US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Russia of an ‘assault’ on the global food system, saying grain prices have increased by eight per cent since it pulled out of the Black Sea initiative.

Reports of new deals to sell French arms to India and Qatar are just the latest sign that France’s defence industry is gaining pace. The news comes as Russian arms exports decline in the wake of the war in Ukraine, leading to speculation that France could soon take its place as the world’s second-largest weapons exporter after the United States.

Vladimir Putin met with Yevgeny Prigozhin just five days after the mercenary leader’s hours-long mutiny (Picture: AP/Reuters)

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former hot dog seller turned Wager group leader, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin only days after his brief mutiny.

The Kremlin claimed today that Putin met with Prigozhin and commanders on June 29 – five days after Wagner troops marched towards Moscow.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky brought home from Turkey on Saturday five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol, a highly symbolic achievement that Russia said violated a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year. Read our live blog to see how all the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

A unified coalition groups say they are ‘fighting for the whole model of democracy and human rights’.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that the mutinous chief of Russia’s Wagner group was still in Russia with thousands of fighters, but dismissed speculation that President Vladimir Putin would have Yevgeny Prigozhin killed.