Wagner Agent Barred From Russian Military Headquarters in Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin Says - The Daily Beast

A representative for Wagner Group boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin was reportedly denied access to Russia’s military command in Ukraine Monday, in the latest sign that Moscow is sidelining Prigozhin’s mercenary fighting group in the war in Ukraine.

The apparent snub comes as Prigozhin pleads with Moscow to provide the Wagner Group with the ammunition it desperately needs in the war. The ammunition, though, has not been delivered—an act Prigozhin said could either be “ordinary bureaucracy or betrayal.”

“On March 5, I wrote a letter to the commander of the SMO grouping about the urgent need to allocate ammunition. On March 6, at 8 a.m., my representative at the headquarters had his pass canceled and was denied access,” Prigozhin said in a Telegram post, according to a Reuters translation.

Wagner Group fighters asked Russia for more ammunition in February, noting that Wagner Group mercenaries were dying unnecessarily in Ukraine as they try to fight off a Ukrainian advance in Bakhmut.

The delays and the latest denial to the Wagner representative have raised questions for Prigozhin about whether Russia—over a year into a war that has no end in sight—is willing to use Wagner as a scapegoat in case it loses the war.

“What if they [the Russian authorities] want to set us up, saying that we are scoundrels—and that's why they are not giving us ammunition, not giving us weapons, and not letting us replenish our personnel, including [recruiting] prisoners,” Prigozhin said in a video, referencing recent measures Russia has established to prevent Wagner Group from rounding up prisoners to use on missions in Ukraine with little to no training.

Prigozhin warned that if the supplies are not provided to Wagner, Russia may lose Bakhmut—and more—to Ukraine.

“If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” he said.

Russia has been trying and failing to seize Bakhmut for months, with significant losses, according to the National Security Council.

Although Prigozhin is questioning whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to blame losses on Wagner, Putin has been leaning on Wagner Group fighting as a way to make up for failings of Russia’s more conventional armed forces, according to a previous White House National Security Council assessment.

Wagner Group fighting has been “a bit more effective” than Russia’s forces, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Monday.

In recent days, the focus of Wagner’s fighting has pushed toward Bakhmut from the east and north, as Ukrainian fighters have retreated west of the Bakhmutia river, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Even so, if Russia does prove victorious in Bakhmut, it likely won’t change the direction of the war, Austin said Monday.

“If the Ukrainians decide to reposition in some of the terrain that’s west of Bakhmut, I would not view that as an operational or a strategic setback,” Austin said, according to Fox News, which was traveling with the secretary of defense. “The fall of Bakhmut won’t necessarily mean that… the Russians have changed the tide of this fight.”

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Estonia elections: Kallas secures big win for centre-right party - Al Jazeera English

Kallas, one of Ukraine’s biggest European supporters, will need to work with junior partners to form a coalition government.

Voters in Estonia have elected a new parliament with almost complete results suggesting a big win for the centre-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine.

With 99 percent of ballots counted, Kallas’s liberal group was at 31.6 percent, followed by the far-right eurosceptic EKRE party at 16.1 percent, reflecting concerns among some voters over the rising cost of living in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Centre Party, traditionally favoured by Estonia’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority, was at 14.7 percent.

“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” the 45-year-old Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the Baltic nation’s capital, Tallinn.

Preliminary results suggested six parties passed the 5 percent threshold of support needed to enter the 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu, including newcomer Eesti 200, a liberal centrist party. Voter turnout was 63.7 percent, little changed from the previous election.

Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people on Russia’s northwestern border, has been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters since Moscow invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Its military assistance to Ukraine amounts to more than one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — the biggest contribution of any country relative to the size of its economy.

Kallas said any government she formed would keep calling for pressure on Russia.

“We … have to invest in our security, our aggressive neighbour has not vanished and will not vanish, so we have to work with that”, she told reporters.

Reform is a centre-right liberal party that appeals to business owners and young professionals.

It has promised to raise military spending to at least three percent of GDP and ease taxes on business. It also wants to pass a law approving same-sex civil partnerships.

The latest results will give the Reform Party 37 seats in the legislature, and Kallas will need junior partners to form a coalition with a comfortable majority to govern.

Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 and is a member of NATO and the European Union.

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Thousands protest in Athens over deadly Greece train crash - Reuters

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Demonstrators, police clash as Greece train crash protests resume - Al Jazeera English

Protesters clashed with police in front of the Greek parliament in Athens amid continuing demonstrations against the government.

Clashes have erupted between police and a group of demonstrators outside the Greek parliament in Athens on the fringes of a protest by thousands of students and railway workers over Greece’s deadliest train crash in living memory.

A small group of protesters hurled petrol bombs at police and set fire to rubbish bins on Sunday.

Police responded by firing tear gas and stun grenades, clearing Syntagma Square of the protesters within a few minutes. The protesters then dispersed to nearby streets.

Police said 12,000 people had gathered by the large esplanade in front of the parliament to demand accountability for Tuesday’s head-on collision near the central city of Larissa that has sparked widespread outrage.

At least 57 people were killed and dozens were injured when a passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided with a freight train on the same track in central Greece.

After protests over the past three days across the country, some 10,000 students, railway workers and groups affiliated with left-wing parties gathered in Athens’s Syntagma Square to express sympathy for the lives lost and to demand better safety standards on the rail network.

“That crime won’t be forgotten,” protesters shouted as they released black balloons into the sky. A placard read: “Their policies cost human lives.”

The train, travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki, was packed with university students returning after a long holiday weekend. The disaster has triggered an outpouring of anger, as well as a sharp focus on safety standards.

Railway workers, who also lost colleagues in the accident, have staged rotating walkouts since Wednesday to denounce cost-cutting and underinvestment in the rail infrastructure, a legacy of Greece’s debilitating debt crisis from 2010 to 2018.

PM promises justice

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government has blamed human error for the crash. However, Mitsotakis said on Sunday that human error should not deflect from responsibilities for a long-suffering railway network.

“As prime minister, I owe everyone, but most of all the relatives of the victims, an apology,” he wrote on Facebook. “Justice will very fast investigate the tragedy and determine liabilities.”

A station master in the nearby city of Larissa who was on duty at the time of the crash was charged this week with endangering lives and disrupting public transport.

The station master, who cannot be named under Greek law, appeared before a magistrate on Sunday after his lawyer requested extra time on Saturday to respond to the charges following new information concerning the case. Those proceedings were ongoing.

Railway workers’ unions say safety systems throughout the rail network have been deficient for years as a remote surveillance and signalling system has not been delivered on time. They have called on the government to provide a timetable for the implementation of safety protocols.

Mitsotakis said on Sunday that if there had been a remote system in place throughout the rail network “it would have been, in practice, impossible for the accident to happen”.

Greece would soon announce action, he said, adding that Athens would seek expertise from the European Commission and other countries on improving rail safety.

Pope Francis said on Sunday his thoughts were with the crash victims. “I pray for the dead, I am close to the injured and their relatives, and may Our Lady comfort them,” he said in his weekly address to crowds in St Peter’s Square, Rome.

Train and metro services have been paralysed by strike action.

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Negros Oriental governor, five others shot dead in Philippines - Al Jazeera English

Negros Oriental Governor Degamo is the latest to be targeted in the Philippines’ long history of attacks on politicians.

A provincial governor in the central Philippines and five others have been shot dead by unknown gunmen in the latest attack against local politicians.

Police said six suspects carrying rifles and dressed in uniforms similar to those worn by the armed services entered the governor’s home in Pamplona town and opened fire.

Roel Degamo, governor of Negros Oriental province, and five others were killed in the shooting, his widow said.

“Governor Degamo did not deserve that kind of death. He was serving his constituents on a Saturday,” Janice Degamo, who is also the mayor of Pamplona, said in a video posted on Facebook.

Police said in a statement on Saturday that the conditions of the hospitalised victims were unknown.

Degamo, 56, is the latest to be targeted in the Philippines’ long history of attacks on politicians, and is at least the third to be shot since local elections last year.

President Ferdinand Marcos condemned what he described as the “assassination” of political ally Degamo and promised to bring swift justice to his killers.

Last month, the Supreme Court declared Degamo the rightful winner of the contest for the Negros Oriental governorship following a recount that unseated his local rival, who had previously been proclaimed the victor.

Attacks on politicians

Mamintal Adiong, governor of the southern province of Lanao del Sur, was shot and wounded in February in an attack that killed his driver and three police escorts.

That same month, the vice-mayor of the northern town of Aparri, Rommel Alameda, and five other people who were travelling with him were shot dead in a highway ambush.

The leaders of a powerful southern clan and about two dozen followers were sentenced to life in prison for a 2009 attack on supporters of a gubernatorial election rival in Maguindanao province. The attack left 58 people dead, including the politician’s wife and relatives, along with 32 journalists and media workers.

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Belarus court jails Nobel laureate Bialiatski for 10 years - ABC News

TALLINN, Estonia -- A court on Friday sentenced Belarus’ top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to 10 years in prison, the latest move in a yearslong crackdown on dissent that has engulfed the ex-Soviet nation since 2020.

The harsh punishment of Ales Bialiatski and three of his colleagues was delivered in response to massive protests over a 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a new term in office.

Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has ruled the ex-Soviet country with an iron fist since 1994. More than 35,000 people were arrested, and thousands were beaten by police amid the protests, the largest ever held in the country.

Belarus is an outlier in its support of the year-old Russian invasion, with other countries in the region not backing Moscow publicly.

Bialiatski and his colleagues at the human rights center he founded were convicted of financing actions violating public order and smuggling, the center reported Friday.

Valiantsin Stefanovich was given a nine-year sentence; Uladzimir Labkovicz seven years; and Dzmitry Salauyou was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.

During the trial, which took place behind closed doors, the 60-year-old Bialiatski and his colleagues were held in a caged enclosure in the courtroom. They have spent a year and nine months behind bars since their arrest.

In the photos from the courtroom released Friday by Belarus' state news agency Belta, Bialiatksi, clad in black clothes, looked wan, but calm.

All four activists have maintained their innocence, the Human Rights Center Viasna said after the verdict. Viasna is Belarusian for “spring.”

In his final address to the court, Bialiatski urged the authorities to “stop the civil war in Belarus.” He said it became obvious to him from the case files that “the investigators were fulfilling the task they were given: to deprive Viasna human rights advocates of freedom at any cost, destroy Viasna and stop our work."

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called the verdict “appalling.”

“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice (and) free them,” Tsikhanouskaya tweeted Friday.

Memorial, the prominent Russian human rights group that shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with Bialiatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, in an online statement denounced the verdict as “an undisguised lawless reprisal for their human rights activities as part of a campaign of terror against civil society and the entire people of Belarus.”

Oleg Orlov, co-chair of Memorial, attempted to fly to Minsk to support Bialiatski on Friday, but was prevented from boarding the flight, with airline representatives telling him Belarus had barred him from entering the country. “Crimes are better committed without witnesses,” Orlov remarked.

Volodymyr Yavorsky from the Center for Civil Liberties told The Associated Press that Ukrainian human rights advocates express solidarity with Bialiatski and demand his release.

“This verdict shows that the highest level of repression in Europe is in Belarus,” Yavorsky said. “Ukraine is currently resisting the very totalitarian model that the Kremlin tries to impose on the entire former Soviet space.”

The punishment also elicited outrage in the West.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a nongovernmental human rights organization, said that it was “shocked by the cynicism behind the sentences."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock labeled the trial and sentencing "a farce.”

“This is just as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war," Baerbock tweeted Friday. “We call for the end of political persecution and freedom for the more than 1,400 political prisoners.”

Condemnations of the verdict also came from the Council of Europe rights watchdog and the U.N. Human Rights spokesperson.

Bialiatski is the fourth person in the 121-year history of the Nobel Prizes to receive the award while in prison or detention.

___

Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

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Antony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov meet for first time since Ukraine war - BBC

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By Barbara Plett Usher in Delhi & Nadine Yousif

BBC News

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to "end this war of aggression" against Ukraine.

The remarks are the first Mr Blinken has made face to face to Mr Lavrov since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion more than a year ago.

The two met briefly on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India's capital Delhi on Thursday.

Mr Blinken also raised the case of Paul Whelan, an American detained in Russia.

A senior State Department official said the discussion in Delhi lasted less than 10 minutes - they spoke "on the move" said the Russian foreign ministry, downplaying the exchange.

"I told the foreign minister [Sergei Lavrov] what I and so many many others said last week at the United Nations, and what so many G20 foreign ministers said today - end this war of aggression, engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and lasting peace," Mr Blinken said at a briefing after the talks.

He said he also urged Russia to rejoin the New START nuclear arms control treaty, describing as "irresponsible" Moscow's recent decision to suspend its participation in the agreement.

Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that the meeting took place but gave no further details.

• Bitter divisions over Ukraine dominate G20 talks

The last time Mr Blinken and Mr Lavrov met was in Geneva in January 2022.

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Lavrov accused Western countries of trying to influence neutral states to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"The West continues its attempts to push everyone and everything," he said.

Mr Lavrov didn't say anything about the "elbow brush" with his US counterpart - but it was clearly not a diplomatic negotiation.

During the G20 meeting he accused the West of encouraging Kyiv to continue the war.

The failure of foreign ministers to agree on a joint statement showed that differences over the war have hardened in the past year.

Mr Blinken reportedly held talks with top diplomats during the Delhi summit to rally support for Ukraine.

He repeated his condemnation of Russia to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva later in the day, appearing via video link.

But he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "demonstrated zero interest in engaging".

The G20, which includes the world's 19 wealthiest nations plus the European Union, accounts for 85% of global economic output and two-thirds of its population.

Related Topics

• Russia-Ukraine war
• Sergei Lavrov
• Antony Blinken
• Russia
• India
• United States

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