Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would leave the destroyed city of Bakhmut on May 10, announcing the withdrawal in a sudden statement that followed a dramatic video slamming Russia’s top defense officials.

“I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on 10 May 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds,” Prigozhin said in the statement translated by Reuters.

“I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly.”

Wagner has largely led the fighting in Bakhmut, the site of the war’s longest and most violent battle, but has complained of lack of support and ammunition from Moscow. In early April, Prigozhin claimed his forces controlled more than 80% of the eastern city.

Ukraine has refused to relinquish the entirely ruined city, which is often referred to as a “meat grinder,” because its officials say that Russian control over it would allow Russian forces much easier access to the rest of eastern Ukraine.

— Natasha Turak

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said he foreshadowed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine back in 2011, saying that he believed it was “just a matter of time,” according to a feature published by the Financial Times.

“Bill Clinton said he realised in 2011 it was ‘just a matter of time’ before Vladimir Putin would move on Ukraine after a chilling discussion with Russia’s president in Davos, Switzerland,” the FT piece read.

“During that encounter, Clinton said, Putin rejected a US-brokered deal agreed by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to respect Ukraine’s territory in exchange for Kyiv relinquishing its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal.”

“‘Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 — three years before he took Crimea — that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,’ the former US president recalled. ‘He said . . . ’I don’t agree with it. And I do not support it. And I am not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day forward it was just a matter of time.'”

— Natasha Turak

The leader of Russian mercenary firm Wagner Group issued a scathing criticism of Russia’s armed forces in a gruesome video where he was filmed surrounded by the bodies of dead Russian soldiers.

“We have a 70% shortage of ammunition. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the [expletive] ammunition?”

Yevgeny Prigozhin screamed in the video, whose expletives were bleeped out by Russian media, according to a Reuters translation.

The names in reference are Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

The video encapsulated a many months-long feud between Wagner and Russia’s top military brass.

Prigozhin said that those responsible would go to hell, and that Wagner’s losses would be a fraction of what they are had the forces been properly supplied.

“These are Wagner lads who died today. The blood is still fresh,” Prigozhin said, according to Reuters.

“They came here as volunteers and they’re dying so you can get fat in your offices.”

— Natasha Turak

Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “any self-respecting country” would stop talking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after an attempted drone strike over the Kremlin that Moscow says was carried out by Ukraine.

“As for the terrorist attack over the Kremlin and over the residence of the state leader, we have made our attitude clear. I think we shouldn’t wait for any more incidents and provocations,” he said while on a visit to India.

“Zelenskyy and his team are doing everything in the media space, and in their practical steps, to ensure that any self-respecting country would refrain from talking to them or communicating with them. This is a fact,” Lavrov said.

Ukraine has claimed that the drone attack Wednesday was staged by Moscow, while the U.S. rejected Russian claims that Washington was behind it.

— Natasha Turak

The director of America’s top spy agency warned lawmakers Thursday that Russia and China will take advantage of the U.S. potentially defaulting on its debt.

“It would be almost a certainty that they would look to take advantage of the opportunity,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said before the Senate Intelligence Committee when asked about the national security consequences of the U.S. teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff.

Haines, who leads America’s 18 intelligence agencies, said that Russia and China would attempt to highlight “the chaos within the United States, that we’re not capable of functioning as a democracy.”

In February, former Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel warned that the federal government defaulting on its bills, a historic first, will weaken America’s national security.

“The consequence of debt-ceiling brinksmanship is a dangerous self-inflected wound that tells both our friends and our enemies that we cannot be trusted. Such brinksmanship weakens our national security,” the former Pentagon chiefs wrote in a letter.

The former secretaries added that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will be watching to measure the credibility of U.S. economic power” while Washington leads efforts to provide Kyiv with security assistance and coordinate global sanctions on Moscow.

Read the full story here.

— Amanda Macias

The Biden administration issued another round of denials that it directed or helped support Wednesday’s alleged drone attack on the Kremlin.

National security council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House that the Kremlin’s allegations of U.S. involvement are “just lies.”

“We’re still trying to gather information about what happened, and we just don’t have conclusive evidence one way or the other. I know there are lots of questions, but we just don’t have conclusive evidence. One thing I can tell you for certain is that the United States was not involved in this incident in any way contrary to Mr. Peskov’s lies. That’s what they are, just lies,” Kirby said, referring to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Meanwhile, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel declined to say whether U.S. officials have spoken to Russian counterparts about the attack.

“The United States was not involved nor had a role in this at all,” Patel said, adding that the U.S. is “still unable to confirm the authenticity of these reports.”

— Amanda Macias

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not spend the night at the Kremlin, following a drone attack on Wednesday.

Russia has claimed that Ukraine and the U.S. were behind the alleged drone attack.

Haines told the Senate Armed Services Committee that intel agencies do not currently have enough information to determine who was behind the attack.

— Amanda Macias