/im-605135.jpg "The leaders of the United Nations and Turkey met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in western Ukraine. The group discussed food shipments and rising tensions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images")
In May, Italian television journalists asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about the role Wagner Group, a private military company, was playing as Moscow began its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area.
He dismissed the question. Wagner, he said, wasn’t deployed in Ukraine and had no connection to the Russian state.
