Ukraine war updates: Deadly missile attack in Kramatorsk city

Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda has warned that Wagner’s Russian mercenary troops moving to Belarus would create greater regional instability.

“If Wagner deploys its serial killers in Belarus, all neighbouring countries face even bigger danger of instability,” Nauseda said after a meeting in The Hague with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and leaders from six other NATO allies.

Stoltenberg has said that while it is too early to determine the effects of Wagner troops moving to Belarus, NATO was ready to defend itself against any threat.

“It’s too early to make any final judgment about the consequences of the fact that Prigozhin has moved to Belarus and that most likely, some of his forces will also be located in Belarus,” Stoltenberg told reporters after the alliance meeting in The Hague.

“But we have sent a clear message to Moscow and Minsk that NATO is there to protect every ally, every inch of NATO territory.”

The US Department of State has said it let Moscow send a plane to Washington, DC to pick up diplomats despite a ban on commercial flights and called for reciprocal treatment.

“The US government allowed the Russian government to send a charter flight to the United States to transport to Russia those Russian diplomats whose assignments have ended,” spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Miller said he had no details on the number of diplomats involved and said the United States wanted “strict reciprocity” from Russia.

The US has condemned Russia for its “brutal strikes” on Ukrainians after the attack on Kramatorsk.

“We condemn Russia’s brutal strikes against the people of Ukraine, which have caused widespread death and destruction and taken the lives of so many Ukrainian civilians,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said