Ukraine-Russia war – live: Ukrainian troops see breakthrough in battle for strategic Robotyne village

Ukrainian troops have gained a foothold in the southeastern village of Robotyne on the road to Tokmak, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said.

The village is an occupied rail hub whose recapture would be a milestone in Kyiv’s southward drive to reach the Sea of Azov. The next major settlement is the big regional city of Melitopol.

However, the deputy minister warned that the counteroffensive should not be compared with either Ukraine’s rapid recapture of land in the eastern region of Kharkiv last year or its success in driving Russian troops out of the city of Kherson in the southwest, because each battlefield situation is unique.

“When Kherson was liberated, remember that the armed forces were creating the conditions in order to more or less swiftly liberate it later,” she said.

Since Vladimir Putin rose to power as Russia’s president 23 years ago, few things have rocked his leadership as much as Saturday 24 June when Wagner mercenaries barrelled towards Moscow.

The “army within an army” who had been ruthlessly grinding away for months at the vanguard of some of the bloodiest fighting in eastern flanks Ukraine were now on the verge of triggering a war within a war – this time, against the Kremlin.

Below we track Wagner’s involvement in the invasion of Ukraine and their infamous- but failed- march to Moscow:

Pictures show workers clean a part of a damaged skyscraper in the “Moscow City” business district after a reported drone attack in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told a summit of the BRICS group on Wednesday that Russia wanted to end a war he said had been “unleashed by the West and its satellites” in Ukraine.

Speaking by video link to leaders of the group, who have refrained from condemning Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, he repeated the Kremlin narrative that the war was a forced response to actions by Kyiv and the West.

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Monday published his first recruitment video for the Wagner Group since organizing a short-lived mutiny against defense officials in Russia, according to information on Russian social media channels.

Prigozhin moved into the global spotlight in June with a dramatic, short-lived rebellion that posed the most serious threat to President Vladimir Putin of the Russian leader’s 23-year rule. The Wagner founder long benefited from Putin’s powerful patronage, including while he built a private army that fought for Russian interests abroad and participated in some of the deadliest battles of the war in Ukraine.

In the video, which was posted on Telegram messaging app channels which are believed to be affiliated with Prigozhin, a person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader says the Wagner Group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free.”

Two educational workers were killed and three other people wounded in a Russian attack on a school in the city of Romny in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Wednesday.

He said two people were still under the rubble.

Ukrainian saboteurs coordinated by Kyiv’s military intelligence services are said to have carried out drone attacks on airfields deep inside Russia – one of which appears to have destroyed a supersonic Russian bomber.

It is one of a number of recent assaults on Russia and its military hardware, as well as drone attacks on Moscow. The latest such attack on the capital came overnight into Tuesday.

Responding to the attack on the Russian airfields, British military intelligence said that the weekend attack is highly likely to have destroyed a nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 supersonic long-range bomber. Kyiv says Russia has used the Tu-22M3 to bomb targets across Ukraine with conventional munitions. Western military experts believe Russia has around 60 of the aircrafts.

Russia has appointed a new acting head of its aerospace forces to replace General Sergei Surovikin, who vanished from sight after a brief Wagner mercenary mutiny against the top brass in June, the state RIA news agency reported on Wednesday.

During the June 23-24 revolt, Surovikin, who once commanded Russia‘s overall war effort in Ukraine – something Moscow calls a “special military operation” – appeared in a video, looking uncomfortable and without insignia, urging Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to stand down.

Since the mutiny, which was ended by negotiations and a deal, unconfirmed Russian and foreign news outlets have said that Surovikin was being investigated for possible complicity in the revolt and being held under house arrest.

“Ex-chief of the Russian Air and Space Forces Sergei Surovikin has now been relieved of his post, while Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov, head of the Main Staff of the Air Force, is temporarily acting as commander-in-chief of the Air Force,” an unnamed source told RIA.

Surovikin earned the nickname “General Armageddon” during Russia‘s military intervention in Syria.

He was placed in charge of Russian military operations in Ukraine last October, but in January that role was handed to General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, and Surovikin was made a deputy to Gerasimov.

Russia said on Wednesday it had thwarted the latest Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow but three people were killed in a drone strike near the Ukrainian border.

The governor of Belgorod region, which neighbours Ukraine and has come under frequent attack, said the drone hit a sanatorium in a village. He said two people had died on the spot and doctors had been unable to save the life of the third.

The attempted attack in Moscow was not reported to have hurt anyone and only appeared to have caused minor damage. It was the latest in a surge of similar incidents, and once again forced Moscow’s airports to briefly suspend flights as a precaution.

The Defence Ministry said air defence forces near the capital had shot down two drones over the Moscow region’s Mozhaisky and Khimki districts.

It said a third had been jammed and lost control – but it nevertheless hit a high-rise building under construction in a Moscow business district. The same district, known as Moscow City, was hit twice in three days at the start of the month.

The state TASS news agency reported that glass planes on three floors of the high-rise building had been damaged. Unverified videos on social media showed minor damage from the two other drones which had been destroyed.