Russia-Ukraine war live: US trying to ‘nail down’ what caused Prigozhin plane crash; drone aimed at Moscow destroyed

Russia reported a new drone attack on Moscow in the early hours of Saturday which again forced the authorities to temporarily shut down all three major airports serving the capital.

Reuters reports that Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was brought down by air defence systems over the Moscow region’s Istra district, about 50 km (31 miles) west of the Kremlin.

Three major Moscow airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo – suspended flights for couple of hours on Friday, the state news agency Tass reported.

Aerial attacks on Moscow and other Russian-held territory have intensified in recent weeks, including 42 drones intercepted over the Russia-held Crimean Peninsula on Friday – one of the biggest reported air assaults since the war began.

The attacks have not caused extensive damage but their intensity has forced Russian authorities to temporarily shut down airports serving the capital several times this week.

Russia blamed Ukraine for Friday’s attack and all the previous assaults, which intensified after two drones were destroyed over the Kremlin in early May.

Ukraine did not immediately comment and almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military has said previously, however, that destroying Russia’s military infrastructure helps a counteroffensive that Ukraine began in June.

President Joe Biden has said US officials are trying to determine precisely how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down, leaving no survivors.

Russia earlier on Friday criticised Biden for expressing his lack of surprise that Prigozhin had been killed in a plane crash and cautioned that it was not appropriate for Washington to make such remarks, Reuters reports.

Asked by reporters what brought down the Wagner leader’s jet in Russia, Biden said on Friday:

I’m not at liberty to speak to that precisely … We’re trying to nail down precisely, but I don’t have anything to say.

Russian president Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to Prigozhin’s family on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader’s plane crashed two months after he led a mutiny against Russia’s military chiefs.

Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a look at the latest key developments.

President Joe Biden has said US officials are still trying to determine exactly how Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was brought down in Russia, killing all 10 people aboard.

Biden said on Friday the US was “trying to nail down precisely” the cause of Wednesday’s jet crash in the Tver region north-west of Moscow.

Western intelligence officials have said Prigozhin was most likely to have been killed by an onboard explosion on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said on Friday that claims of Putin’s involvement were “an absolute lie”.

Meanwhile, Russian air defences destroyed a drone as it approached Moscow, the city’s mayor said early on Saturday.

Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties or damage on initial information.

The launch is the latest in a string of drone attacks on the capital region.

More on both those stories shortly. In other news:

• A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company said. Russian media, mainly associated with a Wagner Telegram channel, had linked a second business jet with the mercenary group and reported it was also in the air at the time of the crash.

• Russian investigators said they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the crash scene in Russia’s Tver region. “Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media on Friday.

• Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister has said after Prigozhin’s presumed death. “There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Friday. “They are broken.”

• The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. The training would begin after the pilots receive English-language training next month, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training at an airbase in Arizona, he added.

• Turkey sees “no alternative” to the original grain export agreement Ukraine struck with Russia, Ankara has said, dismissing an alternate route reportedly being considered by the US. Russia last month pulled out of the deal that enabled Ukraine to export grain from three Black Sea ports but Ukraine this month sent a cargo vessel to Istanbul to test the alternate route. However, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, said Ankara was focused on reviving the original deal.

• Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.

• German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning last October.