pressure as well. the main problem is that the company has nearly £14 billion of debt, so it has a substantial interest bill to pay every year. that interest bill is currently going up because interest rates are going up. some interest rate payments are related to inflation, which is very high. at the same time, it s having to spend over £1 billion a year in infrastructure, water mains, stopping leakage and there s a regulatory review coming up in a few years which may mean it will have to invest even more. thames water needs to raise money from somewhere but if it can t get it, the government is looking at options. we need to make sure thames water as an entity survives. there s a lot of work the government is doing on resolving sewage. up until now, the regulator has been focused on keeping consumer bills down but there is a lot of infrastructure work that needs to take place and we need that entity to survive. in a statement, thames water says it s working constructively
the russian mainstream army, you can go home or go to belarus. now it s not clear under what circumstances they would be going to belarus. there s a lot of confusion here and be perfectly honest, matthew, i think there is still a deal being hammered out. this is still a work in progress between lukashenko, the ruler of belarus, the kremlin, and prigozhin and wagner group, a three way negotiation that s going on. because the wagner group has served the kremlin s interests very well over the years, since 2014. they have been there go to arms length instrument to carry out certain deniable operations and parts of the world like parts of africa, libya, syria, and of course ukraine. so to lose that altogether would be to the detriment of russia s military but then again, can president putin ever trust them again? because look at the vitriol president putin spoke with in the
it was a weekend of instability in russia, where the wagner mercenary group staged a rebellion against the country s military leadership. in the end, that mutiny proved short lived, coming to a halt when wagner leader yevgeny prigozhin told his troops to stand down, just hundreds of kilometres away from russia s capital, moscow. on tuesday, belarus s leader, aleksandr lukashenko, revealed that the wagner chief flew to the belarus capital, minsk but there s uncertainty now over the wagner leader s exact current location. on that, here s our eastern europe correspondent, sarah rainsford. now days later, there are indications that the man who was behind that mutiny is not only still free, there are no criminal charges against him, but it is possible he might actually be back in russia. yesterday, president lukashenko of belarus said he was in that country certainly we had seen flight tracker data which had shown his flight, his own private jet, had landed in minsk yesterday morning. b
address of his on saturday when the mutiny was fully under way. he talked about betrayal, a stab in the back, brutal punishment for those responsible well, he s issued a pardon for the wagner partners, saying they were misled and betrayed. yet prigozhin, as far as we know, is a free man. now what we do know, as you said earlier, is that some state, prigozhin didn t land in his plane and belarus. will he stay there? if he does, what will he stay there? if he does, what will he do? how much freedom will he have, will he run wagner s african operations there? president lukashenko has promised him a camp, you can pitch your tents, as he put it. all of this is very alarming to belarus s nato members, specifically poland, latvia and lithuania they already feel uncomfortable about
and a second plane, which had mirrored the movements of the first for several days, was also seen flying to saint petersburg. we haven t heard from mr prigozhin himself for some time now, since monday, when he put out an audio recording answering some questions but many of them still remain very is happening to his wagner group on the ground, those mercenaries that have been fighting in ukraine for a very long time now. frank gardner has been talking to me and gave me the latest on prigozhin himself in the number of fighters expected to go to belarus. the? himself in the number of fighters expected to go to belarus. they are undecided yet. expected to go to belarus. they are undecided yet, basically expected to go to belarus. they are undecided yet, basically the - expected to go to belarus. they are | undecided yet, basically the kremlin has given the wagner group three choices you canjoin the russian mainstream army, signed a contract with them, in other words no longer be wi