Ukraine Update…545 days into the Russian move on Ukraine…Wagner head Gone in Plane Crash?….

Here’s what to know

• Prigozhin had largely disappeared from the public eye after leading the short-lived rebellion, in which his mercenary fighters briefly occupied a military headquarters in southern Russia and marched on the capital, shocking President Vladimir Putin and the country’s military leadership.
• Under a deal brokered with Putin by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to call off the mutiny in exchange for pardons and the ability to relocate his fighters to Belarus.
• Since then, Prigozhin has been spotted in his hometown of St. Petersburg attending a Russia-Africa summit, and in a blurry video shot in near-darkness that purported to show him instructing his troops in Belarus on how to conduct themselves on their new base in exile…..

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Gen. Sergei Surovikin lost his post as chief of the air force, Russian state media reported. He is linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenary group mounted a short-lived rebellion in June.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Surovikin has not been seen in public since the short-lived Wagner mutiny.

• Surovikin was the force behind Russia’s formidable defensive lines in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian drones target Moscow and a Russia border region, officials say.

• Russian drones strike a grain warehouse on Ukraine’s Danube River, a regional official says.

• In a speech to BRICS nations, Putin again blames the West for the war in Ukraine…..

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*Russian media outlet Sirena notes that Yevgeniy Prigozhin had already “died” once in a plane crash in Congo but later resurfaced. In October 2019, an An-72 military aircraft crashed with eight people aboard. It was alleged that Prigozhin was among the dead, but later it turned out that this was not the case…..

By Mary Ilyushina