Russians outraged after deadly car bombing
Angry Russians called Sunday for attacks on Ukrainian government buildings after the death of a prominent Putin ally in a car bombing after a festival outside Moscow.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement: “We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia.” Ukrainian officials, however, urged government employees in the capital to work remotely this week amid concerns that the buildings would be targeted for attack.
“Kyiv will shudder” said a headline on Russia’s Tsargrad.tv website, while state-run RT editor Margarita Simonyan retweeted a call to bomb the Ukrainian intelligence agency headquarters in Kyiv. “Decision-making centers! Decision-making centers!! Decision making centers!!!” she said in a Telegram post.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the explosion ripped through the Toyota Land Cruiser Darya Dugina, 29, a conservative commentator, was driving near the village of Bolshie Vyazemy on Saturday night. Rt reported that the vehicle belonged to her father, well-known anti-Western Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin, giving rise to suspicions that he was the intended target.
The blast came at about 9 p.m. local time, shortly after Dugina left a festival where she attended a “Tradition and History” lecture led by her father, Russian authorities said.
Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Telegram that Russia would consider any involvement by Ukraine in the incident to be “state terrorism.”
Latest developments:
►Ukraine’s military said it destroyed two Russian ammunition depots in the villages of Chornobaivka in Kherson and Starytsia in Kharkiv. The Kremlin said it destroyed an ammunition depot in the Odessa Region where missiles for U.S. multiple rocket launchers HIMARS were stored.
►Two Russians and a Ukrainian were arrested for alleged espionage at an Albanian military plant. Albania, a NATO member since 2009, has strongly renounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has joined in sanctions against Moscow.
►The U.S. will ship another $775 million package of arms to Ukraine, including long-range artillery ammunition used to devastating effect on Russian forces, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity under Pentagon guidelines.
Russian military parades draw criticism from separatist
Russian hard-liner Igor Girkin, a minister in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry reports. Girkin posted a grudgingly admiring critique of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s conduct during the war in contrast to Russia, where “at the end of the sixth month of the war … we play tank biathlons and hold festivals of military bands.”
The defense ministry explains that the tank biathlon was the finale of Russia’s International Army Games that took place near Moscow last week.
“A significant proportion of Russia’s military and security professionals probably believe that it is inappropriate to continue committing forces to peace-time military ceremonial events while Russian troops continue…
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