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narrator: pediatric surgeon. volunteer. topiary artist. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news". >> this is the context. >> he is in st. petersburg. he have -- he may have gone to moscow. >> the only thing the kremlin is concerned about is armed rebellions from other actors and

they are concerned about making sherpa goshen -- making sure pri gozhin does not go down as a martyr. good evening. it is good to be back on the program after a period of extended leave. the back is on the mend so thank you to everyone who sent kind messages. plenty for us to get into, including the claim today that prigozhin is back in russian. if you thought the wagner leader was in exile indefinitely, think again. what does that mean for the war in ukraine? in the u.k., difficult day for number 10. a committee says former government whip chris pinter should be suspended for groping two men in a london bar. it will likely trigger another

by election. the council lost a legal challenge today. we will get into a busy day in westminster, but let's begin with the news from belarus that the boss of the wagner paramilitary group has returned to russia. that is aording to the belarusian leader alexander lukashenko. mr. prigozhin, who led wagner's mutiny last month, was supposed to go into exile in belarus but the leader says he may be back in st. petersburg. his whereabouts have been something of a mystery. his private jet landed in minsk shortly after the rebellion but was he on it/ at a press conference in min sk, he said the question of whether wagner units would relocate to belarus was in the balance and would depend on decisions made by moscow and by wagner. >> as for prigozhin, he is in

st. petersburg. he may have gone to moscow or somewhere else. he is not in belarus. >> our russia editor was at the news conference. >> less than two weeks ago, we were told that alexander lukashenko, the leader of belarus, had brokered a deal under which prigozhin would move from russia to belarus and any wagner fighters who wanted to could join him in belarus. today, mr. lukashenko told us that, actually, yevgeny prigozhin is not in belarus. he was in st. petersburg. he may be in moscow today and the wagner fighters are not in belarus. he indicated that they went back to their camps in eastern ukraine. mr. lukashenko also said he will be discussing the situation with wagner with vladimir putin in the near future. the kremlin has not given any date for that discussion.

so what is happening? who knows? >> let's speak to another man who follows it closely, the russia editor at bbc. let me tell you that you are not entirely convinced that prigozn was ever in belarus. >> well, all we have in terms of pointers to him being there are those statements made by alexander lukashenko 10 days ago, when he said that, yes, yevgeny prigozhin is in belarus. now he's saying that he's not. does that mean he's left belarus? are we to believe mr. lukashenko at all? it adds to the uncertainty surrounding the leader of the wagner mercenary group. what i do know after watching russian state tv is that it seems they have embarked on a

campaign to discredit yevgeny prigozhin, and that is important because there have been questions about whether this mutiny was real, but now, audiences in russia are to believe that yevgeny prigozhin is greedy, motivated by this lust for money, various tv channels in russia showing pictures of said to be from his home, very opulent, piles of cash, ingots of gold, guns, wigs, fake passports, and they brought up his criminal past as well. he spent nine years in jail in the 1980's and the message is clear. yevgeny prigozhin is a criminal who is after money. he's not a fighter for justice, as he claims, so from this kind of message, to go back to him being a very patriotic fighter in ukraine is going to be difficult. >> all of which is important

because there were always questions about whether he might be rehabilitated if the war was to go wrong again for the russians in ukraine. maybe he would be brought back as mr. popular. as you see -- as you say, they seem to be destroying his reputation. why would he go back to st. petersburg? because st. petersburg, as we all know, is a stronghold for the president, vladimir putin. >> it's also yevgeny prigozhin's home city. that is where they met backed -- met back when mr. prigozhin owned a chain of expensive restaurants. that friendship, that relationship, developed into what we were seeing today. st. petersburg is also where yevgeny prigozhin's home was, so that is one reaso why he might want to go there, but also a lot

of questions are being asked right now about what he might be doing in belarus if it does go to belarus eventually. we have seen pictures, satellite images, apparently showing bases being built in belarus not far from the border with ukraine, bases which might be used by wagner fighters. that has led to concerns that wagner might attack from the north. now, ukrainian officials are playing them down, but at the end of the day, all we have is a lot of uncertainty surrounding both yevgeny prigozhin's whereabouts and his intentions. the last we heard of him was a saturday and he spoke about a car rally that was held in siberia and he thanked people for their support, but said absolutely nothing about where he was or what he was planning to do. >> more questions and

speculation. meanwhile, in ukraine, five people have died today after a russian rocket hit an apartment building in the western city of lviv. the mayor says the attack is left dozens injured. more than 50 flats were damaged. these aerial pictures will give you some idea of the scale of the attack. you see the top floors of the building were devastated by the force of the blast. lviv is for to the west -- is far to the west. this is being described as the largestttack on their infrastructure since the full-scale invasion. >> we were at home. at night, i woke up from the first explosion, but we did not have time to leave the apartment. there was a second explosion. the ceiling started to fall. my mother was immediately hit. i jumped out. i was covered in rubble only about knee-deep. i tried to reach my mother but i could not.

i found out my mother had died. my neighbors had died. at this point, it seems that i was the only one who survived from the fourth floor. it's a miracle. >> if it was not for the rescuers, we would n have left the apartment. the rescuers broke down the door and let us out. i am left without an apartment, without anything. i heard screams from the neighbors. i think they were being pulled out of the rubble. opposite me, there were terrifying screams. they must have been pulling people out of the rubble. now i don't see my neighbors on the street anymore. >> lviv closed the border with poland. let's bring in elizabeth, a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute, a u.s.-based think tank. thank you for being with us. the russians said today they were striking depots in the west storing foreign-made armored vehicles.

quite obviously from the pictures we have seen that was not the target. that was not the target that was hit. do you think this is going to make the allies think again about how they move things across the border? >> well, i think it is remarkable that for over a year now western allies have been able to help ukraine get equipment and it's no mystery how this equipment gets to ukraine. there are not many ways in which you can get into ukraine. so, that said, that was always the realization or the recognition that there would be some equipment or deliveries that would be hit and, if that happens or when that happens, that is something the western allies take into account or except in addition to accepting some of the equipment will be destroyed as part of the fighting.

and i think, if anything, it increases the impetus among them to keep up the deliveries and even to accelerate deliveries because the more equipment gets lost, the more ukraine needs in order to win the war, and there's a realization that if this war is to be prevented from going on forever, they need more equipment. >> before we take it to belarus, if the target was depots and the fact that they are missing or hitting apartment blocks points to the sort of precision guided munitions they do not have. >> you know, the difficult thing with the russians is whether to suspect that they are incompetent or whether to suspect that they are deliberately targeting civilian buildings. they cannot be both at the same time. it is either incompetence or deliberate malice but it's not a regular pattern that civilian buildings, whether apartment

buildings or indie cafes, get hit. you would think a fighting force is supposed to be the second best in the world -- force that is supposed to be the second best in the world would be able to send its missiles in the direction of the intended target. otherwise, it is the case they did intend to kill civilians. >> we talked about prigozhin but there was more important dail in the press conference today in minsk, notably about the nukes, this first batch of tactically nuclear -- of tactical nuclear weapons. let's talk about how steve rosenberg -- let's hear what steve rosenberg said about that. >> the kremlin h said they are moving tactical nuclear weapons from russia to belarus and lukashenko said some had arrived and more would by the end of the year. a short while ago, he said that god forbid he should actually take the decision to use those weapons. i said to him, those are not

your weapons to take the decision to use. they are russian weapons. he said, well, if ukraine can fight with other people's weapons, them like and i? >> how concerned will washington and nato b with a response like that from lukashenko? >> lukashenko is clearly a leader who is keen to prove his worth or value, so if solesky -- if zelenskyy can do that, he's saying i am as good as him. there's a dangerous part to this. if lukashenko claims he has some sort of right to take possession of other countries' nuclear weapons and should we expect a meltdown in the relations between russia and belarus over nuclear weapons when they are already on belarusian soil or should we expect some sort of action, joint action, between

the two, where lukashenko claims he's in charge but in fact is actually on behalf of russia. nuclear weapons, as we know, are no joking matter. it's different if you send tanks or fighter jets to another country. that's very different from letting another country host your nuclear weapons when it's not clear who decides about the use of those nuclear weapons and lukashenko is an erratic man who was also mad, whose grasp on power remains incomete at best. >> thank you very much for joining us. rishi sunak's conservative party are languishing in the polls and would prefer to avoid elections at all costs and yet this summer they could be defending five seats across the country. this morning, the parliamentary standards committee issued a suspension to the conservative mp and former government web

chris pincher -- government web chris pincher. he said the committee's behavior had been inappropriate and an abusive power. if an mp is suspended for longer than 10 days, constituents can vote to remove their representative by signing a petition, triggering a by election. there's speculation that pincher may standdown anyway. let's bring in our political correspondent. let me turn to what the committee said today, damien. he had responsibility for enforcing party discipline and upholding standards and that is why, in their view, this was more damaging to public perception than some of the other cases we have discussed in the past. >> yes. exactly right. so chris pincher was a conservative mp and at the time he was a deputy chief with. i mean, the british system, what that means, it means he was the number two in the department

that would enforce discipline within a party's group of mp's. the deputy chief whip means getting people in line to vote the right way in crucial votes in the house of commons, dealing with internal matters of discipline, and therefore he was in a position of power and authority, and the committee found that that was a serious factor in this when he -- the report is quite stark and shocking, i have to say. in a club, a member's ub not far from here, a year or so ago, there were a couple of occasions when other men -- he groped them, on their bottoms, those men found themselves being touched while they were there in a social event with other people around, and so they found it extremely uncomfortable,

extremely unnerving, and they found themselves in a difficult position because of mr. pincher 's role. so that was the reason that this committee said that he had. his actions were unacceptable and brought parliament into disrepute. he said the actions of a senior mp like that caused anyone in parliament to -- >> the reason this might stick in people's minds is because towards the end of boris johnson's reign in number 10 he was asked about what he knew about pincher's behavior. what does this judgment today say about what boris johnson new and perhaps did not? >> you are right. this particular incident was the final trigger for the downfall of boris johnson, because when he was questioned about it, he had said that he had not been warned that mr. pincher had behaved like this or there were questions and concerns about mr. pincher's behavior when,

actually, it turned out he had been or should have been aware of this, so that triggered resignations from his cabinet and ultimately led to his downfall on top of all the other issues and scandals. this report does not go into that. i i think is interesting, actually. it is not so much the question for boris johnson. it's a question for his successor, rishi sunak, because now that the report has happened, the whole of the house of commons and the mp's must vote to decide whether they approve this report and the sanction that could lead to a new by election, and rishi sunak is under pressure nowo declare does he approve of the findings of this report, because the last couple of times, including boris johnson's behavior, mr. sunak dodged the issue. he never voted in the commons. >> just briefly, in the high court today, the government lost his legal challenge.

they try to prevent the inquiry in boris johnson's whatsapp messages and diaries. why were they so keen to avoid those being handed in and what do the justices say today/ --say today? >> the official reason was they did not want to hand over material that they thought would be irrelevant to the work of the inquiry. the problem was that the legal set up, which the government itself put in place, is the inquiry chooses what it wants to see and decides what is relevant or not, not the government side, so their case was thrown out by the judges today, and they will have to hand over everything, but whatsapp messages, diaries of boris johnson, communications between senior ministers, and all of that, by monday, and that means that the inquiry will have everything at once to look at and will proceed with a broad remit. >> thank you very much. around the world and across the

u.k., this is bbc news. let'take a look at some of the other stories making headlines today. an eight-year-old girl has been killed and 15 people injured when a land rover crashed into a primary school in southwest london. it's a girls school for children aged between four and 11. 10 people were taken to the hospital. a woman in her 40's has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. a man has been found guilty of murdering ellie edwards outside a pub in merseyside. she was an innocent bystander when chaan open fire with a submachine gun, taking aim at two men involved in a gang viewed. the labor leader has set out plans to reform the education system, promising to smash what he called the class ceiling. the speech was briefly interrupted today by protesters. keir starmer said primary schools would be funded to

improve communication skills and he promised to tackle the snobbery that in his view is surrounding vocational training. you are live with bbc news. two rockets were fired today from southern lebanon towards israel, prompting a strike by the military. 15 shells from israel landed in the outskirts of two villages close to the border. it comes in the wake of the military operation israel had been carrying out this week in the palestinian refugee camp. hundreds of troops went in there on monday morning. israeli drones targeted the camp. 12 palestinians and one israeli soldier were killed. the operation is now over but there thousands of palace tilling -- of palestinian residents whose displeasure will be further stoked by the

devastation they are returning to. >> we have fights with terror organizations, funded by iran. am proud to say that we targeted 11 terrorists and there is no civilian that was killed in our activity and we put a lot of efforts in this and also intelligence and military capability as well. >> chris doyle is an expert. chris, good to see you. i see that has paula -- that heollah expressed support. do you think these attacks were linked? >> it is quite probable that they were linked. we are not sure who actually fired these rockets across the

border. it could well be any number of groups. in recent times, hezbollah has been careful to not do this. i think it is wary of giving israel a reason to go after it. indeed, were there to be a confrontation between israel and hezbollah, it would have major repercussions. israel claims that hezbollah has, 12 130,000 rockets -- has 130,000 rockets. this will be a conflict on a different order to what w have seen in recent years. >> it speaks to the tension within israeli society, because the israeli government, which is more hard-line than it has been, has been pressing for the army to sweep through the west bank to deal with the terrorist element, but it seems the army is more cautious and it is worried about an escalation, which can come in any direction. >> you cannot control a

population under occupation. i will remind you that palestinians, millions of palestinians, in the west bank are under occupation. that means their borders are controlled, their water, and at the same time, israel is building settlements, effectively colonies, on that land. you cannot do that and not expect there to be no reaction. the idea that they don't have a fight with the palestinians is absurd. they are in military occupation of their land. this is just one element of that struggle, that form of oppression. it is not a conflict in the normal sense of the word. israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world, it is well-trained,. there is no equivalent on the palestinian side. and although they were very careful in their own words in terms of what they did in janine, which i think refugees

would dispute. the reality is we see record levels of violence, what many israeli human rights groups described as pogroms taking place before the operation in jenin. we have seen a record year this century for the noble of units that have been advanced within the west bank, record numbers of home demolitions. when i was last in the west bank at the end of may, i visited a school that was demolished, a palestinian school. what does that have to do with fighting terrorism? if you want to create the perfect conditions where people are not going to use whatever means at their disposal to try to fight an occupation, you are doing it now. there's no hope on the horizon, no political talks.

israel infuses to allow the palestinian state to come into being. it blocks and tries to block legal avenues to challenge what goes on. and in any contest of force, israel has the upper hand. so what do they expect to happen? >> chris doyle, sorry to squeeze you. we are tight for time but thank you very much indeed. no doubt that is a subject we will come back to. we are going to talk about artificial intelligence. good thing or a bad thing? we will discuss more. narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪

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