Liveblog: ++ Prigozhin raises serious allegations against Moscow ++

Mercenary chief Prigozhin accuses the Russian army of mining retreat routes. According to the local governor, a power plant in Belgorod is on fire after a drone strike. All developments in the live blog.

A week before the major military exercise “Air Defender 2023”, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius emphasized the importance of the Luftwaffe maneuvers for the security of Germany and its allies. “Of course we are doing everything we can to keep the effects on the population and civil air traffic as low as possible. We have been coordinating this very closely with everyone involved for months,” said the SPD politician on the sidelines of a trip to Asia to the German press conference Agency.

From June 12 to June 23, 25 nations with 250 aircraft and 10,000 soldiers are taking part in the “Air Defender” exercise under German leadership. NATO is involved. “With Air Defender 2023′ as the largest air force deployment exercise since NATO was founded, we are strengthening the alliance and transatlantic relations. Together with our allies, we are showing that we can defend alliance territory quickly and effectively,” said Pistorius.

In the Russian region of Belgorod, according to the region’s governor, a power plant caught fire in a drone attack. “In the Belgorod region, one of the power plants is on fire. The preliminary cause of the fire was an explosive device dropped from a drone,” writes Vyacheslav Gladkov on the news app Telegram. “There were no injuries.”

The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has again raised serious allegations against the regular Russian army. In mid-May, soldiers mined a road on which his fighters wanted to drive out of the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has since been conquered, Prigozhin said on Telegram in the evening. He also published a document that is supposed to be an operational log from mid-May and in which there is also talk of exchanges of fire between Wagner mercenaries and soldiers. These allegations could not be verified. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow did not comment.

Prigozhin made similar allegations a few days ago. The US Institute for War Studies (ISW) sees it as a possible attempt by the 62-year-old to divert attention from recent tensions between his troops and fighters of Chechnya’s ruler Ramzan Kadyrov through the dispute with the Defense Ministry.

According to Russia, it has foiled a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Ukraine opened the offensive on Sunday with six armored and two armored battalions, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The alleged offensive began on Sunday morning on five front sections, it said. The Ukrainian armed forces have lost more than 250 soldiers. The information could not be independently verified. Initially, there was no comment from Kiev.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready for a counter-offensive to recapture territories occupied by Russia.