What did 29 June 2023 bring to Kyiv and the front?
A look back at a day marked by a surprise visit to the capital, as the aftermath of a Russian missile strike and the Wagner rebellion continued.
What did 29 June 2023 mean for Ukraine? It was the day a former US vice president, Mike Pence, unexpectedly visited Kyiv, arriving against a backdrop of fresh civilian losses and turmoil inside Russia.
Two days earlier, on 27 June 2023, a Russian missile struck a restaurant in Kramatorsk, in Donetsk Oblast. As reported at the time, the attack killed 13 civilians and injured 61 others. Later accounts put the toll at 13 dead, among them four children, and 59 wounded. The strike hit the RIA café in the city centre at 19:29. A second missile hit private houses in the Bilenke neighbourhood, wounding five residents.
The same day, 27 June 2023, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, had arrived in Belarus under the agreement reached with the Russian government. That agreement ended the Wagner rebellion, which began on the evening of 23 June 2023 and ended on the evening of 24 June after talks between Lukashenko and Prigozhin. Under its terms, the criminal case against Prigozhin for armed mutiny was to be closed, Wagner fighters were to move to field camps, and Prigozhin was to go to Belarus.
Against that background, Pence's unannounced arrival in the Ukrainian capital on 29 June 2023 stood out as a political gesture in the same week as the rebellion and the Kramatorsk strike. The visit came as Ukraine counted its dead in Donetsk Oblast and as its neighbour Belarus received the Wagner leader.
