Yevgeny Prigozhin says children of Russian elite ‘shook their arses’ in sun while sons of poor returned in coffins

The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership does not improve its handling of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

Washington has been clear with Kyiv it does not support use of US-made equipment outside Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby says. This live blog is closed

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Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting some quotes from Denis Pushilin, who has said that the situation for Russian forces on the flanks of Bakhmut has stabilised.

Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader in occupied Donetsk, which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed, is quoted as saying on the Solovyov Live TV channel:

The peak of anxiety, when there was the most active phase, when the enemy tried to attack on the flanks and surround the guys in Bakhmut itself, has passed, according to my information.

I was talking with the guys who are there, including with Wagner, and they also say that combat-ready units have approached there, and this work is being done.

The night was not entirely peaceful. There have been a large number of drone attacks. Most of the air defence systems coped, but there are damages in Belgorod: cars, private houses, office buildings. The most important thing is that there are no casualties at all.

A gas pipeline was damaged in the Grayvoron District, a small fire is going on. Also, the restoration of electrical networks, which were damaged during the entry of the sabotage and reconnaissance group, is under way. All work to restore power supply in the Grayvoron district will be completed today. After that, water supply and cellular communications will be restored.

The paramilitaries who raided Belgorod include guerrillas with far-right connections, anti-Kremlin veterans and former members of Russia’s security services

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

As Russian militias opposing the Kremlin readied a daring cross-border raid into the Belgorod region this week, a man with slicked-down hair, in full camouflage and holding an automatic rifle stared into a camera lens.

“We are Russians just like you,” the man said in the video, later posted online. “We are people just like you. We want our children to grow up in peace and be free people so they can travel, study and were just happy in a free country. But this has no place in modern Putin’s Russia, rotten through and through from corruption, lies, censorship, restrictions on freedoms and repression.”