Easter under the muzzle of machine guns

Good morning!

Emmanuel Macron was re -elected by the President of France, and the Slovenian prime minister seems to have lost the election. In the news not to the election:

• As a result of a missile blow to Odessa, at least eight people were killed, 18 people were injured.
• Employees of the OSCE mission are stolen in the Donbass.
• In Russia, mentions of Kyiv and Ukraine are removed from the textbooks of the Enlightenment publishing house, and the posts of political instructions are introduced in ministries and state -owned companies.
• In Russia, one of the most popular chess sites Ches.com is blocked.

Easter shelling

The hopes for Easter truce in Ukraine did not materialize: on Saturday, Russia inflicted missile strikes on Odessa (according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the “logistics center” with a large batch of foreign weapons was destroyed, in fact, one of the missiles got into a residential building, killing eight people, including a three -month -old girl, and injuring another 18). At a large press conference that the President of Ukraine gave in the Kiev metro, Easter shelling was awarded the following comment: “The scum is smelly. What else to call them? There are no other words.” Putin did not forget about Easter: he said that this holiday unites people "around high moral ideals and values" and defended the Easter service in the XXC with a candle in his hands. As the inhabitants of the occupied Melitopol celebrated Easter, read here (spoiler: under the muzzles of machine guns). In Moscow, the picketers who came out with the posters “Christ for peace” were detained .

Despite Putin’s order not to take Azovstal plant in Mariupol, the Russian army continues the shelling and bombing of its territory, preparing for the assault. It was not possible to open the humanitarian corridor from the city on Sunday again . The filmmaker from Mariupol Olga Novikova said that her son was captured, and now she is extorted five thousand euros for his life. Here is the story of the natives of Mariupol Asi - she left for Europe, but with horror reads news from her hometown, where her relatives and acquaintances remained.

On Saturday, Vladimir Zelensky stated that if people hiding in the dungeons of Azovstali are killed in Mariupol, and “referendums” will be held in the captured territories, Ukraine will stop negotiations with Russia (a pseudo -referendum on the creation of the Hernr is expected between May 1 and 10). According to Financial Times , negotiations with Ukraine Putin are no longer interested in: he was angry with the destruction of the Moscow cruiser, and now he wants to capture as many Ukrainian territory as possible. In a large interview with Meduza, the adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine Alexei Antystovich explains why the Russian president will not succeed. The deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Roman Kostenko, who is now fighting near Nikolaev, advises the Moldovan government to remember that they also have an army, and to free the Transnistria from the Russian occupation under the noise.

Nikolaev is actively preparing for Russian assault, while trying to restore water supply disturbed by shelling. The shelling of the cities of the Luhansk region continues , rockets fly to the Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions. The shelling of Kharkov does not stop - but life in the city also does not stop . The OSCE announced the abduction of several employees of the special monitoring mission in the Donbass. According to the Ukrainian Ombudsman, Lyudmila Denisova, in Russia Ukrainian prisoners of war are contained in general regime colonies - this information is confirmed by the founder of gulagu.net Vladimir Osechkin.

The authorities of the Belgorod region claim that one shell was released in the village of Otradnoye near Belgorod - supposedly from the territory of Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Emergencies reports a fire at an oil depot in Bryansk, but does not call the reasons. The Federal Air Transport Agency again extended the ban on flights at 11 airports in the south of Russia.

Here are new photos of the war.

Raids and cleaning

On Saturday in different cities of Russia, the police continued to detain participants in anti -war shares. Here is the story of the 77-year-old Petersburzhenka Elena Osipova, who goes outside with posters against the war in Ukraine. In Moscow, the door of the activist Leopold Banionis glued a sheet with threats to him and his dog: “Leopold. Soon your Shavka will die, will no longer go to rallies. And we will get to you soon. The traitor of the homeland. Zzzzz”. In Pskov, the police forced a local resident to repaint the yellow-blue fence.

There are more and more “discrediting” Russian army:

• The administrative protocol under the article on “discrediting” was drawn up for a Muscovite who broke a cardboard figure of a Ukrainian grandmother with a Soviet flag;
• Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist of RusNews, was detained in St. Petersburg by a criminal article on “discrediting”;
• Here is a story about the St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko, sent in a pre-trial detention center under this article, but the stories of the chief editor of the Khakass publication “New Focus” by Mikhail Afanasyev and the founder of the Mountain-Altai newspaper “Liste” Sergei Mikhailov-both are in jail as “discreditors”.

The Chess.com chess website stopped opening in Russia, because the Prosecutor General demanded to block two links to the pages of the site with information about the “situation in Ukraine” (CHESS.com uses the HTTPS network protocol, so the blocking of two pages has led to the fact that there is no access to the entire site).

Oleg Tinkov sells his share in Tinkoff Bank (after which the bank will change the name); editor of the publishing house "Education" work in the sweat of the person, removing from the textbooks the mention of Kiev and Ukraine; The ministries, departments and state -owned companies are preparing to receive the political instructions that will explain the Kremlin signals and solve problems with the shaken loyalty.

Russia has ceased to publish a number of statistics on the economy - including in order to complicate the Western countries with work on new sanctions (according to rumors, the USA and the EU are actively discussing how to reduce Russia's oil revenues, and Washington is preparing sanctions against the Kabaeva gymnast, but does not yet introduce them from fears that Putin will respond aggressively). According to the economist Tatyana Mikhailova, under the influence of Western sanctions, planting potatoes in Russia will soon become profitable again - if not in Moscow and St. Petersburg, then it is definitely more victorious in cities. Journalist Shura Burtin tried to understand how about all this - both about potatoes and war - “ordinary Russians” think, and came to the conclusion that fear and a sense of humiliation defeated humanity and common sense in them.

The raids and cleaning go not only in Russia, but also in Belarus: here is the story about hunting on the “rail partisans”, but the conversation with Belarusian Pavel Kulazhenko, who is fighting in Ukraine as part of the Kastuya Kalinovsky battalion, in Belarus against 50 fighters of this unit, criminal cases were instituted.

International

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Minister of Defense Lloyd Austin came to Kiev for negotiations with Zelensky on further supplies of weapons. The meeting is held against the background of news that at least ten EU countries continued to sell Russia weapons bypassing the sanctions introduced after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now the Russian army is probably using it in Ukraine.

Turkey closed the air for Russian aircraft following in Syria, without explaining the reasons; The NASDAQ exchange stops working with Russian residents; The United States closed bank accounts of two Russian consultations; In Kyrgyzstan, a show of Russian propaganda films about the war in the Donbass was banned ; About eight thousand super -expensive cars intended to be sent to Russia were stuck in the Belgian port of Zebrugga.

Six links

• Roar. The first issue of the Russian Oppositional Arts Review was released - “Bulletin of the opposition Russian -speaking culture” edited by Linor Goralik, read .
• Writers. Conversation with a writer with Jonathan Littlel about the parallels between the war in Chechnya and the current war in Ukraine. Or a conversation with a poet and an essayist, politician, human rights activist Alina Vitukhnovskaya - about the war.
• Theater. Conversation with theatrical director Nikita Betekhtin - remaining in Russia, he is fighting the theaters who hang out on his facades Z; conversation with the playwright and screenwriter Mikhail Durnenkov - he published on Facebook an anti -war post with the wish of the "complete and crushing defeat of the Russian army"; A report on an anti -war performance staged in Estonia by Russian actress Julia AUG.

Sincerely yours,
Seven forty