Ukraine news – live: Pro-Russia military blogger killed in St Petersburg café bombing

Plastic windows designed by a Cambridge PhD student are transforming uninhabitable houses in war-torn parts of Ukraine into liveable homes, local residents have said.

Engineer Harry Blakiston Houston created the Insulate Ukraine project to replace bullet and bomb-damaged windows with plastic ones of his own design, pausing his studies to concentrate on the initiative.

According to the United Nations, millions of people in Ukraine are “living in damaged homes or in buildings ill-suited to provide sufficient protection”, particularly in the winter when temperatures can plummet to -20C.

Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be deployed close to Belarus‘ borders with NATO neighbors, the Russian ambassador to Belarus said Sunday amid simmering tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Ambassador Boris Gryzlov’s comment followed Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s recent statement about plans to station tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Russia’s neighbor and ally. The announcement marked another attempt by the Russian leader to dangle the nuclear threat to discourage the West from supporting Ukraine.

Putin has said that construction of storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be complete by July 1 and added that Russia has helped modernize Belarusian warplanes to make them capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that the military situation was “particularly hot” around Bakhmut, with no letup in a months-long drive to seize the city, the most protracted battle in the Russian invasion.

The founder of Russia‘s Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said his troops had raised a Russian flag on the administrative building in the city.

But there was no indication from Ukrainian officials that Bakhmut had fallen into Russian hands. Prigozhin has previously made claims that were premature.

“Thank you to our soldiers who are fighting in Avdiivka, Maryinka, and Bakhmut. Especially Bakhmut,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “It is especially hot there.”

Russian forces have for months been trying to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a town of 70,000 before the Russian invasion launched over a year ago.

Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be deployed close to Belarus’ borders with NATO neighbors, the Russian ambassador to Belarus said Sunday amid simmering tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Ambassador Boris Gryzlov’s comment followed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent statement about plans to station tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Russia’s neighbor and ally.

Putin has said that construction of storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be complete by July 1 and added that Russia has helped modernize Belarusian warplanes to make them capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Gryzlov, speaking in remarks broadcast late Sunday by Belarusian state television, said the Russian nuclear weapons will be “moved up close to the Western border of our union state” but did not give any precise location. “It will expand our defense capability, and it will be done regardless of all the noise in Europe and the United States,” he said in a reference to Western criticism of Putin’s decision.

The deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus would put them closer to potential targets in Ukraine and NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday that some of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons might be deployed to Belarus along with part of Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal.

Associated Press

Vladlen Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

Born in the Donbas, Ukraine‘s industrial heartland, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison.

He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine‘s Crimean Peninsula.

Then he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging. Tatarsky was known for his blustery pronouncements and ardent pro-war rhetoric.

After the Kremlin’s annexation of four regions of Ukraine last year that most of the world rejected as illegal, Tatarsky posted a video in which he vowed: “That’s it. We’ll defeat everybody, kill everybody, rob everybody we need to. It will all be the way we like it. God be with you.”

Russian officials said Tatarsky was killed as he was leading a discussion at the cafe on the bank of the Neva River in St Petersburg.

Twenty-five people were wounded in the blast, and 19 of them were hospitalized, according to the regional governor, Alexander Beglov.

Russia‘s foreign ministry made no accusations of involvement in the attack on a cafe in St Petersburg, but said silence in Western capitals exposed hypocrisy over expressions of concern for journalists.

Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, said the absence of reaction in Washington, London and Paris “speaks for itself given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.”

She wrote on the ministry’s website: “The reaction in Kyiv is striking where those who receive Western grants are in no way concealing their delight at what has happened.”

Volodymyr Zelensky has paid tribute to Ukrainian soldiers fighting against Russia.

Moscow has been sending waves and waves of attacks against the front line city in eastern Ukraine, which has been raised to the ground following months of war.

In his nightly address on Telegram, the Ukrainian president said: “I am grateful to our warriors who are fighting near Avdiivka, Maryinka, near Bakhmut.

“Especially Bakhmut! It's especially hot there today!”

Ukrainian forces have continued to hold on in Bakhmut despite calls from some Western pundits for them to abandon the city.

Now, according to some reports, Russia's offensive appears to be culminating in the city.

President Zelensky added: “The resilience of everyone is the resilience of the whole of Ukraine, helping everyone in a position nearby is helping the whole of Ukraine!”