The measures came after Prigozhin announced his troops had taken control of the military command centre and airbase in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the nerve centre of Russia's offensive in Ukraine.
"A BLOW TO RUSSIA"
Responding to the challenge in a televised address, Putin accused Prigozhin of a "stab in the back" that posed a threat to Russia's very survival.
"Any internal turmoil is a deadly threat to our statehood and to us as a nation. This is a blow to Russia and to our people," Putin said, demanding national unity.
"Extravagant ambitions and personal interests led to treason," Putin said, referring to Prigozhin, who began building his power base as a catering contractor.
Another Putin ally, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, declared that he had dispatched his own units to help quash the Wagner rebellion.
Armed Wagner fighters deployed around administrative buildings in Rostov and tanks were seen in the city centre.
As the insurrection force headed north through Voronezh and Lipetsk towards Moscow, the capital's mayor announced that "anti-terrorist" measures were being taken.
Critical facilities were "under reinforced protection", TASS reported, citing a law enforcement source.
While Prigozhin's outfit fought at the forefront of Russia's offensive in Ukraine, he repeatedly blamed Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, for his fighters' deaths.
Prigozhin, a former convict and long-time ally of Putin, leads a private army that includes thousands of former prisoners recruited from Russian jails.
His men took on the fiercest fighting of the 16-month Ukraine war, including the protracted battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
He railed for months against the regular army's top brass, accusing generals of incompetence and of withholding ammunition from his fighters. This month, he defied orders to sign a contract placing his troops under Defence Ministry command.
He launched the apparent mutiny on Friday after alleging that the military had killed many of his fighters in an air strike. The Defence Ministry denied it.
"There are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country," he said, promising to destroy any checkpoints or air forces that got in Wagner's way. He later said his men had been involved in clashes with regular soldiers and had shot down a helicopter.
Anna Matveeva, senior visiting research fellow at King's College's Russia Institute, said Prigozhin was a popular figure whose men were well-equipped and trained, after doing the heavy lifting in Ukraine in recent months.
"They are a force to be reckoned with", said Matveeva, adding that Wagner's success or failure would depend on the allies it could find within Russia's security forces.
Army Lieutenant-General Vladimir Alekseyev issued a video appeal asking Prigozhin to reconsider.
"Only the president has the right to appoint the top leadership of the armed forces, and you are trying to encroach on his authority," he said.
On Friday, he had appeared to cross a new line in the feud, saying that Putin's stated rationale for invading Ukraine 16 months ago was based on lies concocted by the army's top brass.
"The war was needed ... so that Shoigu could become a marshal ... so that he could get a second 'Hero' (of Russia) medal," Prigozhin said in a video clip.
"The war wasn't needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine," he said, referring to Putin's justifications for the war.
In one of many overnight frenzied audio messages, he had then made clear that he was moving against the army.
"Those who destroyed our lads, who destroyed the lives of many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, will be punished. I ask that no one offer resistance," he said.
"There are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country," he said, promising to destroy any checkpoints or air forces that got in Wagner's way. He later said his men had been involved in clashes with regular soldiers and had shot down a helicopter.
Prigozhin denied that he was trying to stage a military coup.
He said he had led his fighters out of Ukraine to Rostov, where a video posted by a pro-Wagner Telegram channel showed him, seemingly relaxed, conversing with two generals at the headquarters of Russia's huge Southern Military District.
The video showed him telling the generals: "We have arrived here, we want to receive the chief of the general staff and Shoigu. Unless they come, we'll be here, we'll blockade the city of Rostov and head for Moscow."
The state news agency TASS quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that all of Russia's main security services were reporting to Putin "round the clock".
Security was being tightened in Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel.
“There’s always a sense of helplessness because the victims are children,” ASP Chen recounted.
“Some of them are even infants, toddlers, and the experience affects you quite severely because some of these videos depict very, very, extremely violent sexual abuse on the child.”
Frustration comes into play when she unsuccessfully attempts to find out where the victim is, so he or she can be rescued.
She added: “It can be quite mentally overwhelming at times, but then again, despite all these emotions, what spurs me to process all this material is the fact that the offender is still out there.
"Offenders still continue hurting children, and it strengthens my resolve to want to find a breakthrough so that we can try to identify the child.”
HELPING ACCUSED PERSONS
HT Cares officer Joseph Chew, who is also a trained counsellor from Fei Yue Community Services, comes in after suspects are arrested - he advises them on how to seek help to avoid reoffending.
Even before alleged offenders are brought to trial, they are given the opportunity, if they want it, to identify underlying social issues such as a longing for intimacy or low self-esteem that contributed to what they are accused of doing.
Mr Chew is currently supporting three clients involved in child sexual abuse material cases.
“A lot of them (struggle with) addiction to material of sexual content or pornographic material. Some of them became reliant or dependent … so we will actually refer them to an agency that has support pertaining to the behaviour that they have,” he added.
The Russian defence ministry denied Prigozhin's claims of an attack on his forces, saying the statements "do not correspond to reality", and calling them a "provocation".
It later said Ukrainian troops were taking advantage of the infighting to ready an assault near the east Ukraine hotspot of Bakhmut.
A prominent Russian general urged Prigozhin to call off efforts to remove the leadership of Moscow's defence ministry.
"I urge you to stop," Sergei Surovikin, commander of Russia's aerospace forces, said in a highly unusual video address.
"The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country. Before it is too late, it is necessary... to obey the will and order of the popularly elected President of the Russian Federation".
Anti-Kremlin figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, however, urged Russians to support Prigozhin, saying it was acceptable to back "even the devil" in taking on the Kremlin.
Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said the Wagner chief's attempt to force a leadership change in the defence ministry "is unlikely to succeed" given that Surovikin had denounced his call for rebellion.
Kyiv's defence ministry said it was monitoring the situation.
"We are watching," the Ukrainian defence ministry tweeted, while Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said rival Russian factions had begun to "eat each other over power and money".
Ukraine was also on high alert after new Russian missile strikes Saturday, with explosions reported in Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv.
US President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation in Russia and Washington "will be consulting with allies and partners on these developments", National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said.
On Friday, Prigozhin said Moscow's forces were retreating in Ukraine's east and south following the start of Kyiv's counteroffensive early this month. That directly contradicted Putin's account that Ukraine was suffering "catastrophic" losses and that there was a lull in fighting.
"We are washing ourselves in blood," Prigozhin said.
"No one is bringing reserves. What they tell us is the deepest deception," he added, referring to the Russian military and political leadership.
QUESTIONING MILITARY OPERATION
After years of operating in the shadows, Prigozhin has now admitted to running the elusive mercenary group Wagner and even interfering in US elections.
His forces, bolstered by tens of thousands of prison recruits, played a central role in Russia's capture of the town of Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk, the longest and bloodiest battle of the conflict.
However, this week he accused Moscow's top brass of deceiving Russians about the offensive in Ukraine.
"Why did the special military operation begin?" he said. "The war was needed for the self-promotion of a bunch of bastards."
Rarely has such a controversial figure shot to this degree of prominence on the Russian political stage under Putin.
Prigozhin rose from a modest background to become part of the inner circle around Putin.
He spent nine years in prison in the final period of the USSR after being convicted of fraud and theft. In the chaos of the 1990s, he began a moderately successful business selling hot dogs.
From there he fell into the restaurant business and opened a luxury location in Saint Petersburg whose customers included Putin, then making the transition from working in the KGB to local politics.
However, in recent months, Prigozhin has become embroiled in a bitter power struggle with the defence ministry.
He has accused the Russian military of attempting to "steal" victories in Ukraine from his forces, and slammed Moscow's "monstrous bureaucracy" for slowing military gains.
LONDON: Titanic submersible pilot Stockton Rush was "extremely" serious about safety, his former business partner said on Friday (Jun 23) after mounting criticism following a deadly implosion.
William Kohnen, chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee, a voluntary industry body, said OceanGate was "not willing" to undergo a standard certification process for the Titan submersible.
But Guillermo Soehnlein, who started OceanGate with Rush in 2009 before leaving the company in 2013, denied his late friend was reckless.
"He was extremely committed to safety," Soehnlein told Britain's Times Radio, while stressing he was not involved in Titan's experimental design.
"He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment," he said.
Soehnlein noted that Cameron himself had conducted many submersible descents, including more than 30 to the Titanic site, and to the Earth's deepest point in the Pacific Mariana Trench.
"I think he was asked about a similar risk and he said, 'look, if something happens at that depth, it will be catastrophic in a matter of microseconds'.
"To the point where the implosion happens at almost supersonic speeds and you'd basically be dead before your brain could even process that anything was wrong."
Earlier this week, a tweet went viral claiming that a schoolteacher from Malaysia had secretly filmed the contents of her students’ bags without their consent and posted it on TikTok.
The now-deleted tweet tagged education minister Fadhlina Sidek and said: “YBM, I received this video via WhatsApp. The teacher is going through her pupils’ things and posted a video on this. I don’t know her profile name on TikTok, but the teacher is wearing a REAL school lanyard.”
Teachers of TikTok
The teacher in question is Shi Qi, on TikTok she is known as @notqiwiie, and specializes in creating educational content featuring her students, with the consent of their parents.
As expected, the internet was inundated with both criticism and support regarding the teacher’s actions. Some argued that while parents may have given consent, the children themselves might not agree or fully comprehend the potential impact of having their faces exposed on the internet.
Following the controversy, Shi Qi apologized and revealed that the viral video was actually sponsored content intended to promote a children’s vitamin product.
In response to the backlash, Shi Qi’s TikTok account, which had over a million followers, now only features a single video—an apology—while the rest of her content has been removed due to the uproar.
“I would like to apologize to the parents and individuals who were offended by a recent video I posted. I am really sorry. The video was sponsored content. It was filmed during break time and I placed the gummies into the bags before the shoot. I looked through the student’s bags, took out a gummy, and ate it,” the apology reads.
As someone who has viewed her content, it is evident that Shi Qi genuinely cares about her role as a teacher, and the students in her videos appear to genuinely like her.
This indicates that she has a strong connection with her students, likely facilitated by her adeptness in navigating social media and content creation.
Shi Qi is not the only teacher who has gained influence through social media. In fact, it has become quite popular for teachers to document their daily activities in the classroom or participate in TikTok trends with their students.
However, this situation raises an important question: where should the boundaries be drawn?
Students are not money-making objects
Michelle Tan, a preschool homeroom teacher at an international school in Kuala Lumpur, expressed her belief that it is commendable for teachers to document their professional lives. However, she emphasizes that it becomes problematic when students’ faces are exposed to the public.
“I think that it’s great for teachers to create content on TikTok and everything but at the same time, you also have to be responsible for what kind of content we put up on the internet,” she told Coconuts.
“I do it too, I post about my experiences as an educator on TikTok but I do not reveal their faces,” she added.
“Teachers must also exercise caution when it comes to creating content in the classroom because it can be construed as using your students to make yourself famous or monetize from it,” she said.
Protecting the kids
Michelle also pointed out the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential risks for underage children whose faces are shared on the internet.
She noted that there is a risk of their images being misused in pornographic materials.
To mitigate these concerns, Michelle ensures that she seeks permission from parents whenever she includes her students’ faces in teaching materials or assignments.
Similarly, Azhani Fisal, a 26-year-old teacher based in Selangor, shares Michelle’s sentiments.
She believes that educators must exercise utmost discretion when it comes to their students’ identities. Azhani emphasizes that teachers should prioritize their students’ well-being rather than creating content.
“Documenting our daily classroom activities is acceptable, as long as we take precautions to avoid posting or making students’ faces go viral,” she said.
“It is crucial to hide their faces, even if their parents grant permission. Children themselves may not fully comprehend how media operates and might object to their images being shared.”
“Sometimes, it is not only up to the parents to give consent; the children themselves should also be aware of what to anticipate,” she added.
She said teachers need to remind themselves that their role is not to create content but to ensure the well-being of their students.
In summary, this incident involving Shi Qi has sparked a broader conversation about the appropriate boundaries for teacher-influencers and the potential risks associated with exposing students’ identities on the internet.
