Explosion at Russian uranium enrichment plant cause radiation concerns.

An explosion at a uranium enrichment plant in Russia's Urals region on Friday prompted Russia's state nuclear corporation to publish a statement to ease fears.

At around 9 a.m. local time, a cylinder with depleted uranium hexafluoride "depressurized" in a workshop at the Ural Electrochemical Combine in Novouralsk, the statement from Rosatom, which owns the plant—the largest uranium enrichment plant in the world—said.

Uranium hexafluoride is a chemical used during the uranium enrichment process.
Russian media outlets often use euphemisms such as "loud bang" or "depressurized" instead of "blast" or "explosion," allegedly to avoid sowing panic and to maintain a "favorable information landscape.
Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti cited a source in emergency services as saying that one person had died and that radiation levels at the facility were normal.

"The workshop is being sanitized. The rest are operating normally," the company said. "Measurements of background radiation were carried out at the site. It amounted to 0.17 microsieverts, which corresponds to natural values."

One person, a 65-year-old "dedicated equipment maintenance technician" was killed in the "tragic incident" at the plant, Rosatom told Newsweek in a statement.

"The General Director of Ural Electrochemical Plant, Alexander Dudin, together with the entire plant collective and the State Corporation 'Rosatom,' express heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased for their devastating loss," it said.

More than 100 workers from the plant were being taken to a nearby hospital for examination and are likely not injured, according to the Russian news outlet E1, which added that doctors who were on vacation and not working were called in "urgently." 

Rosatom said workers present at the time of the incident "underwent medical examination at the Central Clinical Hospital No. 31 of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency of Russia in Novouralsk."

"We are relieved to report that most workers have been discharged after undergoing decontamination procedures, and their lives and health are not at risk," the statement said.

Rosatom said it has formed a "dedicated commission" to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.

"Our priority is to identify the root causes and implement robust preventive measures to eliminate any chance of recurrence," it said.

Vyacheslav Tyumentsev, the head of Novouralsk, asked residents not to panic and said the situation "is under control," Russian media reported.

"There is no danger of any kind for residents of the city of Novouralsk or the staff of the plant," said the plant's deputy production manager, Yuri Mineyev, adding that the factory was working normally.

"Diverse organic matter" found on Mars by Nasa rover

 

THE INDEPENDENT: 

Diverse types of organic molecules have been found on Mars by a Nasa rover.

The material was detected by the Perseverance rover in the Jezero Crater on Mars, scientists said.

Researchers are unable to rule out that the materials have a “biotic” origin, or are the result of life on the planet. But they might also be formed in other ways, such as interactions between water and dust or having been dropped onto the planet by dust or meteors.

The findings suggest that Mars may have had a far more active past than we realised – and could have significant implications for the search for alien life.

According to the study, understanding more about Martian organic matter could shed light on the availability of carbon sources, with implications for the search for potential signs of life.

Cuba calls US nuclear submarine in Guantanamo Bay 'provocative escalation'

Cuba calls US nuclear submarine in Guantanamo Bay 'provocative escalation'
By Nelson AcostaJuly 11, 202312:21 PM CDTUpdated an hour ago

HAVANA, July 11 (Reuters) - Cuban authorities on Tuesday said the U.S. recently had a nuclear-powered submarine at its military base at Guantanamo Bay and called the action a "provocative escalation" of tensions weeks after Washington alleged that there was a Chinese spy base on the island.

"The presence of a nuclear submarine there at this moment makes it imperative to wonder what is the military reason behind this action in this peaceful region of the world," Cuba's foreign ministry said in a statement. Washington did not confirm that there was a submarine at the naval base.

The ministry did not specify whether the submarine was armed. It said it was at the base from July 5 to July 8.

The U.S. State Department declined to give information about movements of military assets. It said Cuba was looking to distract from the two-year anniversary of largest street protests seen in Cuba since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. On Monday, Cuba had accused the U.S. of inciting that unrest.

Overall this is an incident that is really a symptom of the fact that Cuba has once again become caught between superpowers in what appears to be the emergence of a new Cold War," he said.

Cuba has long called for the U.S. to close its 121-year-old naval base on the eastern part of the island, along with the military prison Washington established there in 2002.

Critics have said the Guantanamo Bay prison has been used for arbitrary detention and torture of people suspected of terrorism.

In June, Havana and Beijing rejected reports citing U.S. officials alleging that China was using Cuba as a spy base. The United States has presented no evidence of such a base.

Tuesday's ministry statement warned of the dangers of circulating nuclear submarines and armed forces across the Caribbean, adding that a history of U.S. military bases across the region threatened its peoples' sovereignty.

The ministry also reiterated calls for the United States to end its military presence on the island, saying this served only to "outrage Cuba's sovereign rights" and carry out acts of detention, torture and the systemic violation of human rights.

It added that U.S. military leaders have made public plans to use their "war capabilities" to realize U.S. ambitions over the region's natural resources.

Russian intelligence services threatened harm to the families of Wagner leaders/organizers will be brought to justice.

The leader of the Kremlin’s shadowy private army, the Wagner Group, rebelled against top military officials over the weekend after a Russian rocket attack killed dozens of his soldiers.

In a dramatic show of force against his own government, Yevgeny Prigozhin led his soldiers toward Moscow on a “march for justice” to remove what he labeled as Russia’s incompetent and corrupt senior military leadership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized Prigozhin’s “armed mutiny,” accusing him of “treason.” Hours later Prigozhin, just 125 miles from the capital, announced he was going to turn around. “Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our convoy around and going back to our base camps, according to the plan,” he declared in an apparent deal to end the insurrection.
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In a dramatic show of force against his own government, Yevgeny Prigozhin led his soldiers toward Moscow on a “march for justice” to remove what he labeled as Russia’s incompetent and corrupt senior military leadership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized Prigozhin’s “armed mutiny,” accusing him of “treason.” Hours later Prigozhin, just 125 miles from the capital, announced he was going to turn around. “Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our convoy around and going back to our base camps, according to the plan,” he declared in an apparent deal to end the insurrection.

British security forces told the Telegraph on Monday that Russian intelligence services had threatened harm to the families of Wagner leaders who were participating in the mutiny. This new information could be a potential explanation as to why Prigozhin called off the march to Moscow.

Insights from British intelligence also claim that Putin is now looking to absorb Wagner soldiers into the country’s military and dismiss all top Wagner commanders. The report cited a British intelligence assessment that about 8,500 Wagner fighters were involved in the mutiny, contradicting public reports that the number was closer to 25,000.


The leader of the Wagner mercenary group defended his short-lived insurrection in a boastful audio statement Monday as the Kremlin tried to project stability, with authorities releasing a video of Russia’s defense minister reviewing troops in Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said he wasn’t seeking to stage a coup but was acting to prevent the destruction of Wagner, his private military company. “We started our march because of an injustice,” he said in an 11-minute statement, giving no details about where he was or what his plans were.

The feud between the Wagner Group leader and Russia’s military brass has festered throughout the war, erupting into a mutiny over the weekend when mercenaries left Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city. They rolled seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday.


The Kremlin said it had made a deal for Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers. There was no confirmation of his whereabouts Monday, although a popular Russian news channel on Telegram reported he was at a hotel in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

Prigozhin taunted Russia’s military on Monday, calling his march a “master class” on how it should have carried out the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He also mocked the military for failing to protect Russia, pointing out security breaches that allowed Wagner to march 780 kilometers (500 miles) toward Moscow without facing resistance.

The bullish statement made no clearer what would ultimately happen to Prigozhin and his forces under the deal purportedly brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Prigozhin said only that Lukashenko “proposed finding solutions for the Wagner private military company to continue its work in a lawful jurisdiction.” That suggested Prigozhin might keep his military force, although it wasn’t immediately clear which jurisdiction he was referring to.

The independent Russian news outlet Vyorstka claimed that construction of a field camp for up to 8,000 Wagner troops was underway in an area of Belarus about 200 kilometers (320 miles) north of the border with Ukraine.

The report couldn’t be independently verified. The Belarusian military monitoring group Belaruski Hajun said Monday on Telegram that it had seen no activity in that district consistent with construction of a facility, and had no indications of Wagner convoys in or moving towards Belarus.

Though the mutiny was brief, it was not bloodless. Russian media reported that several military helicopters and a communications plane were shot down by Wagner forces, killing at least 15. Prigozhin expressed regret for attacking the aircraft but said they were bombing his convoys.

Russian media reported that a criminal case against Prigozhin hasn’t been closed, despite earlier Kremlin statements, and some Russian lawmakers called for his head.

Andrei Gurulev, a retired general and current lawmaker who has had rows with the mercenary leader, said Prigozhin and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin deserve “a bullet in the head.”

And Nikita Yurefev, a city council member in St. Petersburg, said he filed an official request with Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, asking who would be punished for the rebellion, given that Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed in a Saturday morning address to punish those behind it.

It was unclear what resources Prigozhin can draw on, and how much of his substantial wealth he can access. Police searching his St. Petersburg office amid the rebellion found 4 billion rubles ($48 million) in trucks outside the building, according to Russian media reports confirmed by the Wagner boss. He said the money was intended to pay his soldiers’ families.

Russian media reported that Wagner offices in several Russian cities had reopened on Monday and the company had resumed enlisting recruits.

In a return to at least superficial normality, Moscow’s mayor announced an end to the “counterterrorism regime” imposed on the capital Saturday, when troops and armored vehicles set up checkpoints on the outskirts and authorities tore up roads leading into the city.

The Defense Ministry published video of defense chief Sergei Shoigu in a helicopter and then meeting with officers at a military headquarters in Ukraine. It was unclear when the video was shot. It came as Russian media speculated that Shoigu and other military leaders have lost Putin’s confidence and could be replaced.

Before the uprising, Prigozhin had blasted Shoigu and General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov with expletive-ridden insults for months, accusing them of failing to provide his troops with enough ammunition during the fight for the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

Prigozhin’s statement appeared to confirm analysts’ view that the revolt was a desperate move to save Wagner from being dismantled after an order that all private military companies sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1.

Prigozhin said most of his fighters refused to come under the Defense Ministry’s command, and the force planned to hand over the military equipment it was using in Ukraine on June 30 after pulling out of Ukraine and gathering in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. He accused the Defense Ministry of attacking Wagner’s camp, prompting them to move sooner.

Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said on Twitter that Prigozhin’s mutiny “wasn’t a bid for power or an attempt to overtake the Kremlin,” but a desperate move amid his escalating rift with the military leadership.

While Prigozhin could get out of the crisis alive, he doesn’t have a political future in Russia under Putin, Stanovaya said.

It was unclear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine, where Western officials say Russia’s troops suffer low morale. Wagner’s forces were key to Russia’s only land victory in months, in Bakhmut.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said Monday that Ukraine had “gained impetus” in its push around Bakhmut, making progress north and south of the town. Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken Rivnopil, a village in southeast Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting.

U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders of several of Ukraine’s European allies discussed the events in Russia over the weekend, but Western officials have been muted in their public comments.

Biden said Monday that the U.S. and NATO were not involved in the short-lived insurrection. Speaking at the White House, Biden explained that he was cautious about speaking publicly because he wanted to give “Putin no excuse to blame this on the West and blame this on NATO.”

“We made clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Biden said the U.S. was coordinating with allies to monitor the situation and maintain support for Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg concurred Monday that “the events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter.”

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy had contacted Russian representatives Saturday to stress that the U.S. was not involved in the mutiny.

The events show the war is “cracking Russia’s political system,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

“The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now,” Borrell said. “The monster is acting against his creator.”


UPDATE; WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday the organizers of an armed mutiny over the weekend will be “brought to justice” and that his military would have put down the rebellion anyway.

The Russian president’s comments were his first since hundreds of Wagner Group mercenaries, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, marched on Moscow over the weekend in what appeared to be an armed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.


“This is criminal activity, which is aimed at weakening the country. This was a colossal threat,” said Putin in a televised address to the nation.

In exchange for his turning back, a criminal case against Prigozhin was dropped and he was permitted to leave Russia for Belarus. As of Monday afternoon, Prigozhin was believed to be staying in a hotel in Minsk that did not have any windows, according to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The mutiny took the world by surprise, and catapulted a taboo question to center stage across Russia: Whether Putin’s grip on power might not be as ironclad internally as it looks from the outside.

On Monday, Putin said any “armed rebellion would have been put down anyway.”

After they took control of the southern city of Rostov on Saturday, Wagner fighters and hundreds of armored vehicles came within 200 miles of Moscow before Prigozhin ordered them to turn back.


In his speech Monday, Putin thanked those involved in the mutiny “who made the only right decision - they did not go to fratricidal bloodshed, they stopped at the last line.”

He then said Wagner Group soldiers would be permitted to join the Russian army, to leave the country for neighboring Belarus, as Prigozhin did, or simply “to return to your family and friends.”

Putin’s decision to grant unilateral clemency to the Wagner mercenaries seemed out of character to some Russia scholars, coming as it did from an autocratic ruler who regularly jails civilians for publicly criticizing his administration.

Prigozhin has said his goal was never to seize political control of the Kremlin and overthrow Putin, but rather to protest a planned dissolution of his Wagner Group, his private army.

Head of Wagner Group says Russia attacked them/war based on lies.

ABC NEWS/VARIOUS sources 

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said the Kremlin's justifications for its invasion of Ukraine are based on lies, in another extraordinary attack on the country's military and political leadership.

Prigozhin, once a  key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a video posted Friday contradicted the public explanations for the war, including the central claim made by Putin that the 2022 invasion was necessary to prevent an attack from Ukraine.

Since launching the war, Putin has painted it as a defensive operation to protect Russia. He's claimed it was needed to stop imminent large-scale attacks from Ukraine on largely Russian-speaking eastern regions in Donbas that Russia has occupied since 2014.

But in his video address, Prigozhin, whose fighters have played a leading role in the war, said that was not true and there had been no imminent risk of attack from Ukraine.

"The ministry of defense now is trying to deceive society, the president, and tell a story there was insane aggression from Ukraine and that they intended to attack us with the whole NATO bloc," Prigozhin said.

"The Special Military Operation that began on Feb. 24 was started for completely different reasons," he said.

Prigozhin has been in a public feud with Russia's defense ministry and its head Sergey Shoigu for months, blaming them for Russia's disastrous prosecution of the war. As Russia has faced deepening setbacks in Ukraine, he has become an unexpected, prominent critic of Russia's leadership, using social media to post almost daily video updates excoriating it as incompetent, but stopping short of directly criticizing Putin.

Prigozhin also said in Friday's video that the two goals Putin announced at the start of the war— the "demilitarization" and "de-Nazification" of Ukraine—were "pretty stories."

Instead, he blamed Shoigu, the defense ministry and a "clan of oligarchs" for starting the war. He accused Shoigu of seeking glory and wanting "to rob" Ukraine and divide up its assets.

Prigozhin's attacks are extraordinary in Russia, where public criticism of the authorities risks harsh punishment. Since the war began last year, criticism of the military leadership has become a criminal offense.

That has led to speculation among experts about why Prigozhin is enjoying such license. Some observers have suggested Prigozhin might be speaking with the tacit approval of the Kremlin, which may be looking to shift blame for the war from Putin by scapegoating other figures such as Shoigu.

Prigozhin did not directly attack Putin in the video, instead claiming the president was being deceived by his generals and other figures around him. In reality though, Putin—not Shoigu—has taken the lead in making the claims around Donbas and de-Nazification the central justifications of the war, reciting them in his speech declaring his "Special Military Operation."

The implicit picture Prigozhin gave of Putin as weak and out of touch was also remarkable, implying he was manipulated by a clan of wealthy businessmen around him and lied to by his military. The war, as described by Prigozhin, was not about protecting Russia or resisting NATO expansion, but instead greed.

"The war was needed by oligarchs," Prigozhin said. "It was needed by that clan that today practically rule Russia." He added Russia's "sacred war" had "turned into a racket."

Prigozhin lambasted Russia's military leadership for the huge casualties its troops have suffered. He accused Shoigu of hollowing out the armed forces under Putin through corruption and cronyism, crippling its ability to fight effectively and then catastrophically botching the invasion after believing it would be an easy victory.

"There is a total absence of management," Prigozhin said, calling Shoigu a "weak grandfather."

"Someone should answer for the lives of those soldiers," Prigozhin said in Friday's video.

Prigozhin this week has accused the defense ministry of once again presenting a falsely upbeat picture of how Russia is fending off Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. Russia's military has claimed to have largely stymied the counteroffensive and inflicted heavy losses on Ukraine.

Putin himself has trumpeted those alleged successes, repeating claims Ukraine has suffered heavy losses of Western equipment.

UPDATE:

Prigozhin, claimed Russia’s military killed a “huge” number of Wagner paramilitaries in an attack on a Wagner Group camp, as the war in Ukraine drags on and as tensions escalate between the paramilitary group and Moscow. Yevgeny Prigozhin said a "huge number" of his fighters had been killed and that he would lead a "march for justice" to exact revenge.

Prigozhin claimed Russia “sneakily deceived us” as the Wagner Group—which had criticized Russia’s military for allegedly abandoning its front line and said last month it would withdraw some of its troops—planned to “hand over our weapons and find a solution,” adding: “these scumbags did not calm down,” according to a CNN translation. Prigozhin said the Wagner Group is deciding how to respond, threatening: “the next step is ours.” He did not say where the alleged attack happened or suggest a specific motive.

"Those who killed our lads, and tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers [in the war in Ukraine] will be punished," he said.

"I ask you not to resist. Anyone who does will be considered a threat and destroyed. That goes for any checkpoints and aviation on our way.

"Presidential power, the government, the police and Russian guard will work as usual. "This is not a military coup, but a march of justice. Our actions do not interfere with the troops in any way."

In a statement responding to the message, the FSB demanded "an immediate stop to illegal actions" by Prigozhin. The Kremlin has also said "necessary measures are being taken", according to Russian news agency Interfax.

It comes after a video message in May in which Prigozhin stood surrounded by the bodies of his troops and berated Mr Shoigu - as well as Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov - for not providing them with enough ammunition.