The Ukraine update: what happened last night
After the deadly attack, Putin’s henchmen attack each other
On Sunday afternoon in St. Petersburg, well-known Russian military blogger Maxim Fomin (active under the name Vladlen Tatarskij) was killed in an attack (read more in our ticker: Explosion kills Russian military blogger in St. Petersburg). A woman is said to have presented him with a golden bust, which exploded a few minutes later.
In Russia, there is now heavy speculation about the identity of the alleged perpetrator. At the same time, the military bloggers are attacking each other. As the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes, well-known war observers are calling for the arrest and death penalty of other military bloggers who have spoken critically of Putin’s war in Ukraine. At the same time, they exposed several of their colleagues. The well-known military bloggers accuse the Russian secret service FSB and the Russian police of failing to fight critics of Putin.
This development could be a boon for the Kremlin. On the one hand, Putin benefits massively from the propaganda of his war correspondents. At the same time, some of them often criticize the Ministry of Defense and the Russian army. The president is in a quandary: he needs the war correspondents, but sometimes their influence is too great for him. Now he could use the burgeoning Zoff to pull unwanted military bloggers out of circulation or at least to censor them.
Wagner: Have taken the town hall and the entire center of Bachmut
According to the Wagner mercenaries, they conquered the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine “in the legal sense”. “In the legal sense, Bachmut has been taken,” said Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin on Monday in the online service Telegram.
According to him, the city’s administrative building was under Russian control. In a video accompanying the Telegram post, the Wagner boss can be seen holding a Russian flag with the inscription honoring Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarski, who was killed in a bomb attack at a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday.
“The commanders of the units that have taken the town hall and the entire center will put up this flag,” said the Wagner boss. “This is the private military company Wagner, these are the guys who took Bachmut. Legally, it’s ours.” As early as March 20, Prigozhin said his mercenaries controlled “about 70 percent” of Bakhmut. The aim of the Wagner units was the “complete liberation of the city”.
Selenskyj: “Difficult situation” in Bakhmut
The Ukrainian army, meanwhile, said it was still “holding” the city in eastern Ukraine. “The enemy has not stopped attacking Bakhmut. However, the Ukrainian defenders are valiantly holding the city, repelling numerous enemy attacks,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on its Facebook page on Sunday evening – a few hours before Prigozhin’s statement.
The situation in the region “is still very tense,” said Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar on Sunday evening. Moscow is trying to use “not only the Wagner fighters, but also professional paratrooper units”.
In his daily video address on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the “difficult” situation in Bakhmut. “I am grateful for our fighters who are fighting near Avdiivka, Maryinka and Bakhmut. Especially Bachmut! It is particularly difficult there today,” said Zelenskyj.
Vice-Chancellor Habeck surprisingly arrived in Kiev
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has arrived in Ukraine for political talks. The Green politician arrived in the capital Kiev on Monday morning with a small delegation of German business representatives. Topics of the trip are the reconstruction of the Ukraine attacked by Russia and cooperation in the energy sector.
The purpose of the trip is to give Ukraine a clear signal, Habeck said upon his arrival at the Kiev train station. A sign “that we believe that it will be victorious, that it will be rebuilt, that there is an interest in Europe not only to provide support in times of need, but that Ukraine will also be an economically strong partner in the future ».
Habeck is traveling to the country for the first time since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24 last year – and for the first time ever as federal minister. He only wanted to come if he could bring something with him, said the minister on the outward journey in a special train. What is that? “A business delegation that gives Ukraine hope that there will be post-war reconstruction.”
“Concrete investment decisions” have either already been made or are yet to be made, explained Habeck. Now the German economy is saying: “We can do it again” – and I wanted to convey this signal to my Ukrainian friends.”
Russia stationed nuclear weapons on the Belarusian border with Poland
Russia will deploy the tactical nuclear weapons announced for deployment in Belarus on the border with Poland. This was announced by Moscow’s ambassador in Minsk, Boris Gryzlov, on Sunday. The bunkers needed for storing the weapons should be completed by July 1st. “This will happen despite the noise in Europe and the US,” said Gryzlov, former Russian interior minister and chairman of the Duma, according to the Belta agency.
He said it was positive that the planned stationing of nuclear weapons in Belarus was already causing “a lot of noise” in Western media. “Finally it’s being recognized that there should be some parity,” Gryslow said. “If we are talking about the stationing of American nuclear weapons in Europe, then we must take measures that increase the security of our union state (Belarus and Russia). Russia and Belarus are the territory of the union state, a legalized territory, in contrast to the territories of the Countries where the US has its nuclear weapons stationed. “For them, these countries are just puppets, but we have a common space,” said Boris Gryzlov.
Against the background of high tensions with the West as a result of the Ukraine war, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin recently announced that tactical nuclear weapons would be stationed in the neighboring ex-Soviet republic of Belarus. He justified the stationing by saying that the USA had been doing something similar in Europe for years.
An analysis by the US Institute for War Studies (ISW) said a week ago that Putin wanted to stir up fears of a nuclear escalation in the West in order to break support for Ukraine, for example in the delivery of heavy weapons. According to the ISW assessment, it is “very unlikely that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or anywhere else”. According to the ISW, Putin’s step was already announced before the war in Ukraine. By stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia is above all cementing its influence in the ex-Soviet republic.
Also Read: The Ukraine Update of April 2nd
