Ukraine war live: Putin orders Wagner mercenaries to sign oath of allegiance after Prigozhin death

Russia’s military cooperation with Iran will not succumb to geopolitical pressure, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has said, following a report that Washington has asked Tehran to stop selling drones to Moscow.

“There are no changes, and cooperation with Iran will continue,” Mr Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA. “We are independent states and do not succumb to the dictates of the United States and its satellites.”

The Financial Times reported this month that the US is pressing Iran to stop selling the so-called kamikaze Shahed drones, which Russia is using in the war in Ukraine, citing an Iranian official and another person familiar with the talks.

Ukraine has made further gains near the Zaporizhzhia village of Robotyne, analysts have said, where Kyiv’s troops have passed Russia’s first line of defence.

The Institute for the Study of War think-tank said that geolocated combat footage published on Friday indicated that Ukrainian forces had moved southward by 1.5 kilometers to a tree line northeast of Novopokropivka.

The ISW’s Russia analyst George Barros said Ukraine’s troops are “now geolocated to be within 2.5 km of the great anti-vehicle ditch – the next major military engineering obstacle within the Russian layered defence”.

Following the news of the reported death of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, The Independent’s international editor Chris Stevenson has shared his thoughts on the mercenary chief.

He argues that readers should not let Prigozhin’s mutiny against Putin cloud their thinking about a man who was nothing more than a monster.

He writes: “It is not surprising that Russian authorities have declared Yevgeny Prigozhin dead. Given the attempted mutiny he led with the Wagner mercenary group against Moscow, the assumption was that he may not be long for this world. When it comes to the iron-grip President Vladimir Putin has on his nation – if you come for the king, as the adage goes, you best not miss.

But as the speculation swirls about the end of Prigozhin and the embarrassment that Putin could not let stand, it can be easy to brush past the terrible things Progozhin’s mercenaries are believed to have done. Let’s get this straight, Prigozhin deserved the end that all signs point to him having met.

It is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that pushed Prigozhin truly into the public consciousness, with the group having been at the vanguard of some of the bloodiest fighting of the war around the eastern city of Bakhmut.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said an investigation is ongoing into the death of three pilots who died after two trainer aircraft collided on Friday.

President Zelensky, who is counting on swift training of Ukrainian crews to fly up to 61 F-16 fighter jets promised by his Western allies, said the three men included Andriy Pilshchykov, “a Ukrainian officer, one of those who greatly helped our state.”

The investigation is ongoing, he added in his nightly video address. “It is too early to discuss details. Certainly, all circumstances will be clarified.”

The air force said the one of the pilots who died used the callsign “Juice”. The pilot had become well known after giving numerous interviews to international media, it said.

An informal memorial has appeared to Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in Moscow, Russia.

Here are some pictures from today of the memorial and those who came to lay flowers at it.

Russian forces struck a cafe in a key front-line area in north-eastern Ukraine, killing two civilians and wounding a third, regional officials said.

The shelling near the city of Kupiansk came as UK officials said that Russia may try to retake the area, which was captured by Kyiv in a lightning counteroffensive last September after more than six months of Russian occupation.

Fierce fighting there earlier this month prompted mandatory evacuations and fears of a second Russian takeover.

Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a Telegram post that Russian shells on Saturday struck the cafe in Podoly, an eastern suburb of Kupiansk.

He added that rescue teams were working at the site.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has appealed a Moscow court’s decision to extend his pretrial detention in Russia until the end of November, documents on the court’s website show.

Mr Gershkovich is the first US journalist held on espionage charges in Russia since the Soviet era, after he was arrested in March during a work trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, nearly 1,200 miles east of Moscow. Washington has declared him to be wrongfully detained.

An order that authorised keeping Mr Gershkovich in jail before his trial was set to expire on 30 August. The Moscow City Court extended the custody order on Thursday by three months, drawing objections from US government officials and the Wall Street Journal.

The court’s website showed on Saturday that Gershkovich’s defence team had filed an appeal. The court in June rejected his appeal of the earlier ruling to keep him behind bars until the end of August.

Boris Johnson has stated that Vladimir Putin’s “mask is now fully off”, as world leaders and commentators continue to question his role in the death of Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The former prime minister has described the downing of the Wagner chief’s plane as “violent liquidation” and claimed that Putin was “being transformed before our eyes into an Asiatic despot”.

“I cannot think of another example of such ostentatious and uninhibited savagery by a world leader – not in our lifetimes,” he said.

Exiled Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko has said she believed she would be safe in Europe – as Berlin prosecutors investigate whether she was poisoned last October.

“When you work as an investigative reporter in Russia you are always careful,” she told Reuters. “You have lots of protocols you’re following all the time. But when I found myself in Europe I totally forgot all these security measures … Somehow I was thinking that in Europe, I’m safe.”

Having worked as a foreign correspondent who exposed alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper before it was forced to close under threat from Moscow, Ms Kostyuchenko’s symptoms started with disorientation and stomach ache on a train journey from Munich to Berlin.

“I had to take off my rings because my fingers looked like sausages,” she said, describing the swelling that was among her symptoms. Months later, she is still exhausted and only able to work three hours a day.

When doctors told her she had likely been poisoned her initial reaction was to laugh.

She was one of three Russian independent woman journalists who were apparently poisoned while abroad in a similar period. All three suffered similar symptoms.

The second ship to leave Odesa since Moscow’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal has set sail for Bulgaria, according to Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, who posted a photograph of what he said was the ship leaving the port.

The Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Primus is moving from Odesa to the port of Varna in Bulgaria, news agency Interfax Ukraine reported citing the MarineTraffic database.

Odesa’s three seaports shipped tens of millions of tons of grain during Russia’s invasion under a UN-brokered deal which collapsed in July after Moscow withdrew.

Russian forces have since targeted Ukrainian ports with volleys of missiles and kamikaze drones.