Russia-Ukraine war live: Wagner chief Prigozhin defends armed mutiny, saying ‘society demanded it’

James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, said the aborted mutiny by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, represented an unprecedented challenge to Vladimir Putin.

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“Prigozhin’s rebellion is an unprecedented challenge to president Putin’s authority and it is clear cracks are emerging in Russian support for the war,” he told parliament.

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The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”.

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In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

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“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.

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“We stopped at that moment, when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”

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He once again accused the Russian defence ministry of targeting his troops with artillery fire, calling it the “trigger for us to move out immediately”.

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“The goal of the march was to not allow the destruction of the Wagner private military company and hold to account the officials who through their unprofessional actions have committed a massive number of errors. Society demanded it.”

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Prigozhin acknowledged that his troops had killed Russian airmen during their uprising, saying they “regretted that they were required to carry out strikes against aircraft but they were hitting our forces with bombs and rocket strikes”.

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He also claimed that the troops movement into Russia was a “masterclass” in how Russia should have carried out its 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which failed to achieve its goal of taking Kyiv.

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Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has made his first comments since Saturday.

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He said the “march” was to avoid the destruction of the private military group and that Wagner was bound to cease existence on 1 July, Reuters reports.

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Mercenary leader Prigozhin said that it had been intended to register a protest at the ineffectual conduct of the war in Ukraine, not to overthrow the government in Moscow.

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Prigozhin spoke in an 11-minute audio message released on the Telegram messaging app.

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Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, reports that two people have been killed and another wounded in an attack on Nikopol. He posted to Telegram:

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In the afternoon, the Rashists hit Nikopol with heavy artillery. A private enterprise was struck. Two employees were killed – a 51-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man.

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Another 49-year-old man was injured. He has a mine-explosive injury and a shrapnel wound. He was hospitalised in moderate condition.

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There is destruction. The consequences of the attack are being clarified.

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The claims have not been independently verified.

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Lysak’s post was accompanied by pictures of an industrial-looking building with shattered windows

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Britain is prepared for a range of scenarios in Russia, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday, noting the potentially destabilising impact of the tensions between the Wagner group and President Vladimir Putin.

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Putin faced an unprecedented challenge to his authority over the weekend from an abortive mutiny by heavily armed mercenary fighters from the Wagner group, Reuters reported.

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The extraordinary events left governments, both friendly and hostile to Russia, groping for answers to what could happen next in the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

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Sunak said Britain was monitoring events carefully.

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“It’s too early to predict with certainty what the consequences of this might be, but of course we are prepared as we always would be for a range of scenarios,” Sunak told reporters.

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“It’s a situation that we’ve been analysing and monitoring for some time because we’re aware of the potentially destabilising impact of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine and indeed, the tensions between the Wagner group and the Putin regime.”

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Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in Russia was “the monster acting against his creator”, the EU’s foreign policy chief has said.

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“The political system is showing fragilities, and the military power is cracking,” Josep Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg as he arrived for a meeting with ministers from across the 27-member bloc.

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Wagner group mercenary forces under Prigozhin seized control of military headquarters in southern Russia and began to move towards Moscow on Saturday before suddenly heading back to eastern Ukraine after a deal with the Kremlin.

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“The most important conclusion is the war against Ukraine launched by Putin and the monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is fighting, the monster is acting against his creator,” Borrell said.

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• Russia’s defence minister has appeared on state TV and emergency counter-terrorism measures have been cancelled in Moscow and surrounding regions as the Kremlin seeks to restore calm following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny.

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• The defence ministry released footage on Monday that it claimed showed Sergei Shoigu “visiting the forward command post of one of the formations of the ‘Western’ group of troops”. In the video, Shoigu is shown riding in a vehicle and arriving at a command post, where he listens to reports from officers and pores over a battlefield map. The video was released without sound and it was unclear when and where it was filmed, nonetheless, the footage showed tacit government support for Shoigu, whom Prigozhin had sought to oust with his uprising.

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• The Wagner chief has not been seen or heard from since he left Rostov with his troops on Saturday evening with an apparent deal offering him amnesty and exile in Belarus, however, Russian state-owned media reports that a criminal investigation into his actions has not ended.

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• The rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia demonstrates that Moscow has committed a strategic mistake by waging war on Ukraine, Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Monday. “The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President Vladimir Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine,” he told reporters on a visit to Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius.

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• Events over the weekend show that Russia’s military power is “cracking” and the “monster Putin has created is turning against him”, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, has said. But he warned that the instability in Russia was dangerous for Europe and must be taken into account in the coming days and weeks.

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• The weekend’s events have “exposed the weakness of Putin’s regime”, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, saying he had discussed the turmoil in Russia in a phone call with the US president, Joe Biden. In a statement, Zelenskiy called for global pressure to be exerted on Russia and said that he and Biden had also discussed expanding defence cooperation with an emphasis on long-range weapons.

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• The Russian rouble opened at a near 15-month low against the dollar in early morning trade on Monday, responding for the first time to the Wagner mutiny.

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• Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reported that Russia attacked Ukraine overnight from the south with three Kalibr cruise missiles and eight Shahed drones – two missiles and seven drones were shot down. Also, it claimed, four drones of an unknown type were launched from the north, and all of them were shot down.

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RIA Novosti, the Russian state-owned news agency, is reporting that the criminal case against Yevgeny Prigozhin over the mutiny has not been dropped. It was reported at the weekend that investigation into him would be closed as part of the deal that brought the march on Moscow to an end. RIA posted to Telegram to say:

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The criminal case against Prigozhin has not been terminated, a source in the prosecutor general’s office told RIA Novosti.

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The aborted mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia demonstrates that Moscow committed a strategic mistake by waging war on Ukraine, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday.

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“The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President [Vladimir] Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine,” he told reporters on a visit to Lithuania’s capital Vilnius.

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Reuters reports he added: “As Russia continues its assault, it is even more important to continue our support to Ukraine.”

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Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said he was cancelling the counter-terrorism regime imposed in the Russian capital during what the authorities on Saturday called an armed mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group.

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Sobyanin made the announcement in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging application on Monday, in which he thanked residents for their “calmness and understanding.”

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Reuters reports that separately, Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said the situation in the country was “stable”.

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• This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at [email protected].

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Chinese officials have described the abandoned Wagner rebellion as Moscow’s “internal affairs”, while one state media mouthpiece dismissed the divisions in Russia as an “illusion” being exploited by the west.

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Russia’s deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko held previously unannounced talks in Beijing on Sunday. It was not clear if they had been planned in advance or came as a result of the Wagner mutiny.

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China’s foreign ministry said it supported Russia in maintaining its national stability, without explicitly referring to Putin’s leadership.

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“As a friendly neighbour and comprehensive strategic partner in the new era, China supports Russia in maintaining national stability and achieving development and prosperity,” it said.

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Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has visited troops in Ukraine, Russian news agency Ria has reported, his first public appearance since the Wagner mutiny at the weekend.

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Shoigu has not commented on the rebellion, during which Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin demanded that the defence minister meet him in Rostov before calling off the mutiny.

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In a post on Telegram, Ria reported that Shoigu met Colonel-General Nikiforov, commander of the ‘western’ grouping:

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The minister also paid special attention to the organization of support for the troops involved in the special military operation and the creation of conditions for the safe deployment of personnel.

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In a video released by the Russian defence ministry, Shoigu is described as being in the western sector of the “special military operation” – Russia’s preferred term for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There is nothing in the video which gives an indication of where or when it was filmed.

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The Russian rouble has opened at a near 15-month low against the dollar in early morning trade on Monday, responding for the first time to the Wagner mutiny, according to Reuters.

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By 0415 GMT, the rouble was 2.1% weaker against the dollar at 86.50, after earlier hitting 87.2300, its weakest point since late March 2022. It had lost 2.2% to trade at 94.37 versus the euro and shed 2.1% against the yuan to 11.95.

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More from Reuters:

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With the rouble not trading over the weekend, Russian banks were offering exchange rates well above official rate beyond 90 to the dollar.

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Monday’s full trading session begins at 0700 GMT. Investors globally were watching for ripple effects from the aborted mutiny, with some expecting a move into safe havens such as US government bonds and the dollar.

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Brent crude oil, a global benchmark for Russia’s main export, was up 0.2% at $74.03 a barrel.

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Ukraine’s military says it has advanced between 600 metres and 1,000 metres on the southern and northern flanks around Bakhmut, the city which was taken by Wagner forces in May.

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The military also reported advances in the area on Saturday, as Wagner forces were marching on Moscow. It was not possible to verify the reports.

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AFP reported fierce clashes in the area on Sunday, with Ukrainian soldiers telling the news agency that the Wagner mutiny had not noticeably affected fighting in the area.

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“As it attacked yesterday, Russia continued to attack today,” one soldier said, adding. “Most people, most military, understand very well that the circus from Russia is still here.” Another said that for Ukraine, the fighting was going “according to plan”.

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Kyiv has said that the unrest in Russia offered a “window of opportunity” for its long-awaited counter-offensive.

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advances up to 1km near Bakhmut”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Mon 26 Jun 2023 12.24 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Mon 26 Jun 2023 00.32 EDT”},{“id”:”6498d2808f084ea43c440419″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine and the crisis in Russia.

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Ukraine’s military says it has advanced between 600 metres and 1,000 metres on the southern and northern flanks around Bakhmut, the city which was taken by Wagner forces in May. The military also reported advances in the area on Saturday, as Wagner forces were marching on Moscow. It was not possible to verify the reports.

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AFP reported fierce clashes in the area on Sunday, with Ukrainian soldiers telling the news agency that the Wagner mutiny had not noticeably affected fighting in the area. “As it attacked yesterday, Russia continued to attack today,” one soldier said, while another said that for Ukraine, the fighting was going “according to plan”.

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The Russian rouble has opened at a near 15-month low against the dollar in early morning trading on Monday, responding for the first time to the rebellion.

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At 0402 GMT, the rouble was 2.1% weaker against the dollar at 86.37, hitting 86.8800 on market opening, its weakest point since late March 2022, Reuters reported.

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In other key developments:

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n

• US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said the Wagner uprising showed “real cracks” in Vladimir Putin’s government and may offer Ukraine a crucial advantage as it conducts a counteroffensive that could influence the outcome of the war. “This is an unfolding story and I think we’re in the midst of a moving picture,” Blinken told the CBS News programme Face the Nation. “We haven’t seen the last act.”

n

• There has been no word from Putin or Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin since the rebellion ended and their whereabouts are unclear. Putin appeared on Russian state TV on Sunday but the comments appeared to have been recorded before the mutiny. In an interview broadcast on state television he made no reference to the rebellion but renewed his commitment to the war in Ukraine, calling the “special military operation” his top priority.

n

• Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda warned that Nato would need to strengthen its eastern flank if Prigozhin is exiled to Belarus as agreed with Moscow. Following a state security council meeting on the mercenary group’s attempt to revolt against Russian military leadership, Nausėda said: “If Prigozhin or part of the Wagner group ends up in Belarus with unclear plans and unclear intentions, it will only mean that we need to further strengthen the security of our eastern borders.”

n

• State television also said Putin would attend a meeting of Russia’s Security Council this week, without elaborating. Belarus’ Belta news agency said Putin and President Alexander Lukashenko, who negotiated with Prigozhin to end the mutiny, spoke again on Sunday, after at least two calls on Saturday.

n

• The weekend’s events have “exposed the weakness of Putin’s regime”, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, saying he had discussed the turmoil in Russia in a phone call with the US president, Joe Biden. In a statement, Zelenskiy called for global pressure to be exerted on Russia and said that he and Biden had also discussed expanding defence cooperation with an emphasis on long-range weapons.

n

• The Ukrainian president said he had also held “positive conversations” with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Polish president Andrzej Duda. They discussed “hostilities on the frontline” and the “further strengthening of Ukrainian troops”.

n

• France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said that the revolt highlighted divisions within the Russian government. Speaking to the Provence newspaper on Sunday, Macron said that Wagner’s march to Moscow “shows the divisions that exist within the Russian camp, and the fragility of both its military and its auxiliary forces.”

n

• Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he spoke to US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday, and described the Russian authorities as “weak”. Reznikov wrote on Twitter: “We talked about recent events in Russia. We agree that the Russian authorities are weak and that withdrawing Russian troops from Ukraine is the best choice for the Kremlin. Russia would be better served to address its own issues.”

n

• Russian officials said that houses and roads had been damaged because of the rebellion by the Wagner mercenaries. Nineteen houses had been damaged in the village of Yelizavetovka as a result of a firefight involving Wagner forces while about 10,000 square metres of roads in Rostov had been damaged by tank tracks.

n

“,”elementId”:”5bc7588c-f073-4dff-af3b-ad503a67ef81″}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1687753935000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”00.32 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1687753823000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”00.30 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1687753935000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”00.32 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”00.32″,”title”:”Opening summary”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Mon 26 Jun 2023 12.24 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Mon 26 Jun 2023 00.32 EDT”}],”filterKeyEvents”:false,”format”:{“display”:0,”theme”:0,”design”:10},”id”:”key-events-carousel-mobile”}”>

Key events

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The US plans to announce as soon as Tuesday a new military aid package for Ukraine worth up to $500m (£390m), showing that the US resolve to help Ukraine fight Russia was undeterred by the attempted mutiny over the weekend among Russian fighters.

The military aid package will include ground vehicles as Ukraine presses its counteroffensive, two US officials said. Expected to be included are 30 Bradley fighting vehicles and 25 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, one of the officials said.

As a part of the aid package, Ukraine will receive munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars), anti-tank weapons including Javelins and munitions for Patriot and Stinger anti-aircraft systems, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The EU’s high representative on foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, has said the EU’s view of the future of Russia had changed over the past 48 hours, with political instability and internal fragility in a nuclear power adding to the military danger already posed by Moscow.

“It is clear now that our vision of Russia is quite different. It is not just a threat because it has military capability of provoking war, which it has shown already, but also internal political stability.”

Earlier he had described the Warner mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a “monster” attacking its creator.

The situation “remain complex and unpredictable”.

Borrell said: “But the conclusion of our debate it is clear and they [EU foreign ministers] want to stress it: continue supporting Ukraine more than ever, continue and increasing support all kinds of support and in particular the military one because war raging more than ever.”

He did not elaborate on new strategies.

“It takes time to develop a strategy in view of such a state of affairs. We are working on it. I think we can say that everyone is already analysing the possible scenarios that could develop but we don’t have a ready-made strategy.”

Borrell said the EU was also concerned about a change in the role of Wagner mercenaries, previously supported by Vladimir Putin, in parts of Africa, especially Mali and Central African Republic.

In the UK, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, is making a statement about the events in Russia over the weekend.

One of the first MPs to ask a question was Liz Truss, the former prime minister.

Truss said there should be no letup in support for Ukraine, and she said its admission to Nato should be fast-tracked. She also said there should be no talk of deals with Russia, or of sanctions being lifted, until the “war criminals” had been held to account.

In reply, Cleverly said Truss was making “incredibly important” points. He said Ukraine’s record in the war showed why it should ultimately be a member of Nato. The war had truncated the period it should have to wait, he said. He said other allies thought the same.

Senior Ukrainian officials in Kyiv have argued that the attempted coup in Russia shows that Vladimir Putin does not guarantee stability – and instead makes it more likely the Russian state will collapse.

In a tweet, Mikhail Podolyak, a senior adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, pushed back against the idea that any successor to Putin might turn out to be worse. “Sometimes one can hear an opinion from our western allies: whatever Putin may be, today he is the key guarantor of stability in the Russian powder keg. The events of recent days prove us otherwise.

“Putin’s state vertical is incurably sick, weak, fearful and ready for any concessions in order to preserve physical life and material assets. Any organised military group will be able to seize control without encountering resistance … This means the longer Putin remains a nominal president and the longer he drags out this absolutely catastrophic war for Russia, the greater the resulting risk of collapse, internal bloody wars with possible looting, including of weapons of mass destruction.”

This analysis amounts to a critique of a view expressed by some in the Biden administration that Moscow could respond with nuclear weapons, if Ukraine’s counteroffensive this year results in “catastrophic success”.

Podolyak argues that the reverse is true. He wants the US and its allies to give Ukraine everything it needs so it can “deal a final blow” to the Putin regime.

They believe a successor chosen by Russia’s elite will increase stability and lead to the country’s gradual post-Putin transformation.

James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, said the aborted mutiny by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, represented an unprecedented challenge to Vladimir Putin.

“Prigozhin’s rebellion is an unprecedented challenge to president Putin’s authority and it is clear cracks are emerging in Russian support for the war,” he told parliament.

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”.

In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”.

“It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.

“We stopped at that moment, when it became clear that much blood would be spilled,” he continued, describing the progress of a military convoy that reached striking distance of Moscow. “That’s why we believe that the demonstration of what we were planning to do was enough. Our decision to turn back had two factors: we didn’t want to spill Russian blood. Secondly, we marched as a demonstration of our protest.”

He once again accused the Russian defence ministry of targeting his troops with artillery fire, calling it the “trigger for us to move out immediately”.

“The goal of the march was to not allow the destruction of the Wagner private military company and hold to account the officials who through their unprofessional actions have committed a massive number of errors. Society demanded it.”

Prigozhin acknowledged that his troops had killed Russian airmen during their uprising, saying they “regretted that they were required to carry out strikes against aircraft but they were hitting our forces with bombs and rocket strikes”.

He also claimed that the troops movement into Russia was a “masterclass” in how Russia should have carried out its 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which failed to achieve its goal of taking Kyiv.

Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has made his first comments since Saturday.

He said the “march” was to avoid the destruction of the private military group and that Wagner was bound to cease existence on 1 July, Reuters reports.

Mercenary leader Prigozhin said that it had been intended to register a protest at the ineffectual conduct of the war in Ukraine, not to overthrow the government in Moscow.

Prigozhin spoke in an 11-minute audio message released on the Telegram messaging app.

Today, Justin Trudeau said the aborted mutiny in Russia was an internal issue for Moscow to work through.

“Everyone has a lot of questions about what this actually means, but we don’t yet have a lot of answers and too much speculation right now, I think, could probably be extremely counterproductive,” the Canadian prime minister told reporters in Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, after meeting leaders of Nordic countries.

Senior Russian officials rallied around President Vladimir Putin earlier, after the aborted mutiny by mercenaries that appeared to pose the greatest threat to his 23-year rule.

Our video team has put together this series of clips that illustrate international reaction to the events in Russia at the weekend when Yevgeney Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group staged a mutiny.

The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent reports from Germany:

Germany’s defence minister has announced that the country is planning to send several thousand troops to be stationed permanently in Lithuania as part of the international response to the threat that Russia poses for the country and the Baltic region.

Boris Pistorius said in a meeting in Vilnius ahead of a major Nato gathering there in two weeks, that Germany would contribute a “robust brigade”, of several thousand soldiers, who would be able to take their families with them.

Pistorius said he had agreed with his Lithuanian counterpart, Arvydas Anušauskas, that the brigade would be built up slowly in conjunction with the arrival of appropriate infrastructure. More details as to the timeframe, and the costs involved, are expected to follow.

Earlier on Monday, Der Spiegel reported that the government in Berlin was planning to provide Kyiv with a long-term supply of ammunition. A framework agreement regarding the manufacture of the ammunition was drawn up at the end of last week between the company Rheinmetall and the defence ministry, according to the report.

According to the contract, seen by Der Spiegel, the company is to produce and deliver 330,000 rounds of 155mm bullets, as well as thousands of Howitzer rounds, with the aim of providing a long-term supply to the Ukrainian armed forces. The €60m (£51.5m/$65.5m) cost for an initial 20,000 rounds, is to be shouldered by the German government.

Parallel to the deal, Germany’s own military will be provided with a similarly large amount of ammunition. Earlier this year the defence ministry admitted that Germany’s military was woefully under-equipped, with inadequate supplies of artillery and ammunition, and had yet to live up to specifications set for Nato members.

Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, reports that two people have been killed and another wounded in an attack on Nikopol. He posted to Telegram:

In the afternoon, the Rashists hit Nikopol with heavy artillery. A private enterprise was struck. Two employees were killed – a 51-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man.

Another 49-year-old man was injured. He has a mine-explosive injury and a shrapnel wound. He was hospitalised in moderate condition.

There is destruction. The consequences of the attack are being clarified.

The claims have not been independently verified.

Lysak’s post was accompanied by pictures of an industrial-looking building with shattered windows