Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader Russia accused of mounting a coup?

Here’s what to know about Wagner:

How did Wagner get its start?

The entity first emerged in 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and has evolved over the years to become more of a private contractor for Russia’s military. Mr. Prigozhin had been referred to as “Putin’s chef” because of his catering business, which has staged elaborate state banquets for Mr. Putin.

How did the group get its name?

The group reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a retired Russian military officer. Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitler’s. Despite the Kremlin’s denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin.

Where is the group based?

The group is not registered as a legal entity anywhere in the world. Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law. Their shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, observers say.

“It operates in a situation of opacity, there’s a real lack of transparency and that’s the whole point,” said Sorcha MacLeod, the leader of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, which has scrutinized the group. Their structure allows them to have plausible deniability and to create “distance between the Russian state and the group,” she said.

Why are the mercenaries in Ukraine?

Russia has suffered heavy losses in the war and has sent poorly trained recruits to the front lines as cannon fodder. Wagner’s forces led the nearly yearlong assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut. After an estimated tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, Russia declared victory, though there is still fighting in the area.

Where do they recruit?

Wagner’s forces include veteran fighters and mercenaries, and the group had experience fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region for years before Russia’s full-scale invasion. But the use of convicts, whom Mr. Prigozhin personally recruited from prisons, emerged prominently in the battle for Bakhmut.

U.S. officials have cited battlefield intelligence reports in crediting Russia’s success in Bakhmut in large part Wagner’s willingness to use those prisoners. Ukrainian soldiers, though, have said that by the end of the battle prisoners were less prevalent, with Wagner’s professional fighters playing a bigger role.

Where have Wagner forces been deployed?

In addition to their involvement in Syria, Libya, Central African Republic and Ukraine, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, exerting Russian influence by proxy, doing the bidding of authoritarian leaders and, at times, seizing oil and gas fields or securing other material interests. They have become more formalized and have started acting more like Western military contractors.

“There’s a trend or pattern around what happens when Wagner is involved in an armed conflict,” Dr. MacLeod said. “The conflict is prolonged, involves heavy weaponry, civilians are impacted in a substantial way, human rights violations and war crimes increase substantially, and there’s no access to justice for victims.”

But until Friday — when Russian generals accused Mr. Prigozhin of mounting a coup — Mr. Putin had not checked Mr. Prigozhin’s online accusations, despite jailing or fining many other critics of the war.

Spewing vulgarities, disregarding the law and displaying loyalty to no one but Mr. Putin, Mr. Prigozhin, a businessman known as “Putin’s chef” because of his catering contracts with the Kremlin and Russian military, has become a symbol of wartime Russia: ruthless, shameless and lawless. It was a significant turnabout for Mr. Prigozhin, who acknowledged only last fall that he had founded Wagner.

In Moscow, he has been dogged by open questions and criticism, with analysts expressing doubts that his recruitment of prisoners and endorsement of extrajudicial executions had broad appeal.

Mr. Prigozhin expanded Wagner’s presence in Ukraine after the Kremlin’s attempt to seize Kyiv, the capital, failed in the initial days of its invasion early last year. The “private military company” was at that point largely active in Syria and Africa, where it operated both on behalf of the Russian government and in the service of Mr. Prigozhin’s own business interests.

He was also active elsewhere. In February 2018, Mr. Prigozhin was one of 13 Russians indicted by a federal grand jury for interfering in the American election through the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory that spread falsehoods and waged information warfare against the United States, in support of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

The United States imposed sanctions against Mr. Prigozhin in December 2016.

Born in 1961 when St. Petersburg was called Leningrad, Mr. Prigozhin was sent to prison in 1981 for robbery and other crimes, according to Meduza, an online investigative publication.

After serving his nine-year sentence, he opened a hot-dog stand, eventually leading to an entrepreneurial career starting restaurants and convenience stores.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment.

Late Friday, Russian officials accused Mr. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization, of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir V. Putin, with Russian authorities opening an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for “organizing an armed rebellion.”

Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in March 2022 that it would block Google News from the country’s internet users after the company paused advertising in Russia and took steps to block online content that spread false information to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Roskomnadzor is part of a larger tech apparatus that Mr. Putin has built over the years to exert control through technology channels. Apart from tightly supervising Russia’s internet, authorities also use a domestic spying system that intercepts phone calls and internet traffic, spread online disinformation campaigns and hack other nations’ government systems.

After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, many Western technology companies pulled their services and products out of Russia or were blocked. TikTok and Netflix suspended their services in the country. Facebook was blocked. Twitter was partly blocked and Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and others pulled back or withdrew entirely.

Ukrainian officials say that only three of the 12 combat brigades supplied and trained by the U.S. and NATO allies so far have been engaged in fighting. Each brigade has about 4,000 troops.

“Real war is not a Hollywood blockbuster. The counteroffensive is not a new season of a Netflix show,” a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, wrote on Twitter. “There is no need to expect action and buy popcorn.”

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, also tried to tamp down expectations for the counteroffensive, saying the push to retake occupied territory from Russia was bound to be a tedious and slow process.

Still, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged that demonstrating progress was critical to motivating his own troops and reassuring foreign backers who have already poured billions of dollars into the war.

So far, Ukrainian forces say they’ve recaptured a string of villages in the south as they hunt for vulnerabilities along the 600-mile front line. As those forces advance, they are encountering extensive defensive fortifications.

“Accessible and reliable shelters across the country should be and will be a priority for leaders at all levels,” he said on Friday. He called the situation particularly galling in cities, like Kyiv, that have significant financial resources.

Mr. Zelensky said that the prosecutor general had taken legal action to reopen shelters that had been illegally withdrawn from their communities. Authorities have launched an investigation into the circumstances of the June 1 attack, detaining four people — a local government official, a security guard, the director and the deputy director of the clinic — for questioning.

In a city with hundreds of shelters that have experienced increasing aerial attacks in recent weeks, some Kyiv residents have found it difficult to find safety during bombardments. In the days following the deadly June 1 explosion, residents grieved, erecting makeshift memorials of flowers, stuffed animals and candles where the three had been killed.

Ukraine’s interior minister found that nearly 900 of the 4,800 shelters checked at the time were unsuitable for use. Many bomb shelters around the country are closed and there are few penalties for leaving a shelter locked, according to investigations by The Center for Civil Liberties, the Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights organization, and volunteers at OZON, a watchdog monitoring Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and local government.

“We are completely sold out,” said a worker at the Wholesale Prices Pharmacy, Denys Yakymenko, adding that one man had come in to buy seven boxes of the tablets in what Mr. Yakymenko saw as panic purchasing. “Last year, we had it as well.”

Another nearby pharmacy attached to a clinic, however, had not seen panic buying. Only one person had come looking for the medication, workers there said.

Potassium iodide is used to saturate a person’s thyroid with iodine so that radioactive iodine inhaled or ingested after exposure will not be retained by the gland. The tablets are one way to combat the effects of radiation exposure.

The Ukrainian capital is more than 340 miles from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, but there have been significant concerns about the safety of the plant, particularly in recent days, and a disaster there could affect an area of hundreds of miles.

On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukrainian intelligence “has received information that Russia is considering the scenario of a terrorist act at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — a terrorist act with the release of radiation.”

While Russia has denied the accusation, some in Ukraine were preparing for the worst.

Ukrainians have been through similar scares before, as escalations in the war led many to prepare for Russia to target the nuclear power plant or the deployment of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Concerns about an accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have risen in recent weeks, as Ukraine has mounted a counteroffensive in the region and the Kakhovka dam was destroyed by an explosion, draining a reservoir used to feed a key cooling pond at the plant. The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency warned earlier this week of an “extremely fragile” security situation at the plant.

Then came a cryptic warning on Wednesday from Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, that the Russians had mined the cooling pond, a charge that Moscow denied and that U.N. inspectors at the plant said they had seen no evidence of. Finally, Mr. Zelensky raised the alarm on Thursday.

Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said in a televised address on Friday that the government was convening engineers, representatives of the state emergency services, the police and doctors to prepare for an attack or act of sabotage at the plant that might release radiation. He urged people to remain calm and follow instructions from the authorities.

“The radioactive background that may be present in the air after any events will last for about one day,” he said. “We will reduce the radioactive background by 80 percent within a day.”

Mr. Klymenko said that in the case of a radiation release or a nuclear attack residents who are not instructed to evacuate should lock themselves in their rooms, close windows and turn off air conditioners to limit their exposure to radiation.

“We will clearly give all the instructions and all the rules of behavior during this time,” Mr. Klymenko said.

He also noted that exercises would be held in the coming days to prepare, but added that equipment for measuring radiation levels in Ukraine was ready for use.

As the ecological impact has started to come into focus, it has been extremely difficult to determine how many people were killed in the wide-scale flooding as waters rushed downstream and engulfed residential areas. At least 21 people have been confirmed dead and more than 100 people are still missing, according to Ukrainian officials.

But parts of the Kherson region are occupied by Russian forces, and the Ukrainian authorities say they do not have a clear picture of the human toll in those areas. Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesman for the Kherson regional military administration, said that the number of victims could be very high in Russian-held areas, but that an accurate assessment had not been possible. Russian officials have released scant information about the conditions in these areas.

“All we can get is the number of dead from the hospital,” Mr. Tolokonnikov told Ukraine’s Radio Svoboda this week. So far, about 11 people have been reported killed in the Russian-held town of Oleshky and the same number in Hola Prystan, a town farther south.

Constant shelling from Russian-held areas has complicated efforts to assess the losses on the Ukrainian-held side of the Dnipro River as well.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson regional military administration, initially said two city workers had been killed on Friday and five others hospitalized when a Russian bombardment hit their building on Friday morning. A third man died later from his wounds, Mr. Prokudin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia did not immediately provide an account of fighting in the area, and it was not possible to verify Ukraine’s claim. The Ukrainian Army’s general staff said on Friday that Russian forces had continued to focus on Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Lyman and Marinka, with over 30 clashes in those areas in the preceding day.

WHY IT MATTERS: Even as Ukrainian forces focus the initial phase of their counteroffensive in the southeast, aiming to retake areas occupied by Russian forces, they are still on the defensive in a number of areas in the east. The areas where Ms. Malyar said Russian forces were trying to advance in Donetsk have been the scene of fierce fighting almost since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion 16 months ago. All four have been deeply scarred by artillery and other fire, with only a handful of civilians remaining in each.

Because of the nature of the fighting, in which both sides have dug extensive trenches to withstand constant artillery attacks, military experts say that it is easier to defend ground than to advance. As a result, while the Ukrainians may have the upper hand in defending their positions in the Donetsk region, they could face a harder task in trying to wrest back territory in the southeast. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that it will take time before their long-anticipated counteroffensive shows substantive results.

“I know what he’s trying to say now,” Major Kirk said three days into the exercises. “Training together with all of our NATO partners over the week — things are moving now, things are happening a lot more efficiently.”

The joint air power exercises, which end on Friday after a 12-day run, have been the largest in NATO’s history. They involve 250 aircraft and around 10,000 personnel from 25 nations. Conducted in several places in Germany, they were planned well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago.

But the implications in the face of the current conflict, the largest in Europe since World War II, could not be more obvious. “As we face the biggest security crisis in a generation,” said Oana Lungescu, the NATO spokeswoman, “we stand united to keep our countries and our people safe.”

Yet language barriers are not the only problem the air defense teams have been working on. Even the most fearsome warplanes and other weapons depend upon effective communications, a particular problem when they can be drawn from any of the numerous alliance members who may use dissimilar encryption systems or instruments tailored differently even on the same aircraft. And flight instructions can vary from country to country.

Then the Kakhovka dam was destroyed.

It released a torrent of water rushing down the Dnipro River, washing over towns and villages across southern Ukraine. Thousands of houses and businesses were flooded, vast stretches of rich farmland were ravaged, and the full environmental and economic cost is likely to take years to measure.

The floods also carried mountains of debris out to the Black Sea — pieces of buildings, trees, appliances, boats, livestock carcasses and even instruments of war, like the land mines both Russian and Ukrainian forces had planted near the river. Now, the tides are carrying much of that to shore, along with a stew of toxic chemicals, fouling the famed beaches of Odesa and other coastal communities.

“The sea is turning into a garbage dump and animal cemetery,” Ukraine’s border guard agency warned last week. “The consequences of ecocide are terrible.”

Anna Lukinova and Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.

But as Mr. Modi hewed to his country’s line of strict neutrality on the war in Ukraine in his four-day state visit to the United States, Russia and its decades-long role as India’s biggest arms supplier was a pertinent backdrop to the pledges of closer defense cooperation between the United States and India.

With President Biden, he announced a deal for coproduction in India of engines for fighter aircraft; a $3 billion purchase of about 30 American Reaper drones by India; and a road map to expand cooperation between the two countries’ defense industries. The two leaders also praised new agreements on intelligence sharing and space-based quantum and other strategic technologies.

In helping India expand its defense manufacturing and diversify the sources of its arms, the Biden administration is seeking to ease India away from its long reliance on Russia for its military equipment, born of decades of U.S. policy when it held back on sales to India and instead supplied its chief rival, Pakistan.

Russia remains India’s largest supplier of arms, though it accounts for a smaller share than in years past.

The defense cooperation with the United States is also attractive to India because it will help the country toward its aim of strengthening domestic manufacturing and reducing dependence on foreign partners, whose supplies come with geopolitical strings.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, India has remained on the sidelines of efforts by the United States and its allies to isolate Russia economically and choke off its ability to fund the war. Mr. Modi has maintained military and economic ties with Russia and has stopped short of denouncing its war in Ukraine. India remains a major buyer of Russian oil.

At the same time, India has sought closer ties with the United States. Mr. Biden has called U.S. ties to India the “defining relationship of the 21st century,” and his administration has said it hopes to improve the countries’ economic and security relationship to help counter China’s growing influence.

When the United Nations voted in 2022 to condemn the invasion and remove Russia from its Human Rights Council, India abstained both times.

In April 2022, Mr. Biden urged Mr. Modi not to increase India’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. Even so, India’s oil imports from Russia have risen drastically. In a little over a year, it went from purchasing hardly any Russian oil to buying about half of what the country exports by sea.

Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli contributed reporting.

During the conference, Britain pledged $305 million in direct economic assistance to Ukraine and $3 billion in World Bank loan guarantees for the country over the next several years. The funds will help Ukraine regain macroeconomic stability, Mr. Cleverly said.

In addition, the United States announced $1.3 billion in new economic aid, to be directed toward overhauling Ukraine’s heavily damaged energy infrastructure and modernizing its ports, railways and border crossings.

Still, Mr. Cleverly’s tally of new aid includes the European Union’s previously announced $54 billion package to reconstruct Ukraine, which has yet to receive approval from all 27 member nations. And it falls far short of the $411 billion the World Bank has estimated would be needed to rebuild the country, with $14 billion needed this year for rebuilding important infrastructure.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, spoke of the steps necessary for his country’s recovery, both in the short and long term. He said Ukraine was still seeking about $6.5 billion more in aid to rebuild key infrastructure over the next year. “We have set an ambitious goal of securing pledges for this amount as a result of this conference,” he said.

Leaders at the gathering touched on the idea of using confiscated Russian public and private assets — which are estimated to be worth at least $300 billion — to help pay for reconstruction costs. Britain and the European Union are exploring legal pathways to using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.

In his address, Mr. Shmyhal said that Ukraine was preparing mechanisms to lay claim to the frozen Russian assets.

“One of the key questions we are constantly facing is who will pay the hundreds of billions for the recovery,” Mr. Shmyhal said. “First and foremost, Russia must pay for what it has destroyed.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.