Ukraine has said Russian forces are “very far” from capturing the eastern town of 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.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said overnight the fighting in the heavily fought over city in Ukraine’s Donbas region is “especially hot”. His comments came as Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said his troops had raised a Russian flag on the city’s administrative building. However, there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut had fallen into Russian hands and Prigozhin has previously made claims about Wagner’s military progress in the city that were premature.
Russian police have arrested a woman suspected of delivering a bomb that killed a prominent pro-war Russian military blogger in a blast in a cafe in central St Petersburg on Sunday. Russian authorities say Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed by a bomb blast as he was hosting a discussion with other pro-war commentators at a cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of St Petersburg.
Russian police said they had identified a woman called Darya Trepova as the suspect, adding that she was arrested in an apartment in St Petersburg after a search on Monday morning. Sources in the country’s interior ministry told the RBK news outlet that the attack was “carefully planned in advance by several people”.
Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be moved close to Belarus’ borders with its Nato neighbours, the Russian ambassador to Belarus has said amid tensions between Russia and the west over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
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