Blogs
on September 15, 2025
<img src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2600/0*jYTPhSdLKCzrRSxb.jpg"; style="max-width:450px;float:left;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;border:0px;" alt="" />The 40-year-old Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was accorded military honours including a gun salute and an army band at the funeral at Moscow's Troyekurovskoye cemetery due to his past participation in military operations in eastern Ukraine alongside Moscow-backed separatists battling Kyiv's forces.
The Austrian lender is now the most important Western bank in Russia, offering a lifeline to people and businesses there seeking to make international payments, teaching english language learners articles but it is under growing pressure from Western officials and investors to quit.
As he has done every Easter, Francis called for peace in the Middle East, his appeal made more urgent by recent violence in Jerusalem and cross-border exchanges of fire involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
In his message Francis also mentioned instability in Lebanon, expressed the hope that the "martyred Rohingya people" of Myanmar "may encounter justice", and called for more aid for the victims of earthquakes in February that killed nearly 56,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
Reading his homily in a strong and confident voice, Francis said that even when people felt the wellspring of hope had dried up, it was important not to be frozen in a sense of defeat but to seek an "interior resurrection" with God's help.
ZURICH, April 8 (Reuters) - Austria's government is monitoring the global banking turmoil although there are so far no signs of it spreading to the country's financial sector, Finance Minister Magnus Brunner said in an interview published on Saturday.
Intelligence agencies are believed to have comprehensively infiltrated Russia's military and its leading spy agencies, offering considerable knowledge of upcoming maneuvers, as well as insights into how badly Putin's war is going.
An FBI probe was launched Friday to determine the source of the leak, however a senior official told The New York Times that tracking down the perpetrator could prove difficult because a large number of officials have the security clearances needed to access the information.
"Vladlen has proven that today the front line passes everywhere: in the zone of military action, in the rear, and in cities, hearts and minds," said Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the Telegram messaging app, noting he had died "in the centre of peaceful St Petersburg at terrorists' hands".
They remain online, with Twitter owner Elon Musk saying there was little point in banning information which has already been widely circulated, and which will be easily-found elsewhere even if his moderators remove it.
He had initially vowed to stay put in Kyiv despite the constant blaring of air raid sirens and attacks on residential buildings, but decided to leave after hearing reports of Russian soldiers 'raping' Ukrainian women.
"We may feel helpless and discouraged before the power of evil, the conflicts that tear relationships apart, the attitudes of calculation and indifference that seem to prevail in society, the cancer of corruption, the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war," he said.
MOSCOW, April 8 (Reuters) - Hundreds of mourners, including the leader of Russia's Wagner private militia group, attended the funeral on Saturday of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed on April 2 in a cafe bomb blast that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine.
While American officials have previously estimated Russian losses at about 200,000 soldiers, one of the reports indicated that there have been 189,500 to 223,000 casualties, including up to 43,000 killed in action.
They are not war plans and they provide no details on any planned Ukraine offensive. And some inaccuracies — including estimates of Russian troops deaths that are significantly lower than numbers publicly stated by U.S.
officials — have led some to question the documents' authenticity.
They are dated ranging from February 23 to March 1, and provide what appears to be details on the progress of weapons and equipment going into Ukraine with more precise timelines and amounts than the U.S.
The documents - while up to several months old - offer detailed insights into which Russian intelligence agencies have been most compromised, and clues as to how the United States has gleaned so much secret Kremlin information.
Peter's Square and then delivering his twice-annual "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) blessing and message from the central external balcony of St. Peter's Basilica. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Christina Fincher)
Prigozhin is also known for his sharp criticism of Russia's top brass over their performance in Ukraine. The Wagner group has been spearheading efforts in recent months to capture the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
Between the Mass and his reading of the message, Francis, appearing in fine form, was driven in a popemobile around the square and down the main boulevard leading to the River Tiber so more people could see him.