of power.
The attacks came one day after Kyiv said preparations for a long-awaited counteroffensive were nearly complete, having vowed to expel Russian forces from territory they seized in the east and south following their 2022 invasion.
On Friday, a Russian strike on a bloc of flats in the central Ukrainian city of Uman killed 23 people, including a baby boy.
On Saturday, officials in Moscow-controlled Crimea, towns under Russian occupation in southern Ukraine and a governor of a border region reported attacks.
Fears of Ukrainian reprisals more than a year into Moscow's offensive have grown inRussia, where a range of cities have canceled traditional May 9 celebrations to mark Soviet victory over the Nazis at the end of World War II in 1945.
In Sevastopol, home toRussia's Black Sea Fleet, clouds of smoke rose high into the sky as fuel reserves burned.
The port city has been hit by a series of drone attacks since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine began more than a year ago.
'God's punishment'
Russian-installed authorities said the fire was caused by a suspected drone but sought to play down the incident, amid rising security fears on the peninsula.
The Kremlin said nothing about the attack.
It came less than 24 hours afterRussiastruck a typical Soviet-era housing bloc in the historic city of Uman, killing more than two dozen of its residents.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his evening address on Saturday, said six children had been killed in the attack — the previous figure given by the authorities had been five.
"We will do everything possible to ensure that the terrorist state is held accountable for its actions as soon as possible," he added.
"Anyone who prepares such rocket attacks cannot but know that they will become an accomplice to murder," said Zelensky.
The Ukraine leader said that next week would be important in terms of "our struggle for justice."
He stressed that Kyiv was preparing "several important, powerful steps to consolidate our partners and give more energy to the creation of a tribunal for the crime of Russian aggression. And to accelerate the defeat of the terrorist state."
Earlier Kyiv had identified an 18-month-old baby boy as among the victims.
"One woman is considered missing. The search continues," Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Ukraine did not claim the Crimea attack, but military intelligence implied it was revenge for Uman.
Andriy Yusov, from the defense ministry's intelligence unit, said it was "God's punishment, in particular for the civilians killed in Uman."
He warned people in Crimea to "avoid being near military facilities and facilities providing the aggressor's army in the near future."
'Intense shelling'
On the Russian-annexed peninsula, the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, urged Crimeans to "remain calm" and said "nobody was hurt."
He estimated the fire was "around 1,000 square meters" (10,764 square feet).
Razvozhayev insisted that the peninsula's reserves had not been impacted and that authorities had enough fuel for all civilian needs.
Earlier this week, Moscow said it had repelled a drone strike on Crimea — annexed byRussiain 2014 and used as a launchpad for its invasion.
In southern Ukraine, Russian occupation authorities said a key city they control — Novaya Kakhovka — had come under "intense shelling" and had been cut off from power.
The city fell to Russian forces on the first day of their invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. It lies in the part of the Kherson region that Moscow still controls, having withdrawn from the eponymous regional capital last November.
Russian forces urged people in the city "to keep calm," saying that work to restore power would start "after the shelling ends."
Russian border villages shelled
The shelling of Novaya Kakhovka came a day after Russian shelling killed a 57-year-old woman in a southern Ukrainian village. Zelensky had promised a response.
InsideRussia, security fears an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The governor of the border Belgorod region — also been hit by several attacks during the course of the war — said Saturday that five frontier villages were without power after Ukrainian shelling.
"The power lines are damaged," Gladkov said, adding that there had been no victims.
Elsewhere,Russiaaccused Poland — with whom it has historically poor relations — of a "blatant violation" of international norms after Warsaw impounded a school run by the Russian embassy in the Polish capital.
Moscow called the move an "illegal act" and promised "harsh" consequences against Warsaw.
The former prime minister of Sudan has warned that the conflict in his country could become worse than those in Syria and Libya.
Abdalla Hamdok said the fighting will be a "nightmare for the world" if it continues.
The latest ceasefire between warring generals is faltering, with airstrikes reported in the capital Khartoum.
Almost two weeks of fighting has left hundreds dead, while tens of thousands of people are fleeing the country.
Thursday night's extension of an uneasy ceasefire between the rival factions followed intensive diplomatic efforts by neighbouring countries, as well as the US, UK and UN.
But the 72-hour extension has not held. Air, tank and artillery strikes are reported to be continuing in parts of Khartoum.
Speaking at a conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Mr Hamdok called for a unified international effort to persuade the Sudanese military leader and the head of a rival paramilitary force to hold peace talks.
"This is a huge country, very diverse ... I think it will be a nightmare for the world," he said.
"This is not a war between an army and small rebellion. It is almost like two armies - well trained and well armed."
Mr Hamdok - who served as prime minister twice between 2019 and 2022 - added that the insecurity could become worse than the civil wars in Syria and Libya. Those wars have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, created millions of refugees and caused instability in the wider regions.
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The fighting in Sudan broke out on 15 April as the result of a bitter power struggle between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Army commander Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, disagree about the country's proposed move to civilian rule, and in particular about the timeframe of the 100,000 strong RSF's inclusion into the army.
Both factions fear losing power in Sudan, partly because on both sides there are men who could end up at the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in the Darfur region almost 20 years ago.
Millions of people remain trapped in Khartoum, where there are shortages of food, water and fuel.
Violence is also reported to have been particularly bad in El Geneina, a city in Darfur in western Sudan, with claims that militia groups have looted and torched markets.
Hemedti has told the BBC he will not negotiate until fighting ends.
He said his fighters were being "relentlessly" bombed since the truce was extended.
"We don't want to destroy Sudan," he said, blaming army chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan for the violence.
Gen Burhan - the head of Sudan's regular army - has tentatively agreed to face-to-face talks in South Sudan.
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Meanwhile there are chaotic scenes in Port Sudan where people are desperate to board ships, some of which are heading to Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The UK government said it was winding up its own evacuation efforts on Saturday evening. It has established a diplomatic presence in Port Sudan, with an office at the coastal city's Coral Hotel.
Around 2,000 people have arrived in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah after being evacuated from Port Sudan. Most are expected to be flown home via charter flights arranged by their governments within the next few days.
Speaking to BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet in Jeddah, Nazli, a 32 year-old Iranian civil engineer who fled with her fellow engineer husband, recalled the fighting they fled.
"We couldn't even sit on our balcony; the gunfire was everywhere," she said.
"Please please help our family in Sudan," cried Rasha, a Sudanese-American mother of four children - who spoke of hiding for three days, terrified.
"I call on the world to protect Sudan," she pleaded, underlining fears that once all the foreign nationals have fled, the fighting will intensify.
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