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An audio recording in which Donald Trump appears to acknowledge keeping a classified document after leaving the White House has been obtained by US media.
In the recording, the former president is heard riffling through papers and saying: "This is highly confidential".
It has not been independently verified by the BBC.
Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of mishandling sensitive files.
Prosecutors allege he showed classified documents to people without security clearance on two occasions, including a writer and two members of staff, in one instance in July 2021 at his golf club in New Jersey.
Mr Trump is facing 37 counts of illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing the government's efforts to get them back.
He has denied any wrongdoing and has said that all documents he took with him from the White House were declassified.
During the exchange, released by CNN and the Washington Post on Monday, Mr Trump is heard describing a document that he alleges is about possibly attacking Iran.
"He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing?" Mr Trump says near the beginning of the clip.
"I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look," he says.
"See as president I could have declassified it," he says. "Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."
In an interview last week with Fox News, Mr Trump denied that he provided secret documents to people unauthorised to view them.
"There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things," Mr Trump said.
BBC Russian has been tracking which Russian
aircraft were downed in the mutiny over the weekend.
Using open sourcing, it says that this includes
three Mi-8 MTPR Electronic Warfare helicopters, two attack helicopters – a
Ka-52 and Mi-35 – one military transport Mi-8, as well as one Il-22M command
plane.
It also says that, according to Conflict
Intelligence Team, an open source organisation with a focus on Russia, it’s
possible that another Mi-8 MTPR helicopter was shot down near Luhansk on June
23, although there are no further details of this incident.
It’s currently unclear how many crew members
died, BBC Russian says.
Of the aircraft lost, the most valuable is
the Il-22M, BBC Russian says, an airborne command post from which troops can be
controlled during combat operations.
In an address to the nation on June 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Wagner mercenary fighters who took part in the revolt over the weekend can either join the Russian Army or go to Belarus.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefinggives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
"Today, you have the opportunity to continue serving Russia by entering into a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or to return to your family and friends. Whoever wants to can go to Belarus. The promise I made will be fulfilled," Putin said. "I repeat: The choice is yours."
Putin also thanked the Russian people for unity and thanked commanders and soldiers of the mercenary group for avoiding bloodshed in what is widely seen as the greatest challenge to Putin's 23 years of rule.
Putin made no mention of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in his short remarks but said the organizers of the revolt had betrayed the Russian people.
He warned that any attempt at blackmail or unrest in Russia would be “doomed to fail” and claimed the West wanted Russians to “kill each other.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders said the brief uprising was part of a struggle within the Russian system. Biden said neither the United States nor its allies was involved.
Biden's message was sent directly to the Russians through various diplomatic channels, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He did not characterize Russia's response.
Meanwhile, Prigozhin said earlier that the intent of his troops' march toward Moscow over the weekend was to highlight the incompetence of Russia's military leadership in its war against Ukraine and not to overthrow the Russian government in what is widely seen as the greatest challenge to Putin's 23 years of rule.
In his first public statement since abandoning the march just 200 kilometers from the Russian capital, Prigozhin continued to sound defiant in an 11-minute long audio clip on June 26, saying his progress was a "master class" on how Russia's army should have carried out its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, noting multiple holes in military security that allowed his group to easily take control of cities as it proceeded toward Moscow.
Prigozhin did not reveal his current whereabouts, nor did he mention any details of a reported agreement brokered by Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka that is said to have granted him asylum in Belarus.
PODCAST: Why did Yevgeny Prigozhin halt Wagner’s advance toward Moscow so abruptly? How badly weakened is Russian President Vladimir Putin, and what might the 24-hour rebellion mean for the course of the war in Ukraine?
"We started our march because of an injustice,” Prigozhin, once a close ally of Putin, said, referring to an alleged attack on his forces that he blames on the Russian military.
"We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country," Prigozhin added, repeatedly denying that he and his forces planned to seize power.
He said the goal of what he referred to as "our march of justice" was to prevent the "liquidation of the Wagner private military campaign and to demonstrate how indeed the special military operation should have been conducted."
But then he added that as a "result of intrigue and wrong decisions," Wagner plans to cease existing on July 1 after its commanders spoke to the fighters "and nobody agreed to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry."
Prigozhin also noted in his lengthy commentary that his troops "did not kill a single Russian soldier on land" but shot down several Defense Ministry aircraft after the aircraft "bombed us and attacked us with missiles."
In Washington, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the United States used various diplomatic channels to send a message informing Russia that there was no U.S. involvement in the uprising. Kirby did not say how Moscow responded to what he said were "good, direct communications."
He could not confirm whether Prigozhin was in Belarus and said it is too soon to know what will become of the Wagner group.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that while Washington does not know what will happen to Wagner in Ukraine, the events over the weekend reinforce Washington's concerns about the instability Wagner brings when its forces join conflicts.
Wagner has fought in Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Syria since being founded in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea and started supporting pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
The United States renews "the message that we have given to these countries publicly and privately in the past, which is that any time Wagner enters the country, death and destruction follow," Miller told reporters. "You see Wagner exploit local populations, we see them extract local wealth, we see them commit human rights abuses."
Prigozhin's recording was released as Russian authorities scrambled to present a return to normality by reversing counterterrorism measures in the capital and some regions after Prigozhin's short-lived mutiny.
In Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that counterterrorism measures imposed in the Russian capital during Prigozhin's attempted mutiny have been canceled.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) separately announced the lifting of all temporary restrictions in Moscow region, while Voronezh regional Governor Aleksandr Gusev also said the counterterrorism regime had been rescinded in his region following the withdrawal of Prigozhin's fighters.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose dismissal was one of the main demands by Prigozhin, was seen in a video visiting troops.
Russia's Defense Ministry on June 26 published a soundless video purporting to show Shoigu flying in a plane with a colleague and hearing reports at a command post. It was not immediately clear where or when the footage had been recorded.
Earlier, the RIA Novosti news agency said Shoigu had visited Russian troops involved in the military operation in Ukraine. The information could not be independently confirmed.
As part of the deal brokered by Lukashenka and reported by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, criminal charges against the mutineers were to be dropped in exchange for their return to camps, while Prigozhin would move to Belarus.
But the Russian newspaper Kommersant and the TASS news agency, citing unidentified sources, reported on June 26 that Prigozhin remains under investigation by the FSB on suspicion of organizing an armed mutiny.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to Lithuania on June 26 that Prigozhin's aborted mutiny shows that Moscow committed a strategic mistake by waging war on Ukraine.
"The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President [Vladimir] Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine," he told reporters in Vilnius. "As Russia continues its assault, it is even more important to continue our support to Ukraine."
European Union ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, said the failed revolt raised questions about Putin’s grip on power.
“We are analyzing this carefully,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters. “There are also risks involved, which we are still unable to assess at the moment. For us Europeans, the only thing that matters is to support Ukraine.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who chaired the meeting, said that the political system "is showing fragilities, and the military power is cracking” and now is the moment to support Ukraine more than ever.
Photo Gallery:
In Russia, Road Repairs And Eerie Calm After Wagner Uprising
Photos from Russia show a rush to erase all traces of the tumultuous events of June 24, and a swift return to apparent normality.
Addressing the ministers by video link, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the ministers to take advantage of the latest developments.
“Russia is getting weaker every day. It is critically important now to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needs,” he said, including artillery and missiles, but also tougher sanctions.
Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said early on June 26 that Ukrainian forces have retaken 130 square kilometers in the south since the start of Kyiv's long-anticipated counteroffensive.
Malyar said on her Telegram channel that the Ukrainian military continued to make advances in the Melitopol and Berdyansk areas of the southern Zaporizhzhya region, despite fierce Russian resistance and "significant" human and material losses.
"In total, since the beginning of our [counter]offensive, the area liberated in the south amounts to 130 square kilometers," she said.
Separately, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in its daily report early on June 26 that Ukrainian forces successfully repelled intensified Russian attempts to advance in the eastern region of Donetsk, fighting off 36 assaults in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, and Maryinka areas over the past day.
The General Staff also reported that Ukrainian troops are continuing their operations in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions, without giving more details.
The Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin remains under Russian investigation for his mutiny, despite the Kremlin saying criminal charges had been dropped, state media report.
Prigozhin said on Monday his group's aim had been to "avoid the destruction of Wagner", in his first message since Saturday's rebellion.
Wagner occupied Rostov-on-Don in the south, then advanced towards Moscow.
But hours later they turned back and charges were dropped, the Kremlin said.
Many felt the apparent deal not to prosecute him showed weakness from President Vladimir Putin, who had earlier denounced Wagner's "treason" in a televised address.
Instead, Prigozhin was offered exile in neighbouring Belarus, the Kremlin said, following mediation by Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The Kremlin tried to project an image of business as usual on Monday.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown in a video, allegedly at a forward command post for the war on Ukraine.
It is not clear exactly when that was filmed.
Wagner had been demanding that Mr Shoigu be sacked for his alleged mistakes on the battlefield in Ukraine.
In his first appearance since the weekend turmoil, President Putin gave a video address on Monday to engineers attending an industry forum, in which he lavishly praised their contributions to the Russian economy.
And Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin urged his team to unite behind Mr Putin.
In an 11-minute audio message on Telegram on Monday Prigozhin said he did not target President Putin and had no desire to overthrow the regime when he declared his troops would march on Moscow last Friday.
He said Wagner had sought to "hold accountable those people who made a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation [in Ukraine] with their unprofessional actions".
Although Wagner fights on the same side as the Russian military, Prigozhin has long been critical of how the war has been fought.
He said the group marched to stop Wagner being disbanded and incorporated into Russia's defence ministry, and that he ordered his troops to turn back "to avoid spilling the blood of Russian soldiers".
The mercenary boss did not reveal his location during the message, but did say Mr Lukashenko had offered Wagner a way to maintain its independence.
It was the first time Prigozhin had spoken since agreeing to abort his mutiny attempt late on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, Wagner seized Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people where the military command centre for Russia's campaign in Ukraine is located.
Then a Wagner column headed north towards Moscow via the city of Voronezh, triggering a state of emergency in the capital and around it.
Before the agreement to end the march, Mr Putin addressed the nation to condemn Wagner. He did not mention Prigozhin - formerly a close ally - by name, but promised to punish those who had led the mutiny for "treason" and what he called "a stab in the back" of Russia.
Hours later, the mercenaries turned round and left Rostov-on-Don, but the apparent deal involving Belarus left many questions unanswered.
Kremlin.ru
The Kremlin has vowed to incorporate Wagner into the regular Russian armed forces.
But Wagner was still openly recruiting into its own ranks on Monday for service in Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.
A notice on Wagner's Telegram channel offers new recruits a minimum of 240,000 roubles a month (£2,236; $2,843) - a fortune for most Russians, especially those in poor regions. It lists call-up centres across Russia, the main one being at Molkino in the far south.
In the eastern Siberian city of Novosibirsk the mercenary group was also recruiting, Russia's Tass news agency reported. The Wagner office there had been shut down on Saturday - but on Monday its banners were on display there again.
Wagner has long been seen as a key tool in Mr Putin's ambition to restore Russian influence globally.
Amid continuing confusion about Wagner's status, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the group would continue its military role in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR).
Wagner fighters have a reputation for brutality in Africa and have played a key role in Syria supporting President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
In Ukraine, months of bitter fighting in the devastated city of Bakhmut is believed to have cost thousands of Wagner men's lives.
In an expletive-laden video ahead of the Wagner mutiny, Prigozhin accused the defence ministry of depriving his men of the arms they needed.
Bakhmut remains the only Russian military gain of any note in more than six months of heavy fighting. And Ukraine says its forces have pushed the Russians back around Bakhmut in recent days.
Vladimir Putin vowed to punish Yevgeny Prigozhin for “treason” over the warlord’s armed uprising. Instead, the former Kremlin caterer and his Wagner group appeared to escape any harsh consequences after launching the first coup attempt in Russia for three decades.
Prigozhin’s failed putsch ended abruptly, but it still exposed deep flaws at the heart of Putin’s regime, called the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine into serious doubt, and raised the spectre of state collapse if unrest were to boil over again, people close to the Kremlin told the Financial Times.
“It’s a huge humiliation for Putin, of course. That’s obvious,” said a Russian oligarch who has known the president since the 1990s. “Thousands of people without any resistance are going from Rostov almost to Moscow, and nobody can do anything. Then [Putin] announced they would be punished, and they were not. That’s definitely a sign of weakness.”
At the root of the rebellion lay frustration within Russia’s armed forces at how Putin had been handling the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to the extent that a row between paramilitaries and regular armed forces nearly brought down the state. Russia’s army and security services were unable to forestall Prigozhin’s revolt.
The ease with which Wagner launched its revolt, the lack of resistance it met from other security forces and the rapturous reception its fighters met in the southern city of Rostov as they stood down “damages [Putin’s] reputation domestically”, said Alexei Venediktov, the well-connected former editor of the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
“It turns out you can start a revolt against the president, and be forgiven. That means the president isn’t that strong.”
The extraordinary events have led even ardent supporters of the invasion to publicly question Russia’s rationale for it and worry further shocks could follow.
“The whole world has seen that Russia is on the verge of a dire political crisis,” Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin spin-doctor and MP, wrote on Telegram. “Yes, the putsch didn’t succeed, but putsches have fundamental reasons behind them. And if those reasons remain, then the putsch might happen again. And it could be successful.”
For now, the Kremlin says it has quelled the threat from Prigozhin after the warlord agreed to leave Russia for Belarus in exchange for a promise not to prosecute him or Wagner’s fighters.
On Sunday, Russian state media attempted to show life going on largely as normal. Municipal workers fanned out to repair the highways damaged by Wagner’s advance, while Russian forces reclaimed the command centre in Rostov that Wagner had briefly taken over the day before.
But Russia’s attempt to play down the incident as an inconvenient blip belies the deep problems the invasion of Ukraine has created for Putin’s rule.
“You can’t see this as anything other than a sign of weakness and dysfunction,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. “This isn’t some kind of unexpected one-off event or external shock. This is part and parcel of the war,” she said.
The Kremlin insisted on Saturday that Prigozhin’s revolt would have no effect on its handling of the war. But Wagner’s prominent role on the front lines was itself a consequence of how Russia mishandled the invasion.
Initially formed to fight covertly in conflicts around the world, Putin redeployed Wagner’s men to Ukraine when the invasion plan failed. He then let Prigozhin swell his ranks by personally signing pardons for convicted criminals who joined up to fight.
“They started a war they shouldn’t have, they couldn’t run it properly, and they decided to resort to extremes by letting him round up an army of prisoners,” Schulmann said. “He became a political actor, and they had to deal with it. One thing leads to another.”
Putin’s reluctance to end Prigozhin’s months-long public feud with the defence ministry appears to have convinced the former caterer he was powerful enough to succeed in his mutiny attempt, according to people close to the Kremlin.
But the episode has also proved damaging for Prigozhin after he failed to secure the resignations of defence minister Sergei Shoigu or Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion forces.
Some of Wagner’s troops will sign contracts with the defence ministry, the Kremlin said. That amounts to a humiliation after Prigozhin said his group would never submit themselves to Shoigu — a step that would rob him of the money and influence that came from only answering to Putin personally.
Once the revolt began, Prigozhin appears to have had little idea of how to see it through successfully, according to a person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s.
“I don’t think he had anything particular in mind. He just decided to go and convince Putin that he should get to keep all the money they took away from him,” the person said. “Then the situation got completely out of control.”
“At some point he realised he didn’t know what to do next. You get to Moscow, and then what? You open the doors of a dozen prisons, some unimaginable freaks come out, the country goes to shit, and then you get to the Kremlin . . . and you don’t know what to do.”
The humiliating episode will probably prompt Putin to dismantle Wagner and ensure it can no longer threaten the state, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“They promised not to touch anyone, but I think it’s entirely possible someone will get jailed, or die in mysterious circumstances, to scare the rest,” Gabuev said. “Putin must by now have realised how vulnerable the system is and will try to fix it.”
Much remains unclear about how exactly Russia convinced Prigozhin to stand down, with many in the Russian elite suspecting that Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who ostensibly brokered the deal, was a stand-in for powerful figures in Russia.
“Everyone wanted to call [Prigozhin] and make a deal. And in the end they found a more reasonable middleman in the form of Luka, who found a way for both sides to step back,” the person close to Prigozhin said.
On Monday, however, state media reported that Prigozhin was still facing charges, adding more uncertainty after a febrile weekend.
After failing to stop the revolt, Russia’s elite is unlikely to escape unscathed either, with Putin now conscious of the threat to his own power.
“This was a huge counter-intelligence failure. The CIA knew this was coming, and your own secret services didn’t know or didn’t report it. So he’s going to tighten the screws and keep the elite on edge,” said Gabuev.
But even wholesale changes may not be enough to restore order, the oligarch said. After Russia’s war effort began to falter last year, many in Russia’s elite began discussing the likelihood of a “time of troubles”, a repeat of the long, violent political crisis in the early 17th century when different factions vied for the throne.
But even then, the oligarch said, “if it started I expected the army to intervene immediately. And they did not. That’s a surprise.”
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, has visited troops on the frontline in his first public appearance since the Wagner Group attempted to overthrow him.
In a video released on Monday morning by the Russian Defence Ministry, Shoigu was shown flying in a helicopter with a colleague and then attending a meeting with military officers at the headquarters of a military headquarters in Ukraine
It was not immediately clear where or when the visit had taken place.
Russia’s Zvezda Defence Ministry TV Channel said Shoigu, who looked physically unharmed and calm, had listened to a report by Colonel General Yevgeny Nikiforov, the group’s commander, about the current situation on the frontlines in Ukraine.
The video showed Shoigu for the first time since Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin declared a “march of justice” late Friday to oust the defense minister, during which the mercenaries captured the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then marched on Moscow.
Meanwhile, Moscow lifted an “anti-terrorist” security regime it had imposed over the weekend when mutinous Wagner mercenaries threatened to storm the city.
