The head and founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was on the plane that crashed in the Tver region, north of Moscow, Rosaviatsia, Russia's civil aviation authority, confirmed.
As previously reported, all seven passengers and three crew members died in the plane crash.
Among the passengers, as they stated, was Dmitry Utkin, Prigozhin's "right-hand man" and co-founder of Wagner.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated that Turkey does not recognize the annexation of Crimea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would end Russia's occupation of the Crimean peninsula and all other Moscow-controlled areas in his country, Reuters reports.
Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014, which most other countries did not accept, and has occupied other parts of Ukraine since the start of its full invasion in February 2022.
Kiev launched a counter-offensive with the aim of regaining the lost land.
"Crimea will be deoccupied like all other parts of Ukraine which, unfortunately, are still under the control of the occupiers," Zelenskiy said at the international conference on Crimea in which representatives of more than 60 countries and international organizations are participating.
Four educators were killed and four others were injured in a Russian attack on a school in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Romny on Wednesday, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said.
Klimenko said that the bodies of the school principal, deputy principal, secretary and librarian were pulled from the rubble by rescuers, reports Reuters.
He said that four local residents were injured while passing the school in Romni.
A Russian drone attack on the Danube port of Izmail in southern Ukraine on Wednesday destroyed 13.000 tons of grain, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said, according to Reuters.
Kubrakov said on the Telegram messaging app that the port's export capacity had been reduced by 15 percent by the overnight strike, adding: "Russia is systematically hitting grain silos and warehouses to stop the export of agricultural products."
Two educators were killed and three people were wounded in a Russian attack on a school in the city of Romny in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
Russia has named a new acting head of its aerospace forces to replace General Sergei Surovikin, who disappeared after a brief mutiny by Wagner's mercenaries against the top in June, state news agency RIA reported on Wednesday.
During the rebellion of 23-24. In June, Surovikin, who once commanded Russia's overall war effort in Ukraine - what Moscow calls a "special military operation" - appeared in an unmarked video calling on the leader of Wagner's mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to step down, Reuters reports.
Since the rebellion, which ended in a negotiated settlement, unconfirmed Russian and foreign news reports have reported that Surovikin is being investigated for possible complicity in the rebellion and is being held under house arrest.
"The former head of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Sergei Surovikin, has now been relieved of his duties, while Lieutenant General Viktor Afzalov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force, is temporarily the acting Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. Force," an unnamed source told RIA.
Surovikin earned the nickname "General Armageddon" during the Russian military intervention in Syria.
He was in charge of Russian military operations in Ukraine last October, but in January that role was given to General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, and Surovikin was appointed as Gerasimov's deputy.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that air defense forces shot down two drones near the capital over Mozhai and Khimki districts in the Moscow region.
A third were said to have become stuck and lost control - but still crashed into a high-rise building under construction in Moscow's business district. The same district, known as Moscow City, was hit twice in three days at the beginning of the month, reports Reuters.
The state news agency TASS reported that the glass panels on three floors of the multi-story building were damaged. Unverified videos on social media show less damage than the other two drones that were destroyed.
There was no comment from Ukraine, which rarely claims direct responsibility for drone attacks on Russian territory or Russian-controlled areas, but which appears to have stepped up such attacks since two drones were destroyed over the Kremlin in early May.
The governor of Russia's Belgorod region said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed when a Ukrainian drone struck a sanatorium in the village of Lavi, near the border with Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Russia targeted Ukrainian ports in the southern Odesa region and the Danube River area in drone strikes overnight, setting fire to at least one grain warehouse, Ukraine's military and local authorities said Wednesday.
The attacks were the latest Russian attacks on port infrastructure on the Danube, which Ukraine uses to transport grain to the Romanian port of Constanta, since Moscow abandoned a UN-brokered deal that allowed Kiev to ship grain across the Black Sea, Reuters reports.
"The enemy hit grain warehouses and a production and transshipment complex in the Danube region. A fire broke out in the warehouses and was quickly contained. Firefighters continue to work," the Ukrainian military said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
The army released photos showing piles of grain under a burned and shattered shell warehouse.
Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said the attack on the region lasted three hours and that the Ukrainian Air Force destroyed nine Russian drones.
"Unfortunately, there were hits in the production and transshipment complexes where the fire broke out... The damage also includes grain warehouses," Kiper said on Telegram.
Ukraine's air defenses said later Wednesday that they had shot down 11 of 20 drones launched by Russia overnight.
An industry source told Reuters that Ukrainian ports on the Danube were the main targets. Ukraine manages two large ports on the Danube - Izmail and Reni.
Danube ports accounted for about a quarter of Ukraine's grain exports before Russia pulled out of an agreement in July to provide safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports across the Black Sea.
The ports have since become the main outlet, and grain is also sent by barge to the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța for onward shipment.
Global grain prices rose earlier this month, when Russia attacked Izmail - Ukraine's main inland port across the Danube from Romania and the Reni port.
Russian authorities said Tuesday evening that they had sent two planes to intercept two unmanned aerial vehicles, the MK-9 Ripper and the Bajraktar TB2, over the Black Sea, without specifying whose drones they were.
"Two Russian planes were sent to prevent a possible violation of Russia's border and to block the drone's electronic guidance mission," said the Ministry of Defense there.
It is added that after that the drones changed their path and left the air zone in which they were located.
(BETA)
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