https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-2-2023
[Summary Abbreviated update in order to discuss the assassination of high-profile, heavily pro-Wagner Maksim Fomin, aka Vladlen Tatarsky by someone, and the implications that it's been a Russian governmental assassination due to his heavy criticism of the Kremlin]
[ Summary - a woman gave him a statue and 3 - 5 minutes later there was an explosions. He was killed, 30 audience members were wounded. It was an open-to-all presentation of Fomin's frontline experiences.
Naturally the Kremlin is blaming Ukraine.]
"Prigozhin oddly stated on April 2 that he would not “blame the Kyiv regime” for the deaths of Fomin and Russian ultranationalist figure Daria Dugina, suggesting that Ukrainian agents were not in fact responsible"
Unknown actors killed Russian milblogger Maksim Fomin in a deliberate and targeted attack during an event in a St. Petersburg bar reportedly belonging to Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin on April 2.
Russian officials and propagandists have accused Ukraine of staging a “terrorist attack” to assassinate Fomin.
Fomin was a prominent figure in the Russian pro-war nationalist information space, although not more so than some others
Fomin’s assassination at Prigozhin’s bar is likely part of a larger pattern of escalating Russian internal conflicts involving Prigozhin and Wagner.
Russian officials may be intending to use Fomin’s assassination to drive the self-censorship of a growing Russian civil society questioning the progress of the war in bars.
The assassination is already deepening a divide within the Russian milblogger space, which may ultimately be beneficial to the Kremlin’s efforts to consolidate control of the information space.
Key inflections in ongoing military operations on April 2:
- Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[27] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made marginal gains northwest of Kreminna.[28]
- Russian forces continued to attack Bakhmut and its environs.[29] Russian forces likely seized the AZOM plant in northern Bakhmut as ISW has previously assessed. Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike on the plant on April 2.[30]
- Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.[31] Ukrainian Tavriisk Direction Forces Joint Press Center Spokesperson Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi stated that Russian forces retreated from unspecified positions in the Donetsk direction.[32]
- Ukrainian forces conducted a HIMARS strike against a rail depot in Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, the third strike against the city in the past week.[33]
- The UK Ministry of Defense assessed that a significant minority of Russia’s 200,000 casualties in Ukraine are due to poor discipline and training outside of combat, including due to excessive alcohol consumption and mishandling of small arms.[34]
- Former Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) official Rodion Miroshnik denied ISW’s April 1 report citing Miroshnik that Russian authorities are deporting Ukrainian children to Russia under rest-and-rehabilitation schemes.[35] Miroshnik claimed that mothers and children from Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast went to Russian sanitoriums for medical treatment.[36] Miroshnik denied being closely affiliated with the current occupation regime, claiming that he has not served as advisor to the Head of the LNR for a year.[37] LNR People’s Militia Press Service called Miroshnik “advisor to the LNR Head” as recently as January 29, 2023, however.[38] Miroshnik claimed on his Telegram channel that he served as LNR Ambassador to Russia as recently as November 13, 2022.[39]