Russia Ukraine war latest news: Putin ‘buying time’ to strike back at Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, says CIA

President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine‘s ambassador to Britain on Friday.

A presidential order gave no reason for the dismissal but said Prystaiko had also been removed as Ukraine‘s representative to the International Maritime Organization.

Britain has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia‘s invasion last year.

Wagner mercenaries are training Belarusian special forces just a few miles from the border with Nato-member Poland.

Warsaw said that it was ready for “various scenarios as the situation develops” – having started moving around 1,000 of its own troops towards the border earlier this month.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Belarus, telling them they would take no further part in the Ukraine war for now but ordering them to gather their strength for Africa while they trained the Belarusian army.

Mr Prigozhin, who agreed to move to Belarus as part of a deal to end a mutiny by his forces that rattled Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, said what is happening with Russian forces on the Ukraine frontline is a “disgrace” and that his group wants “no part of it”.

Russia has stepped up its assault on Ukraine’s ports with a third night of air strikes and a threat it is now treating all ships heading for those ports as potential military targets.

Saying that Moscow was deliberately turning the Black Sea into a “danger zone”, Kyiv responded in kind by announcing that from Friday, ships heading for Russian ports – or Russian-occupied ports in Ukraine – would be treated in the same way, as if they are carrying weapons or other military cargo.

Washington called Russia’s threat a signal that Moscow might attack civilian shipping and said Moscow was also releasing new mines into the sea. “We believe that this is a coordinated effort to justify any attacks against civilian ships in the Black Sea and lay blame on Ukraine for these attacks,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge had said.

Our international editor Chris Stevenson has more:

Russian missiles hit grain terminals at an agricultural enterprise in the Odesa region in a fourth successive night of air strikes on southern Ukraine, the regional governor said on Friday.

But Russia‘s attacks appeared less intense than on the three previous nights, when missiles and drones struck southern cities and ports after Moscow quit a U.N.-brokered deal allowing safe shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

Odesa’s regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said two people had been hurt in the attack on an agricultural enterprise but did not say where in the region the enterprise was located.

“Unfortunately, the grain terminals of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa region were hit. The enemy destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Kiper said Russia had attacked with Kalibr cruise missiles that were fired from the Black Sea at low altitude to bypass air defence systems.

He said two missiles hit the grain storage facilities, causing a fire. Another missile struck the same enterprise as the blaze was being extinguished, damaging agricultural and rescue equipment.

Russian prosecutors have called for Vladimir Putin‘s most prominent critic, Alexei Navalny, to be jailed for a further 20 years on extremism charges.

The 47-year-old has been on trial behind closed doors for a month at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 145 miles (235km) east of Moscow, where he is already serving sentences totalling more than 11 years on fraud and other charges which are widely seen as being trumped up to silence him.

In his closing statement released by his team, Mr Navalny bashed Russian authorities as being governed by “bargaining, power, bribery, deception, treachery… and not law.” Mr Navalny said: “Anyone in Russia knows that a person who seeks justice in a court of law is completely vulnerable. The case of that person is hopeless.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his government on Thursday to keep a tight rein on spending in wartime, in a call that resulted in his culture minister, a proponent of several high-profile and costly projects, offering his resignation.

“In a time of war like this the maximum amount of state attention and therefore state resources should go to defence,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address, referring to a conversation he had earlier with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

He told Shmyhal to find alternative funding for projects “that are really necessary. This applies to various areas, including culture. Museums, cultural centres, symbols, television series are important, but we have other priorities.”

Zelensky, who was a television comedy star before entering politics, said he had appealed to local councils to show restraint so that “people feel that budget resources are used fairly and correctly…Cobblestones, city decorations, fountains will have to wait. Victory first.”

And he asked Shmyhal to “consider replacing” Culture and Information Policy Minister Olexander Tkachenko.

Within an hour, Tkachenko said he had tendered his resignation, while remaining unapologetic about his projects.

“Culture in wartime is important as this war is not just about territory but also people – our memory, history, language and creativity despite the war,” Tkachenko, who headed a television channel before entering politics, wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s ambassador in London has caused deep consternation in Kyiv after publicly criticising Volodymyr Zelensky’s conduct in a row with British defence secretary Ben Wallace, according to diplomatic sources.

Vadym Prystaiko, who has been a key point of contact for the British government during the Ukraine war, accused Mr Zelensky of “unhealthy sarcasm” in his response to Mr Wallace saying Kyiv should not view the UK and Western allies as an “Amazon” delivery service.

The Independent has been told that there were subsequently “very strong” telephone conversations between Mr Prystaiko and the government in Kyiv.

Russia’s defence ministry said that its navy conducted a live fire “exercise” in the northwest region of the Black Sea.

This exercise took place just days after the Kremlin stated that ships passing through the waterway to Ukraine could be seen as potential military targets.

During the exercise, the Black Sea Fleet engaged in live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles at a target ship within the combat training range in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.

“The target ship was destroyed as a result of a missile strike,” it said.

“Also during the joint exercise, the ships and fleet aviation worked out actions to isolate the area temporarily closed to navigation, and also carried out a set of measures to detain the offending ship.”

A Russian military aircraft was exposed to “the guidance systems” of F-16 fighter jets of the US-led coalition during a routine patrol over Syria’s southern border, according to a military official quoted in Tass.

Rear Admiral Oleg Gurinov, who serves as the deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria, said the F-16s “affected” the Russian aircraft with their guidance systems. He provided no further details.

Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, tipping the balance in president Bashar Al-Assad’s favour. Moscow has since expanded its military facilities in the country with a permanent air base and also has a naval base.

The US is leading a coalition against the Isis militant group and has carried out airstrikes in Syria this year.

Mr Gurinov also made fresh accusations that the pilots of the coalition had violated Syrian airspace several times over the past day.

Russia has launched nearly 70 missiles and 90 Shahed drones in the Ukrainian cities of Odesa, Mykolaiv and others during the span of just four days, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Of course, our warriors managed to shoot down some of the enemy missiles and drones, and I thank each of our defenders of the sky for this,” he said.

“But unfortunately, the capacity of Ukrainian air defence is not yet enough to protect the entire Ukrainian sky.”

He said Ukraine is “working with our partners as actively as possible to obtain additional air defence systems”.