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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that he he warned the Wagner mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to "watch out" for threats to his life before the plane crash said to have killed him. Mr Lukashenko helped broker a deal between Mr Prigozhin and the Kremlin that ended an attempted mutiny by Wagner forces against Moscow in June – an uprising that marked the most significant challenge to Mr Putin's authority in more than two decades in power. Two months to the day after that revolt was halted, with fighters 125 miles from the Russian capital, a plane believed to be carrying Mr Prigozhin and a number of other members of Wagner's senior leadership crashed on Wednesday evening. Mr Putin had called the Wagner mutiny treason, and had initially vowed to crush it, and a number of world leaders have suggested that he would not let the embarrassment of that incident stand. Mr Lukashenko said on Friday that Mr Prigozhin had twice dismissed concerns raised by the Belarusian leader about possible threats to his life. Mr Lukashenko said that during the mutiny he had warned Mr Prigozhin that he would "die" if he continued to march on Moscow, to which he said Mr Prigozhin had answered: "'To hell with it - I will die'." Then, Mr Lukashenko said, when Mr Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, who was also listed as a passenger on the plane which crashed, had come to see him, he had warned them both: "Lads – you watch out". Mr Lukashenko said that the Wagner leader had never asked him for security guarantees. "I don't have to ensure Prigozhin's safety... the conversation was never in that vein." It was not exactly clear from Mr Lukashenko’s words, which were reported by state news agency BELTA, when that conversation took place, Reuters reports. Mr Lukashenko has previously claimed that he persuaded Mr Putin not to "wipe out" the Wagner leader. US officials, speaking to American media, have suggested that a preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded the plane was downed by an intentional explosion. One of the US and Western officials who described the assessment to the Associated Press said it determined that Mr Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.” The Kremlin rejected that assessment on Friday, falling back on a regular refrain for Moscow that it is the West that are the root of the problem. “Right now, of course, there are lots of speculations around this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the passengers of the plane, including Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said during a conference call with journalists. “Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie,” he claimed. On Thursday, Mr Putin appeared to eulogise Mr Prigozhin, calling him a “great businessman”. But he also said that the the Wagner leader had made “serious mistakes” in his life and had a “complicated fate”. A close ally of Mr Putin, the Belarusian president said that he believed the plane crash was “just too rough and unprofessional a job” for the Russian leader to be involved. “I know Putin: he is calculating, very calm, even tardy,” Lukashenko said. “I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is to blame.” The jet crashed soon after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg, carrying Mr Prigozhin, six other Wagner members and a crew of three, according to Russia's civil aviation authority. Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Mr Prigozhin was dead. As part of the deal to end June's mutiny, Mr Prigozhin was due to set up in Belarus, with any Wagner fighters that wanted to join him. While the mercenary leader appeared to be able to travel freely, thousands have his fighters have travelled to Belarus, and have been training Belarusian soldiers near the border with Nato-member Poland. Warsaw has moved thousands of its own troops to its border in response. Britain's Ministry of Defence said on Friday that it was "highly likely" Mr Prigozhin was dead and that his death "would almost certainly have a deeply destabilising effect" on Wagner, with the reported deaths of Mr Utkin and logistics chief Valery Chekalov compounding a "leadership vacuum", Mr Lukashenko said Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus. "Wager lived, Wagner is living and Wagner will live in Belarus," the president said. "The core remains here." "As long as we need this unit, they will live and work with us," he said. Elsewhere, on the battlefield in Ukraine – which has been subject to Russian invasion for 18 months – there was a significant attack on Russian-occupied Crimea involving dozens of drones. Russia's Defence Ministry said that 42 drones had been shot down over Crimea and 73 as a whole across across the last 24 hours. The attacks were the latest in a surge of similar incidents in recent weeks. Ukraine has said that destroying Russia's military infrastructure helps a counteroffensive than Kyiv began in June. President Volodymyr Zelensky told an international conference this week that Kyiv would "de-occupy" Crimea. Ukrainian military intelligence said it had assisted the navy this week in a "special operation" in which they landed units on the western tip of Crimea, had a firefight with Russian forces and raised a Ukrainian flag. Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary What next for the Wagner Group in Russia? Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? Wagner chief presumed dead in plane crash What is the Wagner mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Cambodia’s king has congratulated the country’s new lawmakers and urged them to promote economic growth and equality

The structure of the Earth beneath our feet has been fascinating to members of the scientific community recently, and it turns out it’s far more complex than people initially thought. First, we learned of the news that there’s a massive ocean beneath the Earth’s crust which contains more water than all of the seas on the surface. Now, another study has been published which has taken an in-depth look at the geology beneath the southern hemisphere. The new research, published in Science Advances, has found evidence that an entire ocean floor actually runs the length around the core. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter This is a relatively thin layer that sits on the core-mantle boundary around 1,800 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It's an ancient formation that could provide more insight into the structure of the planet beneath our feet. Geologist Samantha Hansen and her colleagues from the University of Alabama led the research. They observed the structure by using 15 monitoring stations under the ice of Antarctica, mapping the waves from earthquakes. Doing this allowed them to analyse the structure of the Earth below the surface, including the ultra-low velocity zones where waves moved much slower. "Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought," Hansen said. "Analyzing [thousands] of seismic recordings from Antarctica, our high-definition imaging method found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB everywhere we probed," geophysicist Edward Garnero from Arizona State University also said. "The material's thickness varies from a few kilometers to [tens] of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to five times taller than Mt. Everest." "Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet," Hansen added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

NIAMEY The European Union has cut off financial support to Niger and the United States has threatened to

The European Union has decided not to renew a ban on Ukrainian food imports heading to nearby countries

French police are investigating the suspected poisoning of a Russian state TV journalist who denounced Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine live on air and later fell suddenly ill. Marina Ovsyannikova, who escaped Russia after her on-air protest and settled in France, reported feeling suddenly ill as she left her Paris apartment and was hospitalised after she called emergency services. She said she suspected she was poisoned, the Paris prosecutor’s office said, adding that they were examining her apartment and an investigation was underway. Ovsyannikova, who worked for Russian state television’s Channel One before the war began, drew international headlines in March 2022 when she appeared on screen in the background of a live broadcast by another news anchor and flashed a sign that said: "Stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here." She was fined 30,000 roubles (£460) for her protest but continued her opposition to the war. During a subsequent solo protest in Moscow, she held up a poster which read: “Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists.” She was then arrested and put under house arrest in August before she fled along with her daughter in the dark of the night. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which assisted Ovsyannikova in her efforts to escape a lengthy trial in Moscow and potentially a prison sentence, helped her settle in Paris. Christophe Deloire, director general of RSF, said he met Ovsyannikova after her malaise outside her Paris apartment. Deloire, writing on X, said the possibility Ovsyannikova had been poisoned had not been ruled out, though she was feeling better since the incident. “We have opened an investigation,” a spokesperson for the Paris tribunal prosecutor’s office said by telephone,” he said. “She said she had a malaise.” “All we have for the moment is what she said.” RSF said its team has been ‘’at her side" since she sought medical attention, though they have not disclosed any further details regarding the incident. Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Ovsyannikova in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian military. Her sentencing was the latest example of Russia’s crackdown on dissenting voices in the country, which has intensified since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine around 20 months ago. Russia has called its attack on Ukraine a “special military operation” and banned organisations or the media from referring to it as a war or invasion. Read More FA slammed over decision not to light up Wembley in Israel flag colours Russian state TV journalist who spoke out against war live on air recounts daring escape from country Could Putin be arrested? President to leave Russia for first time since international arrest warrant issued

Four Australians are presumed dead after the chopper hit the water during a military drill last week.