Day 393 since the beginning of the war: Russia is said to have a lack of military instructors. Ex-President Medvedev threatens to send troops to Kiev and Lviv. All information in the news blog.
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Ukraine: Russia attacks humanitarian aid center – five dead
12:53 p.m.: According to Ukrainian sources, five people were killed in Russian attacks in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka. A one-story building was hit during the rocket fire on Friday night, the rescue services said in the Telegram online service. It was a humanitarian support center.
The emergency services released images of a building with a collapsed roof and debris lying around. According to the information, three women and two men were killed. The women killed were internally displaced people from Bakhmut, Chasiv Yar and Opytne, it said.
Kostyantynivka is located about 25 kilometers west of the city of Bakhmut, which has been heavily fought over for months. A statement from the local prosecutor said the Russian military fired an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system at Kostyantynikva. Meanwhile, authorities in the southern Kherson region, partly controlled by Russian forces, said one civilian was killed in Russian attacks.
Ex-Kremlin chief Medvedev reads Stalin telegram to armaments representatives
10.55 a.m.: More than a year after the start of the war against Ukraine, Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev resorted to a sensational method to increase domestic arms production: Speaking to representatives of a national armaments commission, the 57-year-old quoted Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) as if from a from several videos that Medvedev himself published on social networks on Thursday evening and Friday morning.
In the video, he can be heard sitting at the head of a long table reading from a WWII-era telegram from Stalin calling on a factory in the city of Chelyabinsk to produce tank parts on time. “If it turns out in a few days that you are violating your duty to the fatherland, I will start beating you up like criminals,” the 1941 letter continued. Then Medvedev, who is now deputy head of the Russian Security Council, said to the group: “Colleagues, I want you to listen to me and remember the generalissimo’s words.”
Medvedev later published excerpts from an interview with Russian journalists. In it he once again claimed that Russia was actually not fighting Ukraine at all, but the whole of NATO. Russian propaganda keeps blaming the West for the war that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin himself started on February 24, 2022.
Does Prigozhin fear the Ukrainian counterattack?
10.50 a.m.: Allegedly, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin wants to withdraw parts of his army from Ukraine and use them more in other countries in the future. But what would that mean for the war in Ukraine – and how seriously should such reports be taken? You can read an analysis of the situation here.
Russia: Not planning direct conflict with NATO
10:02 a.m.: According to its top politician Dmitry Medvedev, Russia has no intention of entering into a “direct conflict” with NATO. Rather, Russia is interested in finding a solution to the Ukraine crisis through talks, says the deputy chairman of the National Security Council and former Russian president, according to the Interfax agency. However, he warns that any Ukrainian attempt to regain the Crimean peninsula would be a reason for Russia to use “absolutely any weapon” against Kiev.
