Russia Ukraine war latest news Putin at risk of ‘revolution’ after Belgorod raid, Wagner chief claims

Watch live as US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin delivers opening remarks at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

Ukraine will not be able to join Nato as long as Russia’s invasion continues, the head of the alliance has said.

“To become a member in the midst of a war is not on the agenda,” Jens Stoltenberg said. “The issue is what happens when the war ends.”

Last September, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced a bid for fast-track membership of Nato after Russia’s president Vladimir Putin proclaimed four partially-occupied regions of Ukraine as annexed Russian land as part of Moscow’s invasion. Since then, there have been plenty of platitudes from Nato members about how Ukraine belongs in the alliance, but little concrete action, with some Western allies of Kyiv wary of moves that could push Nato towards an active war with Russia.

At an event organised by think tank German Marshall Fund of The United States in Brussels, Mr Stoltenberg acknowledged there were differences among the alliance over how to address Kyiv’s membership ambitions.

Russia has replaced its Wagner private military units with regular soldiers in the outskirts of Bakhmut but the group’s fighters remain inside the devastated city, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on Thursday.

Her comments appeared at least partially to confirm an announcement by Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin that his group had started withdrawing its forces from Bakhmut in east Ukraine and handing over its positions to regular Russian troops.

Russia said on Thursday it would shut Sweden’s consulate in St Petersburg and its own mission in Sweden’s second-biggest city Gothenburg, and expelled five Swedish diplomats in a tit-for-tat move after Stockholm expelled five Russians last month.

Stockholm said last month it had expelled the diplomats over espionage concerns. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the expulsions an “openly hostile step”.

It said it had withdrawn its consent for the Swedish consulate in St Petersburg from September.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said in a statement the news was “very regrettable” and “further confirmation of the negative political development in Russia and the country’s international isolation”.

“Russia has chosen to expel Swedish diplomats who acted within the framework of the Vienna Convention and conducted customary diplomatic activities in Russia. We also deeply regret the Russian announcement about the Consulate General in St Petersburg,” he said.

Relations between the two countries have worsened since Sweden last year announced its intention to join NATO following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian statement said ties had “reached an unprecedented low”.

Russia and Belarus signed a deal on Thursday to formalise the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear missiles on Belarusian territory, a step Moscow said was driven by rising tensions with the West.

“In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” TASS news agency quoted Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

The deployment of the missiles was first announced by President Vladimir Putin in March. Since invading Ukraine last year, Putin has said repeatedly that Russia would be ready to use nuclear weapons if needed to defend its “territorial integrity”.

NATO said at the time it did not see any need to adjust its own nuclear posture, though it said Putin’s nuclear rhetoric was “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Ukraine said Russia‘s ally Belarus had been “taken hostage” by Moscow.

Moscow will retain control over the weapons and any decisions on their use, Shoigu said.

TASS quoted him as saying that Iskander-M missiles, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, had been handed to the Belarusian armed forces, and some Su-25 aircraft had been converted for the possible use of nuclear weapons.

“Belarusian servicemen have received the necessary training in Russian training centres,” Shoigu was quoted as saying.

He added that the agreements signed with his Belarusian counterpart covered the procedure for establishing a “special storage facility for nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.”

Tactical nuclear weapons refer to lower-yield weapons designed for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic ones capable of wiping out entire cities. Russia has not disclosed how many tactical nuclear weapons it has.

Russia‘s Wagner mercenary group has started withdrawing its forces from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and transferring its positions there to regular Russian troops, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published on Thursday.

“We are withdrawing the units from Bakhmut. From today at five in the morning, May 25 until June 1, most of the units will rebase to camps in the rear. We are handing our positions to the military,” he said.

The video was posted on Telegram by his press service, and showed Prigozhin dressed in battle gear and standing beside a war-damaged residential block.

Prigozhin announced the capture of Bakhmut on Saturday after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

In the latest video Prigozhin, who has repeatedly voiced public criticism of senior Russian defence officials, said his forces would be ready to return to Bakhmut if the regular army was unable to manage the situation.

A senior Ukrainian presidential aide said on Thursday that Ukraine had nothing to do with a “strange and pointless” drone attack on the Kremlin and played down the findings of two U.S. media reports.

The New York Times reported that assessments by U.S. spy agencies showed that a drone attack on the Kremlin this month was probably orchestrated by one of Ukraine‘s special military or intelligence units. Moscow blames the attack on Ukraine.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, told Reuters in a statement that Russia was trying to reduce arms supplies to Kyiv by playing on Western fears of a possible escalation because of alleged Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday that the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus was driven by rising tensions with the West.

“In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” TASS news agency quoted him as saying.

The defence ministers of Russia and Belarus on Thursday signed a document on the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.

Separately, Russian media reported that Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said that the West was waging an “undeclared war” against Russia and Belarus.

Russia and Belarus, which are close allies over the conflict in Ukraine, agreed earlier this year to deploy part of Moscow’s tactical nuclear arsenal in Belarus.