tl;dr bot

ISW will cover subsequent reports in the June 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. Russian sources widely voiced concerns that the rebellion could disrupt Russian forces’ ability to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives, but many milbloggers asserted that Russian forces are continuing to repel Ukrainian attacks. Prigozhin attempted to justify his armed rebellion by accusing the Russian MoD - namely Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov - of causing irreversible Russian losses on the battlefield and for striking a Wagner base, but notably did not criticize Putin. Russian milbloggers claimed that intensified Ukrainian assaults and decreased Russian artillery fire contributed to Ukrainian advances south of Orikhiv during the night of June 23 and on June 24. Russian forces continued ground attacks near Kreminna amid Russian claims of continued Ukrainian assaults in the area on June 24.

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have been testing Starlink since March with the system deployed in about 10 locations and in training, Yomiuri newspaper reports. TOKYO, Japan - Japan’s military is testing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service with an eye to adopting the technology next fiscal year, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday, June 25, citing unnamed government sources. The Ministry of Defense already has access to communication satellites in geostationary orbit, but use of Starlink technology, operated by Musk’s SpaceX, would add a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, the Yomiuri said. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have been testing Starlink since March with the system deployed in about 10 locations and in training, the newspaper said. Musk said in October SpaceX could not afford to indefinitely fund Starlink’s use in Ukraine.

Heavily armed Russian mercenaries who advanced most of the way to Moscow halted their approach, de-escalating a major challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, in a move that their leader said would avoid bloodshed. Reuters could not independently verify how far Prigozhin’s mercenaries had reached. Wagner’s lightning insurrection appeared to develop with little pushback from Russia’s regular armed forces, raising questions about Putin’s hold on power in the nuclear-armed nation even after the abrupt halt to Wagner’s advance. The fighters led by Prigozhin, a former convict, include thousands of ex-prisoners recruited from Russian jails. Tarnavskiy said the area had been under Russian control since separatist forces backed by Moscow seized it in 2014.

COLUMBUS, Mont. - A bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed early Saturday, plunging portions of a freight train carrying hazardous materials into the rushing water below. David Stamey, the county’s chief of emergency services, said there was no immediate danger for the crews working at the site, and the hazardous material was being diluted by the swollen river. The area is in a sparsely populated section of the Yellowstone River Valley, surrounded by ranch and farmland. The river there flows away from Yellowstone National Park, which is about 110 miles southwest. ADVERTISEMENT. The Yellowstone saw record flooding in 2022 that caused extensive damage to Yellowstone National Park and adjacent towns in Montana.

While Russia scrambled to defend itself from its own paramilitary forces on Saturday, Ukrainian leaders said their own forces managed to make advancements in Russian-occupied territory. The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin - a former ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin - marched across Russia on Saturday, coming within hours of Moscow. The BBC reported that Ukraine has made advances since launching its counter-offensive on June 4, including in the days and hours before the Wagner Group’s apparently brief insurrection. While Ukraine continued its efforts to retake territory, Russia was forced to defend itself from itself. Before the Wagner Group fighters turned back, Russian security officials were gearing up to defend Moscow.

Ukrainian troops have launched an offensive in several directions around the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and made advances, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on June 24. Russian troops tried to advance in the Kupyansk, Lyman and Marinka directions, without success, according to Maliar. On June 19, the U.K. Defense Ministry wrote in its intelligence update that Russia had begun relocating its forces from the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to strengthen the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut sectors. On June 15, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian troops were redeployed from the southern sectors to the Bakhmut area. On June 24, Ukrainian forces confirmed that they had liberated territory near Krasnohorivka, Donetsk Oblast, occupied since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014.

The Wagner group is a private military army that’s been fighting alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, but tensions over how the war has been fought have been building for months. Putin has appeared to acknowledge that Russia’s military has lost control of Rostov-on-Don and there are indications Wagner fighters have moved north to Voronezh, about 320 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian officials declined to comment directly on whether Prigozhin was leading an insurrection against Putin. U.S. officials observing the chaos unfolding in Russia Saturday have reached few conclusions about the rupture between Putin and Prigozhin. Prigozhin, 61, is the head of the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary organization that was supporting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine before Prigozhin apparently turned against Russia’s military.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said that campaigners were being ‘systemically targeted with repression’ in France, where she was attending a finance summit. It/reuterssubscribe Reuters brings you the latest business, finance and breaking news video from around the globe. Our reputation for accuracy and impartiality is unparalleled.

Russia is ramping up its efforts in the Ukraine war by doubling the number of its pens holding trained dolphins near the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, the UK defense intelligence agency said on Friday. The report of additional dolphin pens comes after Russia accused Ukraine of launching drone attacks on its Sevastopol base earlier this month. Dolphins have been used by both the U.S. and Russia’s militaries in past years, particularly during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The U.S. Navy discovered by studying Notty, a female Pacific white-sided dolphin, that dolphins could become an asset on the battlefield. In the years since the Cold War, Russia has been reported to continue mobilizing dolphins and whales, one of which appeared to have escaped its pen in 2019.

Our lost relatives just became more complex, with the discovery of ancient cave engravings in France that appear to be their handiwork. The engravings sit in La Roche-Cotard, a cave about 12 miles west of Tours. The figures-which are comprised of parallel lines made by fingers dragged across the cave wall in a number of patterns-predate Homo sapiens’ arrival in the region, leading a team of researchers to believe they were created by Neanderthals. Neanderthals are our ancestors; it appears that Neanderthals did not go extinct outright, but rather were subsumed into the gene pool of Homo sapiens as our two species interbred. In any case, Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind remains for researchers to find-genetic quirks and perks in modern humans that scientists can now trace back to our lost cousins, and-as evidenced in the new work-very ancient cave engravings.

The Wagner group is a private military army that’s been fighting alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, but tensions over how the war has been fought have been building for months. Putin has appeared to acknowledge that Russia’s military has lost control of Rostov-on-Don and there are indications Wagner fighters have moved north to Voronezh, about 320 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian officials declined to comment directly on whether Prigozhin was leading an insurrection against Putin. U.S. officials observing the chaos unfolding in Russia Saturday have reached few conclusions about the rupture between Putin and Prigozhin. Prigozhin, 61, is the head of the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary organization that was supporting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine before Prigozhin apparently turned against Russia’s military.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush what he called an armed mutiny after the private army of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin seized control of a southern city as part of an attempt to oust the military leadership. In Russia’s first armed insurrection since the Chechen wars 20 years ago, heavily armed fighters from Prigozhin’s Wagner militia were in control of the streets of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine. Prigozhin said he had captured the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District there after leading his forces into Russia from Ukraine. A Russian security source told Reuters that Wagner fighters had also taken control of military facilities in the city of Voronezh, further north on the road towards Moscow. Prigozhin, a former convict and long-time ally of Putin, leads a private army that includes thousands of former prisoners recruited from Russian jails.

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin has released a statement on Wagner Group’s armed insurrection. Russia’s history makes clear: external threats and challenges have only united our society in the past. The deputies of the State Duma, who represent the interests of Russian citizens, support the consolidation of powers and President Vladimir Putin as our Supreme Commander-in-Chief. We are confronting a common external adversary, who is advancing the ideology of Nazism to destroy the Russian citizens, threatening the security of our country. In this situation, it’s necessary to unite even more, and to do all we can for victory.

June 24 - Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush what he called an armed mutiny after rebellious mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday he had taken control of a southern city as part of an attempt to oust the military leadership. Prigozhin had demanded that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, whom he has pledged to oust over what he says is their disastrous leadership of the war against Ukraine, come to see him in Rostov, a city near the Ukrainian border that he said he had seized control of. A Russian security source told Reuters that Wagner fighters had also taken control of military facilities in the city of Voronezh, about 500 km south of Moscow. Footage on channels based in Rostov-on-Don showed armed men in military uniform skirting the regional police headquarters in the city on foot, as well as tanks positioned outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District. Russian local officials said a military convoy was indeed on the main motorway linking the southern part of European Russia with Moscow, and warned residents to avoid it.

June 24, 2023 at 12:08 AM UTCUpdated onJune 24, 2023 at 1:09 AM UTC. Argentina Economy Minister Sergio Massa will run for president as the only candidate of the government’s ruling coalition. The coalition, recently rebranded as Union por la Patria, or unity for the homeland, will run a single candidate in presidential elections to be held later this year, according to a message on Twitter. Massa, a career politician who finished third in the 2015 presidential race, will be joined by former Defense Minister Agustin Rossi as his vice presidential running mate.

Vladimir Putin made an extraordinary address to the nation on Saturday morning admitting that he was facing an armed insurrection led by former confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries. After months of feuding between the mercenary boss and Russia’s Defense Ministry, things came to a head Friday when Prigozhin accused the Russian military of ordering a rocket strike on a camp full of his men, and vowed merciless revenge. Within hours, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced charges against Prigozhin for attempting to incite an armed rebellion, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars. Prigozhin showed no sign of backing down, instead releasing a series of audio messages via his press service late Friday in which he accused the Defense Ministry of deploying fighter jets to shoot at Wagner vehicles in the Rostov region and of firing at civilians on Russian territory. While the drama between Moscow and Prigozhin played out, Ukrainian officials announced Friday their forces had retaken eight villages from Russian control as part of their first counteroffensive.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Eight Chinese war planes crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line and approached close to the island’s contiguous zone that is 24 nautical miles off its coast on Saturday, June 24, the Taiwanese defense ministry said, in a further rise in tensions. China’s air force over the past three years has routinely flown into the air space around Taiwan. Taiwan defines its contiguous zone as being 24 nautical miles from its coast. Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement that starting from around 8 am on Saturday, it had detected 19 Chinese warplanes, including J-10 and J-16 fighters. Taiwan sent up its own aircraft and dispatched ships in response and activated land-based missile systems, the ministry said, using standard wording for how its forces react to Chinese incursions.

Authorities in Moscow have clamped down on security as the head of the Wagner mercenary group claimed to have seized control of all military sites in the city of Rostov-on-Don and demanded that Russia’s military leadership come to him after accusing them of killing his forces. In videos posted on social media early on Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov and demanded that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to the city, 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow. State-run Channel 1 also broke into regular programming early Saturday for a special news bulletin in which the country’s best-known news anchor, Yekaterina Andreyeva, denied Prigozhin’s claims of a Russian military attack against his fighters and repeated the FSB statement. The string of statements marked an unprecedented escalation of infighting among Russia’s elite, which has pitted Prigozhin against defence minister Sergei Shoigu and senior military commanders. Earlier on Friday, Prigozhin had accused Moscow’s leadership of lying to the public about the justifications for invading Ukraine, denying Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was planning to launch an offensive on the Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine in February 2022.

Last year’s colossal eruption of the Hunga undersea volcano near Tonga produced the most intense lightning storm ever recorded on Earth, scientists announced in a new study published this week. Previously, the annual lightning report from Vaisala estimated The Hunga Tonga volcano explosion generated hundreds of thousands of lightning events in just six hours, the most extreme concentration of lightning ever detected. Amazing facts about the eruption and lightning storm The eruption lasted at least 11 hours, several hours longer than previously known. There were a total of 200,000 lightning flashes during the storm. More lightning info: Video shows fiery lightning strike at North Carolina motorsports company.