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Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Well, despite the Wagner group's claim to have more or less taken back moot, the Ukrainians appear to be holding on,

an activity has dropped away as exhaustion takes its toll on both sides.

The Lal will, of course, give the Ukrainians a breather while they build up their resources for the forthcoming offensive,

and for the Russians it will be an opportunity to strengthen their defenses.

We'll be looking into all that as well as the consequences of Finland's very speedy accession to NATO, as well as the assassination of a pro-war blogger who's blown up in a cafe in St. Petersburg.

Let's start with that, Saul. That was a sort of characteristically murky affair, wasn't it,

with a very widely spaced cast of suspects. The Russian states claiming that

the Ukrainian Secret Service was behind it, quite predictably, I suppose, with the help of supporters

of the jailed anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, equally predictably, I suppose. But others

are saying, meanwhile, that it was a state operation and part of the ongoing

spat between the Ministry of Defence and the Wagner-Bossi of Guinea-rigozyn. What do you reckon?

Well, it's a tricky one, isn't it? We've been here before too, haven't we? The dead blogger,

I should say, is a real piece of work. He goes by the name of Vladlen Tatarski,

but his real name is or was Maxim Formin. So let's call him that. He comes from Donetsk and was in

jail for armed robbery when he was freed by pro-Russian forces. He then transformed himself at

some point into a pro-war propagandist, which of course does not

mean that he's pro the Russian army top brass, quite the contrary. So he's been doing his fair

...