©Valentin Sprinchak/TASS, archive
Russia’s flag has been hoisted over Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine) city hall, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private military company, said on Monday.
"April 2, 23:00 precisely. Behind me is the building of (Artyomovsk’s) city administration. This Russian flag is for Vladlen Tatarsky, (the Russian military reporter killed in a blast in St. Petersburg on Sunday). ‘In grateful memory,’ is written on this flag. Technically we have captured Bakhmut," he said as quoted by the Telegram channel of his press service.
Prigozhin noted that the commanders of Russian units that captured the city hall and the entire central district "will carry and place the flags." "The adversary remains in Western blocks," he added.
The head of the Russian private military company (PMC), Evgeny Prigozhin, has announced a milestone achievement in the battle for the city of Artryomovsk (known in Ukraine as Bakhmut), publishing a video allegedly taken in front of the town’s administrative building on Sunday evening.
“We hoisted the Russian flag with the inscription ‘Good memory to Vladlen Tatarsky’ and the flag of PMC Wagner on top of the city administration of Bakhmut,” Prigozhin said in the clip.
Prigozhin’s announcement comes just hours after prominent Russian military blogger Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin) was killed in an apparent improvised explosive device blast in a café in Saint Petersburg on Sunday afternoon.
“Legally speaking, Bakhmut is taken. The enemy is concentrated in the western districts,” the head of the PMC added.
The battle for Artyomovsk/Bakhmut has emerged as one of the most intensive and bloody engagements of the armed conflict in Ukraine, with both sides reportedly suffering significant casualties. Western officials have claimed that the city poses no strategic military value, but Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky pledged to defend it as long as possible after proclaiming the city a fortress.
Kiev’s attempts to cling onto Bakhmut, regardless of the losses, has “almost destroyed the Ukrainian army,” Prigozhin claimed earlier this week. However, Wagner fighters, who led the charge to capture the Donetsk People’s Republic city, also took “a serious beating,” he acknowledged.
The Donbass fighter-turned-war correspondent was killed in an explosion at a St. Petersburg café on Sunday. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into the incident. Who was Vladlen Tatarsky? Here’s what we know.
In the spring of 2014, Ukrainian forces launched a full-blown offensive into the Donbass in an attempt to crush a nascent pro-independence rebellion by local residents and militias. By the summer, fighting approached right up to the prison where Fomin was doing his time, with shells, mortar rounds and bullets hitting the detention center and killing and wounding several inmates. Fomin managed to escape in the chaos, and soon joined up with militiamen fighting off Ukrainian forces.
Between late 2014 to 2019, Fomin served in several Donbass militia units, including the Vityaz Regiment, the LPR’s Fourth Brigade, and the Vostok Battalion. Fomin was briefly arrested by militiamen in 2014 after they learned of his criminal record, but received a pardon from late DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko in recognition of his service.
Fomin began covering events in the Donbass as a journalist in 2019 after retiring from military service.
His audience on social media ballooned after February 2022 with his front line coverage of Russia’s military operation, where he combined his job as a correspondent with service as a military drone operator. Fomin's videos spread like wildfire across the internet, reaching not only Russian-language users, but foreigners as well.
Fomin received popularity – and occasional notoriety, for his brusque and to-the-point reporting style, and for his no-holds barred critical coverage, including discussion of some of the problems faced by Russian forces in the conflict.
‘Big Loss’
Boris Rozhin, a military expert with the Center for Military-Political Journalism, called Fomin's death a "big loss," saying his reports constituted an honest appraisal of the real situation on the front. "He did not hesitate to reveal the problematic points which needed to be fixed. And in some areas, progress really began to be made after that."
Russian lawmaker and Russian Liberal Democratic Party fraction chief Leonid Slutsky said that while he would trust investigators in the case to figure out what happen there is every reason to talk about a “Ukrainian trace” in the attack on Fomin, “as in the case of the murder of Daria Dugina."
"It has the same handwriting. This crime was committed by those who hate Russia, who are ready to kill Russian patriots,” Slutsky wrote in his Telegram page on Sunday evening.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that Russian journalists are under constant threat of reprisal attacks by the Kiev regime and its patrons.
“They are subjected to harassment, branded in the literal sense with special markings on digital platforms on American internet companies, and face a ‘witch hunt’ in the Western media,” she said.
“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist, assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’ has been investigated, or even treated with elementary human sympathy by Western countries, international organizations or foreign professional communities.”
Zakharova blasted Kiev’s “undisguised delight” in the wake Fomin's death and said the lack of reaction in the White House, Downing Street and Elysee Palace “speaks for itself” in light of the lip service they typically pay to the "well-being of journalists and freedom of journalism."
Ukrainian rockets strike repelled in southern Donetsk direction — defense ministry
Russia’s battlegroup East has repelled Ukraine’s strikes from multiple rocket launch systems in the southern Donetsk direction, the battlegroup’s spokesman Alexander Gordeyev said on Sunday.
"Combined rocket strikes with two HIMARS and three Smerch rockets were repelled in the southern Donetsk direction. Russian S-300 and Buk air defense systems hit all the targets. Osa-AKM and Strela-10 air defense systems downed two Valkyrie and two Fury drones," he said, adding that a Leleka drone was downed from small arms in the Zaporozhye direction.
According to Gordeyev, an attempt by a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group to penetrate into the rear of Russian forces in the Zaporozhye direction was thwarted. Five militants were killed. "An enemy howitzer was spotted and destroyed by a Russian Msta self-propelled system near the settlement of Zaliznichnoye in the course of counterbattery activity," he added.
"In the south Donetsk direction, combined missile strikes involving two rockets of the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system [MLRS] and three projectiles of the Smerch MLRS were repelled. The crews of the S-300 and Buk anti-aircraft missile systems destroyed all targets," the spokesperson said.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian forces have also shot down three Ukrainian drones.
In the south Donetsk direction, Russian troops have thwarted "two attempts by the enemy to carry out reconnaissance by force," "a reconnaissance group was destroyed, and up to 20 militants were eliminated," the defense ministry spokesperson told.
In addition, in the Zaporozhye direction, an attempt by Ukrainian forces to send a sabotage and reconnaissance group to the rear of Russian troops was thwarted and five militants were killed, the spokesperson said.
Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, after the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. In response to Russia’s operation, Western countries have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Moscow and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine.
On September 30, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, signed agreements on the accession of these territories to Russia, following referendums that showed that an overwhelming majority of the local population supported becoming part of Russia.
Western countries have significantly increased their economic and military support for Kiev, which now includes air defense and multiple rocket launching systems, tanks, self-propelled artillery, anti-aircraft guns, armored vehicles and various types of ammunition. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in January that arms supplies to Ukraine by Western countries testify to their direct and growing involvement in the conflict.
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