UPDATED: Russian defence minister says Ukraine operation unaffected by mutiny

July 3 (Reuters) – A brief mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group last month did not affect Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Monday, making his first comments about the short-lived rebellion.

Wagner fighters took over the southern Russian city of Rostov and advanced towards Moscow on June 24 as their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin demanded the dismissal of Shoigu and chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov.

The crisis was defused when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin.

Shoigu said the mutiny aimed to destabilise Russia, but failed because of troops’ loyalty and did not impact the situation on the frontlines.

“The provocation did not affect the actions of army groups (involved in the operation),” he told a ministry meeting.

Gerasimov, who has not appeared in public since the mutiny, was nowhere to be seen in photographs from the meeting published by the defence ministry.

Ukraine has said Russian troops are advancing in four areas in the east of the country amid “fierce fighting” but reports that Kyiv’s forces are moving forward in the south.

Russian troops were advancing near Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman and Svatove, said the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar. “Fierce fighting is going on everywhere,” she wrote on social media on Sunday.

Russian accounts said Moscow’s forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near villages ringing Bakhmut and in areas farther south, including the strategic hilltop town of Vuhledar.

Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian plot to kill top Moscow-backed official in Crimea

Russia’s FSB security service said on Monday it had thwarted a Ukrainian assassination attempt on Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, arresting a Ukrainian agent before he was able to blow up Aksyonov’s car.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the Russian allegation.

It came amid Russian media reports that security has been stepped up in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and that additional security checks are being made on people wanting to cross a bridge from Russia’s southern Krasnodar region into Crimea.

The FSB said in a statement that it had arrested a Russian national recruited as an assassin by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency who had undergone explosives, reconnaissance and sabotage training in Ukraine.

His plan, it said, had been to blow up Aksyonov’s car, but he had been detained as he tried to retrieve an explosive device from a hiding place.

The FSB did not name the arrested man, who it said was in his mid-thirties. It said he had entered Crimea in June and that it was investigating him on suspicion of “attempting to commit a terrorist act” and “of illegally possessing explosives.”

Aksyonov thanked the FSB for preventing what he called an attempt on the lives of the “Republic of Crimea’s leadership” and said he was sure that the individuals who ordered the assassination would be found and punished.

Ukraine has pledged to retake full control of Crimea, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, as well as large areas of eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia has captured since launching its full-scale invasion last year.

Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported on Monday that a 13 km (8-mile)-long traffic jam had formed at the entrance in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region to the bridge to Crimea. It said that Crimean transport officials had increased the number of checkpoints around the bridge on Sunday.