Russia

Aug 27 (Reuters) - Russia launched an overnight air attack against Ukraine on Sunday, sending missiles over other northern and central parts of the country, authorities said.

The Ukrainian military reported shooting down four cruise missiles out of up to eight total airborne targets detected, adding that the rest of the targets were "probably false".

It also said there were no immediate reports of strikes.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities on Sunday confirmed the death of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, putting to rest any doubts about whether the wily mercenary leader turned mutineer was on a plane that crashed Wednesday, killing everyone on board.

MOSCOW, Aug 26 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group.

Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday after the Kremlin said that Western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an "absolute lie". The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Russia (AP) —The Wagner Group’s presence extends from the ancient battlegrounds of Syria to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, projecting the Kremlin’s global influence with mercenaries accused of using brutal force and profiting from seized mineral riches.

But that was under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in what may have been his final recruitment video, appeared in military fatigues and held an assault rifle from an unidentified dry and dusty plain as he boasted that Wagner was “making Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even more free.”

GORKI, August 25. /TASS/: The decision to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was not an easy one to make, but it ensured peace in the Caucasus, the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said at a meeting with the heads of the two republics - Aslan Bzhania and Alan Gagloyev.

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: Russian air defense systems operate quite effectively in repulsing Ukrainian drone attacks, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

"This activity was before as well. All the relevant air defense systems operate quite effectively," the Russian presidential spokesman said, responding to a question about whether the Kremlin and the head of state, in particular, were worried about increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone attacks.

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: TASS Director-General Andrey Kondrashov on Friday handed over to Maxim Kharlamov, the chief of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, a certificate of the agency's special correspondent on the International Space Station (ISS) for cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who will become a fourth TASS correspondent on the orbital outpost.

The certificate was handed over at the TASS headquarters in Moscow. Earlier, Oleg Kononenko was handed the agency's space mascot - a soft toy Inotasia, which will go with him into space.

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: Russia warns Moldova not to get too involved in the process of "supporting" Kiev as such actions endanger security in the region, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a commentary.

"I would like to <...> warn official Chisinau against getting too involved in the process of 'supporting' Ukraine, as this will not only jeopardize stability and security in the region, but will actually make Moldova an accomplice to the Kiev regime's war crimes," the diplomat said.

MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said that Western suggestions Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an "absolute lie" while declining to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Russia's aviation authority has said that Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, was on board a private jet which crashed on Wednesday evening northwest of Moscow with no survivors.

MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday Ukraine had fired a missile towards Moscow and attacked Crimea with 42 drones, in what would be one of the biggest known coordinated Ukrainian air attacks to date on Russian-held territory.

The Russian defence ministry said a modified S-200 missile had been shot down over the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region. The city of Kaluga is less than 200 km (124 miles) from Moscow.

"The missile was detected and destroyed by air defences over the territory of the Kaluga region," the defence ministry said.