Related video: Russia arrests US journalist on espionage allegations
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A prominent pro-Putin military blogger has died and more than a dozen other people were injured when a bomb went off in a cafe in the Russian city of St Petersburg.
Russian news reports said blogger Vladlen Tatarsky - real name Maxim Fomin - was killed and 15 people were hurt in the explosion at the Street Bar cafe in the country’s second largest city.
Tatarsky was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers who have provided an often critical running commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He was meeting with members of the public at the cafe and a woman presented him with a statuette that apparently exploded, according to local reports.
It comes after six civilians were killed and eight wounded in Russian shelling of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine on Sunday morning, a senior Ukrainian official has said.
Kostiantynivka, home to about 70,000 people before the war, is just 12.5 miles west of Bakhmut, the epicentre of fighting for at least eight months as Russian forces try to capture the city.
Pictured: scene after St Petersburg cafe explosion
Russian investigators and police officers stand at the side of an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia
Russian police officers are seen at the site of an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia
Video: One person killed and 15 injured in St Petersburg cafe blast
Pro-Putin military blogger killed in St Petersburg cafe explosion
One person was killed and six injured in an explosion in a cafe in Russia‘s St Petersburg on Sunday, the TASS news agency reported, citing emergency services.
News agency RIA has said well-known military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, has been killed in the explosion.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers who have provided an often critical running commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary
It was a month into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp.
His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager.
As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead.
The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary
It was a month into Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp. His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager. As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead. The Body in the Woods by Bel Trew is streaming now on Independent TV and on your smart TV.
Lavrov held phone call with Blinken
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian news agencies said on Sunday, citing Russia‘s foreign ministry.
They did not say what was discussed.
The conversation came at a time of acute tension in U.S.-Russian relations, three days after Russia said it had arrested Evan Gershkovich, a U.S. reporter for the Wall Street Journal, on charges of espionage.
Journal reporter's arrest threatens reporting from Russia
The arrest of a Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges in Russia has news organizations based outside the country weighing for the second time in a year whether the risks of reporting there during wartime are too great.
The Journal and other news outlets continued to press Friday for the release of Evan Gershkovich, He was taken into custody by Russian security officials a day earlier and accused of spying, charges the newspaper vehemently denies.
More than 30 press freedom groups and news organizations, including the Journal, The New York Times, BBC, The Associated Press, The New Yorker, Time and The Washington Post, signed a letter Friday to Anatoly I. Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., expressing concern about “a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions.
War crimes warrant for Putin could complicate peace efforts, observers warn
An international arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin raises the prospect of the man whose country invaded Ukraine facing justice, but it complicates efforts to end that war in peace talks.
Both justice and peace appear to be only remote possibilities today, and the conflicting relationship between the two is a quandary at the heart of a decision on March 17 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek the Russian leader’s arrest.
Judges in The Hague found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Mr Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights were responsible for war crimes, specifically the unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
As unlikely as Mr Putin sitting in a Hague courtroom seems now, other leaders have faced justice in international courts.
Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a driving force behind the Balkan wars of the 1990s, went on trial for war crimes, including genocide, at a United Nations tribunal in The Hague after he lost power. He died in his cell in 2006 before a verdict could be reached.
Serbia, which wants European Union membership but has maintained close ties to Russia, is one of the countries that has criticised the ICC’s action. The warrants “will have bad political consequences” and create “a great reluctance to talk about peace (and) about truce” in Ukraine, populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said.
Others see consequences for Mr Putin, and for anyone judged guilty of war crimes, as the primary desired outcome of international action.
“There will be no escape for the perpetrator and his henchmen,” European Union leader Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday in a speech to mark the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Bucha, the Ukraine town that saw some of the worst atrocities in the war.
“War criminals will be held accountable for their deeds,” she added.
Brittney Griner urges Biden to bring home reporter Gershkovich
U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who was freed from a Russian penal colony in a prisoner exchange last year, has urged the Biden administration to keep using “every tool possible” to win the release of a U.S. reporter accused of spying in Russia.
Griner and her wife Cherelle said on Instagram that “our hearts are filled with great concern” for Evan Gershkovich, the journalist arrested by Russia‘s FSB security service last week in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
The Kremlin says Gershkovich was using journalism as a cover for spying activity - something his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, has vehemently denied.
Russia has not made public any evidence to support the charges, under which Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in jail. The White House has described the accusations as “ridiculous” and President Joe Biden has called on Moscow to release him.
The Griners said they were grateful for Biden’s “deep commitment to rescue Americans”. They cited the cases of aid worker Jeff Woodke, freed last month after being kidnapped for more than six years in West Africa, and Paul Rusesabagina, a permanent U.S. resident who returned home last week after being released from prison in Rwanda.
The couple added, “we call on all of our supporters to both celebrate the wins and encourage the administration to continue to use every tool possible to bring Evan and all wrongfully detained Americans home”.
Brittney Griner, a WNBA star and double Olympic gold medallist who played for a Russian team in the off-season, was arrested at a Moscow airport one week before Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
She was found with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after being convicted on drug smuggling and possession charges, a verdict that Biden called “unacceptable”.
She was freed in December in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who spent 14 years in jail in the United States for arms trafficking, money laundering and conspiring to kill Americans.
What’s happening on the battlefield?
Here is the latest from the frontline:
* Six civilians were killed and eight wounded in Russian shelling of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine on Sunday morning, a senior Ukrainian official said. Kostiantynivka, home to about 70,000 people before the war, is just 20 km (12.5 miles) west of Bakhmut, the epicentre of fighting for at least eight months as Russian forces try to capture the city.
Reuters could not independently verify the number of casualties.
* Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu promised to boost munitions supplies to Russian forces in Ukraine during a visit to the headquarters of Moscow’s troops fighting in the country, according to footage published by the Defence Ministry on Saturday.
Russia becomes president of UN Security Council despite Ukraine invasion
Around 50 Ukrainians protested in front of the UN’s office in Brussels on Saturday afternoon, waving a mixture of Ukrainian and EU flags.
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2023-04-02 18:25:01Z
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