In today’s newsletter: Over the weekend, Russian mercenary group Wagner marched on Moscow – only to turn back at the last moment. Why did one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies turn on him – and how was bloodshed averted?
Good morning.
Months of simmering tension between the Russian military and the Wagner group, a Russian mercenary organisation, came to the boil over the weekend after the group’s leader, hitherto Vladimir Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed to have seized control of all military sites in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
NHS | Britons die sooner from cancer and heart disease than people in many other rich countries, partly because of the NHS’s lack of beds, staff and scanners, a study has found. The UK “underperforms significantly”, in part because the NHS has been weakened by years of underinvestment, according to the King’s Fund health thinktank.
Strikes | The government is prepared to overrule and block the pay rises that public sector review bodies recommend, a senior minister has confirmed, as unions threaten to strike over the issue.
Tax | More than 180,000 people on low incomes were fined for not filing a tax return on time last year, even though they received so little that they had no tax to pay in the first place. Many of these people, already in severe financial difficulties, misunderstood the initial fine and were then subjected to further fines and interest.
Greece | The New Democracy Party has won a comfortable victory in Greece’s second election in five weeks. The centre-right party won 40.5% of the vote, giving them an outright majority and their leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a second four-year term in office.
UK news | The musicians Fatboy Slim, Billy Bragg, and Olugbenga Adelekan of Metronomy – in a letter to home secretary Suella Braverman – have called for the government to allow the resumption of tests of confiscated pills at music festivals. A cross-party group of MPs have condemned the Home Office’s decision to block onsite drug testing as “shortsighted and dangerous”.
