Ukraine war latest: Wagner 'building tent city' 15 miles from Ukraine border - as 'Russia seizes five towns in Kharkiv' (2024)

Latvia is joining Lithuania and Poland in strengthening its borders with Belarus, amid the country's military exercises and Wagner mercenary presence.

During a visit to the border, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said there was "a lot of work ahead of us to improve and to invest in the border, but there has been quite significant progress so far".

Surveillance is expected to be stepped up on Latvia's eastern border, after 5,285 people attempted to illegally cross from Belarus since the start of this year.

The number of people attempting to migrate to NATO countries has reportedly dramatically increased as tensions between Belarus and its neighbours have risen.

See our 8.26pm post for a map showing the locations of military activity in Belarus in the past few days.

We brought you news earlier that explosions had been heard in the Donetsk region (see 5.20pm post), and we can now bring you a further development...

Russian officials are claiming that Ukraine subjected the Donetsk region to an "intense" bombardment of shelling, resulting in the deaths of three people.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed governor of the region, said that "Donetsk during the day was subjected to intensive shelling by the armed formations of Ukraine", before confirming three people had died and 11 were left injured.

Both sides have accused the other of attacking the region in the last few days, and it is not clear whether Ukraine carried out any shelling in Donetsk today.

Dozens of secondhand tanks that once belonged to Belgium will be sent to Ukraine after a deal was struck between an arms dealer and an unnamed European country.

The German-made tanks were sold by Belgium to defence company OIP Land Systems over five years ago.

OIP has now agreed to sell 50 tanks to another government, which cannot be named due to a confidentiality clause in the contract.

The unnamed government will in turn pass the armoured fighting vehicles on to Ukraine.

The total value of the deal has not been disclosed - but earlier this year Belgian defence secretaryLudivineDedonder blasted private military contractors for quoting him high prices when inquiries were made about Belgium possibly buying back old military equipment it had sold off.

The tanks are old - with the Leopard 1 first made in the 1960s - but some of the tanks will be used for spare parts, while others will be repaired and put out in the field, it is understood.

A spokesperson for the Belgian defence ministry declined tocomment on the sale of the tanks.

By Ollie Cooper, live news reporter

Throughout the day, we've been bringing you updates as a flurry of military activity has been reported in Belarus.

Sky News has produced a map to help visualise what is happening where.

To the north of the country, near the city of Grodno, lies the so-called Suwalki Gap - a stretch of border territory between Belarus and Kaliningrad - a heavily militarised Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that has no land connection to the mainland.

Lithuania and Poland stand either side of this sparsely populated stretch of land, which is around 96km long.

Near this thin strip is where Belarus has reportedly decided to conduct a number of military exercises in the last few days - much to the alarm of neighbouring Poland and Lithuania.

Today, Belarusian officials confirmed that a tank unit, the 6th Independent Guards Mechanised Brigade, had been undergoing live fire tests at the Gozhsky firing range - barely 15km from the city of Grodno - which lies on the Belarus-Poland border.

Further to the south, there were reports that the mercenary Wagner Group had conducted drills of its own near the border city of Brest.

The Wagner Group, which had been fighting in Ukraine on Moscow's orders, but was later relocated to Belarus after an attempted coup against the Kremlin, took part in exercises barely a kilometre away from the Polish border throughout the last few weeks.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last week he estimated around 4,000 Wagner fighters were in Belarus.

Perhaps more alarming is the suggestion that the mercenary group is establishing a "tent city" 24km away from Belarus' southern border with Ukraine.

The Ukrainian National Resistance Centre suggests that up to 1,000 fighters could be stationed at the base at the Zyabrovka airfield, with easy access to the northern Chernihiv region of Ukraine.

You may remember that Russia moved troops into northern Ukraine through this southern part of Belarus at the very start of the conflict - seizing the Chernobyl nuclear plant and attempting to move down to the capital of Kyiv in the early days of the war.

Sky News is attempting to verify the existence of the "tent city".

Poland has reacted - agreeing to increase the number of troops on its border after authorities requested 1,000 reinforcements - as huge numbers of immigrants reportedly cross from Belarus into Poland.

It is not clear how many troops have been dispatched, but any reinforcements will join the 2,000 soldiers already stationed on the border.

In Lithuania, head of the border guards said "the possibility of provocations at our border exists [and] we are preparing for this".

Both countries met last week just south of the Suwalki Gap, promising to be ready "for any possible scenario".

Meanwhile, Ukrainian groups have noted the reported presence of the Wagner "tent city" and warned it could be a site from which "subversive activities" in the nothern Chernihiv region could be launched.

In the last few months, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine ordered his armies to reinforce the north of his country.

We reported earlier that rescue operations in Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk region, had ceased (see 4.38pm post).

Seven people died, with over 80 injured.

This video shows the devastation, which Ukraine said was caused by two missile attacks - staggered, for maximum damage.

Rescuers were able to pull eight people from the site - moving over 120 tonnes of rubble in the process.

There are 'dozens' of ships backed up on the Danube river afterRussian drone attacks on the Ukrainian maritime export infrastructure, shipping data shows.

This comes after Russia embarked on a campaign of destruction of ports, grain silos and other crucial export infrastructure following Moscow's exit from the Black Sea deal.

The river and its mouth are Ukraine's final remaining safe waterborne grain export routes.

At least 30 ships had dropped anchor around Musura Bay inthe Black Sea, which leads into the Sulina channel of the Danube, tracking data from analyticscompany MarineTraffic showed on Tuesday.

A further 20 ships anchored leading up to Izmail, andat least 20 commercial ships are waitingclose to the Romanian port of Constanta.

Before Russia pulled out of the deal in July, the Danube route saw one quarter of Ukraine's grain exports - but that will need to dramatically increase now it is the only viable route.

We've had some images through from the city of Donetsk, which has been shelled heavily again in recent days.

These pictures show local resident Olga Paramonova, 49, her mother Natalia and their neighbour Ekaterina gathered in the kitchen of Ms Paramonov's house - which has been devastated by recent strikes.

Further explosions have been reported this evening (see 5.20pm).

In a state like Russia, where media is tightly controlled, getting a sense of what ordinary people think can be tricky.

But independent opinion polls are occasionally conducted. When tracked over the years, they can give a sense of how Russia is changing in a war that rumbles on far longer than the Kremlin promised.

Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, has been analysing what polling shows in an essay for Foreign Affairs.

She writes that before the invasion, just 8% of Russians said they overtly admired Vladimir Putin, while 48% said they wanted him re-elected in 2024.

Those figures are now 19% and 68% respectively. In fact, all parts of the establishment are more popular now than before the war.

From a domestic perspective within Russia, you might think the war has worked.

War fatigue seems to be setting in, however. In polling by the Levada Centre this May, 45% believed the war would last more than another year, but 12 months earlier, that was just one in five.

That frustration and fatigue was one of the sparks for Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin's brief mutiny in June. Highly respected at the time, he railed against defence minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the army Valery Gerasimov, preaching that he would go further and faster to win the war.

"Anti-elite sentiment also propelled the rise of Prigozhin," Ms Stanovaya writes.

"Russians saw the capture of Bakhmut by Wagner fighters in May as the most important event of that month."

He ranked 158th among the most trusted Russian political figures at the start of 2022. Bakhmut catapulted him into the top five, but still below Vladimir Putin.

Yet his personal popularity took a significant knock during his march on Moscow, as did Shoigu's, in polling by Levada at the end of June.

Ms Stanovaya adds: "The mercenary commander's revolt has not inspired Russians against a struggling state but rather frightened them with the prospect of destabilisation and disorder."

It sent the message that Putin's grip on power was weaker than expected.

Drone attacks on parts of Moscow have sewed concern among the public since they started in May. Ukraine hasn't claimed responsibility for them, but they project the wrong image. After all, how can you win a war when you can't protect your own capital?

A quick scan of Russian social media showed people had genuine questions about how the attack had been allowed to happen.

But there appears to be a contradiction. How can Putin's personal ratings still be as strong as ever when there are rumblings about his weakness?

Analysts say Putin's inner circle and security services may look to assert greater control, becoming more repressive and brutal to avoid any potential for chaos and unrest.

In effect, it could encourage him to double down on opposition, instead of easing off. We've seen it already this year - as we brought to you at 1.33pm, the number of treason cases this year is reportedly on course to be more than the past 20 years combined.

We also saw a gear shift in Putin's public persona. The strongman who was famously photographed shirtless on horseback in 2009, was filmed in Dagestan a week after the mutiny, holding babies, hugging members of the public and posing for selfies.

Ms Stanovaya says that while Putin may have wanted to rehabilitate his image through Dagestan, "many observers interpreted the spectacle as a sign of the president's acute need to experience the adulation of Russian citizens—a measure perhaps of his own sense of vulnerability".

Of course, it's nearly impossible to know exactly how things have changed inside Russia. The country is too cut off to know for sure.

But symptoms of change can still be read from what the world is allowed to see.

Poland will hold elections in October of this year, amid rising tensions with Belarus.

President Andrzej Duda confirmed on X (formerly known as Twitter) that elections for the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, and for the 100-seat senate will both take place on 15 October.

Security of the country, which was the third-biggest contributor of military aid to Ukraine last year, will likely dominate the discourse of the campaigning.

We've brought you news throughout the day about Belarusian military exercises close to Polish territory (see 3.48pm post) and that Warsaw has agreed to send more troops to reinforce the border (10.10am post).

On top of this, there are reports that the Russian-backed Wagner Group has been conducting drills close to the Polish border at the city of Brest (2.29pm post).

Law and Justice, the conservative party which has governed Poland since 2015 are slightly ahead in the polls of oppositionscentrist bloc, the Civic Coalition.

Law and Justice are strong on national defence, but there has been a rise in support for a far-right political group that has been critical of helping Ukraine, named Confederation.

Russia is deliberately firing at rescue workers and has killed 78 since the war began, a spokesperson for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine has said.

Speaking at a media briefing earlier today,Colonel Oleksandr Khorunzhy said Russia was intentionally ignoring international law by targeting rescuers with shelling, killing nearly 80 and injuring 280 since the invasion in February last year.

Last night, an emergency worker was killed in Pokrovsk and a further ten were injured after one missile attack was followed by another minutes later, with some suggestions that the staggered explosions were deliberate from Russia - aiming to hit people who had gathered to help at the initial blast site.

Sky News has not independently verified these claims.