Zelensky condemns Russian attacks on Kostiantynivka: 'The evil state must be defeated.' A Ukrainian military victory is the only thing that will end Russia's "terror" and restore freedom to all captured territories, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on April 2.
Governors: Russian attacks hit 6 regions, kill 4 civilians in 1 day. According to the regional governors' reports, four civilians were killed, and at least 15 were injured. 6 civilians killed in Russian missile attack on Kostiantynivka in Donetsk Oblast. Earlier in the day, the regional governor reported that Russian attacks had injured five civilians in Donetsk Oblast over the past 24 hours.
Ukraine has said Russian forces are “very far” from capturing Bakhmut and that fighting raged around the city administration building where the Wagner mercenary group claims to have raised the Russian flag. “Bakhmut is Ukrainian, and they have not captured anything and are very far from doing that to put it mildly,” Serhiy Cherevatiy, a spokesperson for the eastern military command said.
New: Today's report discusses the assassination of prominent pro-war Russian milblogger Maksim Fomin (also known as Vladlen Tatarsky) in St. Petersburg on April 2. Fomin’s assassination may reveal further fractures within the Kremlin and its inner circle.
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Military: Russian troops forced to retreat from ‘several positions’ in Donetsk Oblast. The Ukrainian forces "are now busy equipping these positions for defensive combat operations," according to the Ukrainian military spokesperson.
Defense Ministry: Russia lost 4,000 soldiers in Ukraine over the past week. Ukrainian defenders have "destroyed" nearly 4,000 Russian troops since March 27, First Deputy Defense Minister Oleksandr Pavliuk said on April 2.
Military spokesperson: Russia changes attack tactics in Ukraine’s south. Russia has reportedly started using its Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets to strike civilian areas in Kherson Oblast, instead of shelling them from the ground positions that are targeted by Ukrainian forces.
Southern Command: Russia's proxies in occupied parts of Kherson Oblast preparing for 'elections.' Moscow plans to hold the so-called local elections on the occupied east bank of Kherson Oblast this fall, said a spokesperson for Ukraine's Southern Command Vladyslav Nazarov.
General Rustam Muradov, a top Russian commander in Ukraine, has been dismissed in the wake of unsuccessful Russian assaults near the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, two Defense Ministry sources told The Moscow Times.
Military: Wagner Group comparable in size to armies of Hungary, Slovakia. The Wagner Group, Russia’s most high-profile mercenary outfit, is now a fully-fledged army equal in size to Hungary or Slovakia's military personnel, Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine's Eastern Military Command, told the Ukrainian Channel 24.
One hallmark feature of Putin's rule - very different from the Soviet times - is complete blurring of the lines between common criminals and the state. Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin), the war propagandist who was killed today in St. Petersburg, was a common criminal before his rise to fame.
He escaped from jail where he served time for a bank robbery in 2014, when the law and order broke down in Donbass after the Russian incursion. After gaining popularity as a social media personality, he has become a darling of state channels and took part of Kremlin's official receptions.
And this is a very general pattern. Evgeny Prigozhin served 9 years for robbery and fraud before becoming a member of Putin's close entourage, the head of a large quasi-state military organization, Wagner, and, effectively, a spokesman for the Russian military in Ukraine. This mingling of criminals and state functionaries would be totally impossible in, say, the Khrushchev, Brezhnev or later years.
In the city of Pushkin, a search was completed in the apartment of the relatives of Darya Trepova, who is wanted in the case of an explosion at a meeting of Vladlen Tatarsky. The woman moves freely, there are no handcuffs on her. In her hands, presumably, the keys and a pack of cigarettes. According to Fontanka, this is not Daria herself, but her mother, and the girl's stepfather was also taken away with her.
Who killed Tatarsky? Russian state media has now settled on Navalny and the Ukrainian secret services as reported in The Moscow Times.
“The terrorist act committed on April 2 in St. Petersburg against the well-known journalist Vladlen Tatarsky was planned by the special services of Ukraine with the involvement of agents from among persons collaborating with Navalny’s so-called Anti-Corruption Foundation, of which the detained Daria Trepova is an active supporter,” it says. in a press release from the NAC ( quoted by RIA Novosti).
Armenia not to arrest Putin under ICC warrant. “We've heard the concerns expressed by Russia, and we can ensure that the continuation of the Rome Statute process does not harm the strategic relationship between Armenia and Russia,” said a top Armenian official.
Financial ties between Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Russian President Vladimir Putin proven by consortium of journalists. According to The Washington Post, we are talking about a gift agreement of the mid-2000s, according to which a company controlled by Abramovich in Cyprus transferred $245,000 to Israeli citizen Mina Yuditskaya-Berliner, former teacher Putin. On the same day, she became the owner of a small apartment in the center of Tel Aviv.
The production of passenger cars decreased by 67% in the past year, and by 44.6% for all vehicles, including trucks and buses. Fedyakov says the situation in the car market is a disaster: “We dropped to the 1980s level.” Car sales decreased by 58.8% to 687,000 units over the year. Meanwhile, Russians are in no hurry to switch to the available Chinese brands: sales of key manufacturers from China grew by less than 5%. According to the forecast of analysts at the Technologies of Trust company (formerly PwC in Russia), the car market will only reach pre-crisis levels by 2027.
Germany’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, has been pictured arriving in Kyiv for talks in an unannounced visit. Habeck was accompanied by a small business delegation including Siegfried Russwurm, president of the federation of German industries. It is Habeck’s first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion 13 months ago. They paid tribute to the courage of nearly 400 residents of the village of Yahidne who were held in a school basement under Russian occupation for 27 days before they were set free a year ago.
Rheinmetall is building a military maintenance and logistics hub in Satu Mare, Romania, that is expected to begin operation this month to service weapons used for the war in Ukraine, the company has said.
The service hub should play a central role in maintaining the operational readiness of western combat systems in use in Ukraine and ensuring the availability of logistical support.
Poland has already delivered the first batch of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to the Polish presidential office’s head of international policy, Marcin Przydacz.
Incumbent PM Sanna Marin’s Social-Democrats came third in the Finnish election, trailing the conservative National Coalition Party of Petteri Orpo and the populist Finns party. Marin conceded defeat; it’s now up to Orpo to spearhead talks with other parties to form a coalition in the parliament. We are still waiting for the official results of the elections in Bulgaria.
In Montenegro, former Economy Minister Jakov Milatović has managed to unseat Milo Đukanović after more than three decades of rule in Sunday’s presidential runoff. Milatović, who campaigned on an anti-corruption, pro-EU platform, won around 60 percent of the vote, according to local pollsters. The official election results are expected in the coming days.
DoJ and FBI investigators have amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former president Donald Trump in the investigation into top-secret documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home, according to people familiar with the matter. The new details highlightthe degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case —whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.
Nato’s position on Ukraine’s bid “remains unchanged” and that is that “Ukraine will become a member of the alliance”, Stoltenberg says. Nato is also looking into how it can develop a political relationship with Ukraine, and how it can expand its work on more long-term reforms in institutional building, he says.
It is extremely important to continue to demonstrate that Nato’s door remains open, as we’ll do tomorrow, when Finland will become a full member. As we do when we finalise the accession process for Sweden hopefully in the near future.
Finland joining Nato on Tuesday “will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for Nato as a whole”, he says.
In response to Stoltenberg’s announcement, Russia said that it would bolster its defences near their joint border if Nato deployed any troops inside the country. “We will strengthen our military potential in the west and in the north-west,” Grushko said in remarks carried by the RIA Novosti state news agency.
“Finland will become a member of the defense alliance NATO on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. The President Niinisto travels to Brussels and participates in the official accession ceremony organized at NATO headquarters.”
Claire Berlinski, The Surprising Reason Europe Came Together Against Putin- Politico
Apart from Hungary (which continues to pay Russian President Vladimir Putin obsequious court), Europe has indeed displayed an uncommon unity since the invasion began. Converging on Brussels within hours of the invasion, European leaders surprised the world by swiftly passing package after package of sanctions designed to crush Russian finance, deprive it of revenue from energy exports, hamstring its defense sector, punish its elites and shut down its propaganda organs.
Von der Leyen attributes this uncommon unity and efficiency to Europe’s “courage and solidarity.” The Biden administration attributes it to the president’s diplomatic prowess: Administration officials told the Washington Post that Biden had engaged “in discreet diplomacy with European allies, and in recent weeks he ha[d] encouraged them to take action.” One European diplomat attributed it to Putin: “Putin has done much more than any other to unite the Europeans and to go for a stronger European Union.” All of this is true. The prospect of invasion by Russia concentrates the mind wonderfully.
But there is another, less widely acknowledged source of Europe’s newfound unity: The latest version of Google Translate, which has turned the ancient dream of a world without language barriers into reality. [continue reading]
russian troops trapped on Kinburn Spit – spokesperson of Ukraine's armed forces- Rubryka
The Ukrainian military is keeping the russian aggressors in a trap on the Kinburn Spit of the Mykolaiv region, constantly working to create "shell hunger" among the invaders. The Kinburn Spit is the last part of the Mykolaiv region, occupied by the russian army.
Nataliia Humeniuk, head of the Joint Coordination Press Center of the Operational Command "South," told about this on the telethon air.
The spokeswoman noted that Ukrainian defenders are trying to take control, in particular, of the ways by which the invaders on the Kinburn spit receive supplies.
As Humenyuk reported, Ukrainian fighters are methodically and effectively taking control of not only parts of the territory of the Kinburn Spit but also its connection with the mainland of the Kherson region as shells are coming from that region to the invaders on the peninsula.
The result of the successes of the Ukrainian defenders is the "shell hunger" of the aggressors on the Kinburn Spit and a decrease in the number of shelling from its territory on the controlled areas of Ukraine. [continue reading]
