(Photo of an unnamed UA combatant sitting in front of a mural of the Ukrainian flag, sometime in 2023, Bahkmut - via apa europe)
In a sick twist, Saturday seems to be the busiest for news in my life - it’s normally Friday but yesterday was quite slow. So let’s get to the news then, yea?
Starting with the biggest, the town of Bahkmut was announced as liberated and held in totality by Russian PMC Wagner with assistance from the Russian Armed Forces and Ministry of Defense, PMC Wagner expects to relinquish control of the city to the MoD no later than May 25th or in roughly 5 days time.
This is a moment for NATO and the US, like Mariupol, that was not supposed to happen. The city, an impenetrable and strategic fortress on a hill, took just 5 months of active combat to be wholly conquered, amidst the backdrop of the non-existent Ukrainian “Spring Counteroffensive” which failed to materialize and has since been reworked into the tentative “Summer Counteroffensive”. This is, of course, providing Ukraine gets more moneys, more weapons, more vehicles and more men, more quickly.
So where is Zelenskyy? He’s traveling the globe, doing a concert tour I’ve dubbed ‘BegAid’, from meeting one on one with the Pope, to Germany, Italy, the Arab League, and now speaking at the G8-1, asking for more money, more armaments, more volunteer mercenaries, more tanks, more bombs, and of course his favorite, the F-16.
And with that we come to the second chunk of big news today, via Twitter - it is speculated and rumored that the Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was potentially critically wounded and may be in a military hospital clinging to life right now, per this reporting from Dagny Taggart via Voenkor.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
For the past week, it had been noted in online chatter that the Commander of the AFU was conspicuously absent, with some netizens joking that he may have joined other holiday-makers and traveled abroad as we enter the late spring and early summer. Some found and recirculated photos of Zaluzhnyi on vacation in 2018, positing that he had indeed taken a trip.
However this was not to be, as indicated by the below tweets.
This is a grave problem for NATO, the AFU, and their American and European financiers. It is impossible to overstate the practical and obvious implications of such a high ranking official being critically wounded, and with it happening in such a conspicuous manner at the hands of the enemy.
So of course I expect they’ll lie about it, first slowly by omission, then by pretending he never existed in the first place. “Zaluzhnyi? Never heard of the guy. Meet this new guy, he’s fantastic. Hand picked by Zelenskyy himself. 👌”
Never heard of you before, but somehow you popped up in my feed. What a piece of crap!