Ukrainian personnel have reportedly destroyed an entire base in their country associated with the Wagner group, which is a private military organization that’s been tied to the Russian government and has personnel fighting for Putin’s cause in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
The destroyed base — where Luhansk-area Governor Serhiy Haidai said just one person survived — was located in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian settlement of Kadiivka, which is in the Luhansk region. Haidai shared footage that appeared to depict the aftermath of the strike on the apparent Wagner base; he said that base was running out of a local stadium, and what looks like a burning stadium can be seen in the clip Haidai shared. Recently, retired Russian Air Force Major-General Kanamat Botashev was reportedly shot down by mUkraine in the Luhansk region. Botashev might have been in Ukraine in association with the Wagner group. Rob Lee, with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said in reference to Botashev it “appears he was flying for Wagner.”
The Russian military is attempting to take complete control of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine, which together comprise an area of the country known as the Donbas. Severodonetsk, which is in the Luhansk region and was designated by national authorities in Ukraine as that region’s administrative capital, has recently become a particularly high-profile flashpoint for ground-level fighting, and it remains as such as this week draws to a close: “Fighting continues around Sieverodonetsk,” the U.K. defense ministry said in an early Friday update. “Russia is again in control of most of the city, but its forces have made little progress in attempts to encircle the wider area from the north and south.” At this point, the current war in Ukraine has been going on for well over three months, and Ukraine claims to have killed over 31,000 Russian troops throughout that timeframe.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine threatens international food supplies. Ukraine’s Agrarian Policy and Food Deputy Minister Taras Vysotskyi told CNN: “We have lost 25% of the arable area. In terms of volumes, of course, it is more. We anticipate that [next year’s] harvest will be around 35% less than previous years, which means around 30 million tons less, 35-40% less, almost half of the previous year harvest.” NPR described Ukraine and Russia as “two of the world’s biggest food exporters,” explaining: “Global food prices shot up 12% between February and March, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), to the highest point since the FAO started tracking this index in 1990.” The war began February 24, making it positioned to aptly explain much of what’s going on here. “Lebanon’s food inflation is now among the highest in the world, with food prices rising by 1000 percent,” Al Jazeera reported in March. Lebanon gets a large portion of basic necessities from Ukraine and Russia.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 10 June 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/eMOeSJOmbI
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/IncUIxawpK
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) June 10, 2022
