In today's summary:
- Vladimir Putin visited the headquarters of two groups of Russian troops operating in Ukraine. He brought an icon with him;
- The head of the GUR, Kirill Budanov, believes that Russia is switching to strategic defense, with the exception of the areas of Bakhmut and Avdeevka-Marinka near Donetsk;
- Vladimir Zelensky arrived in Avdiivka;
- Z-channels report an unsuccessful Ukrainian assault on Russian positions in the Ugledar direction;
- Kherson, Slavyansk, Ukrainsk, Donetsk and a village in the Zaporozhye region were shelled;
- Egypt froze plans to secretly supply Russia with MLRS rockets and instead decided to sell 152mm and 155mm shells to Ukraine;
- Ukraine received air defense systems from Germany Patriot and other equipment;
- The mobilized were presented with icons with Putin;
- The FSB launched an investigation into Donbass Devushka.
The situation at the front
Vladimir Putin visited the headquarters of the Dnepr group of troops in the Kherson region. According to Russian media, he met with the commander of the group, Colonel General Oleg Makarevich and the commander of the Airborne Forces, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky. Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, believes that the video also includes Lieutenant General Andrei Kuzmenko, who in late March, according to Russian sources, replaced Rustam Muradov as commander of the Vostok group after the failure of the offensive on Ugledar.
Putin took part in a meeting of the headquarters of the Dnepr group, listened to reports on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporozhye directions. It is worth noting that some time ago Makarevich was predicted to be the commander of the Airborne Forces, but in the end he remained in office.
Putin presented the servicemen with an icon with the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, suggesting that Teplinsky take it to the troops. According to Putin, this is a copy of the icon, which belonged to "one of the most successful defense ministers of the Russian Empire." Later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained that the original of the icon belonged to Peter Vannovsky, who was presented with it by Alexander III.
“The original of this icon will be transferred by Putin to the Temple of the Armed Forces. She had two copies: one copy was left in the Kherson region, as you saw, and the second copy was left in the LPR.”
It is noteworthy that in the video published by Russian propagandists, Putin, showing the generals an icon, says: "Now Easter will come." This may mean that the video was filmed before the holiday, which the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated on April 16 this year.
Then Putin visited the headquarters of the Vostok group of the National Guard Troops (not to be confused with the military group of the same name) in the LPR, where he listened to a report by Colonel General Alexander Lapin. In October last year, Ramzan Kadyrov called Lapin a mediocrity and blamed him for the loss of Liman. He is also responsible for the failure and significant losses while trying to cross the Seversky Donets in May. It was said about Lapin that he put a pistol to the temples of the retreating mobilized in Svatovo and threatened them with execution. It is known that the Colonel General awarded his own son, Denis Lapin, who commanded the 1st Guards Tank Regiment advancing on Chernigov and Sumy, and in the first three weeks after the invasion lost half of the payroll of the T-72B3M tanks.
Rob Lee adds that the commanders of the South, West and Center groups, which operate on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, were also present at the Vostok headquarters. He also notes that Lapin, against whom a criticism campaign was launched in the summer-autumn of 2022, apparently still continues to play an important role in the conduct of the war.
OSINT specialists on Twitter found out that the headquarters where Putin visited is located on the territory of a summer children's camp. At the indicated coordinates, the Primorsky camp is located on the Arabatskaya Strelka spit (Genichesk district of the Kherson region).
In the Z-community, Putin's visit was perceived ambiguously.
“On the work of the Supreme at the headquarters of the groups: I pray to God that our generals report not only on the successes of the “Great Standing on the LBS NVO”, but also on the problems that we still have a lot of,” the VGTRK military correspondent wrote in his Telegram channel Alexander Sladkov.
He also said that there is a practice of marking certain areas on headquarters maps in yellow – this is how they supposedly mark territories that have not yet been occupied, but “the liberation of which has already been reported to the top.”
The Russian winter offensive has ended, and now Russia is moving to a strategic defensive operation along the entire front line, except for Bakhmut and the Avdiivka and Maryinka districts near Donetsk, follows from an interview with the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov. As noted by a well-known OSINT researcher Ukraine Battle Map, over the past two months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost control of 60% of Bakhmut, if things continue at the same pace, Russian forces will completely capture the city by June.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Avdiivka, Donetsk region, met with military personnel, and visited a hospital where the wounded are being treated. Previously, Zelensky had repeatedly visited the line of contact in Izyum , Kherson , Slavyansk , and twice near Bakhmut without hindrance.
“Voenkor” Roman Saponkov, apparently veiledly comparing Zelensky’s visit to the front line with Putin’s trip to the headquarters of groups at a respectful distance from the front, claims that “there is no point in measuring kilometers to the front line.”
The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar claims that Ukrainian formations tried to storm Russian positions south of Vuhledar the day before, but the attacks were repulsed. According to reports, two assault groups participated in the operation, supported by artillery and drones.
The Telegram channel FighterBomber, which is associated with Russian military aviation, writes that the offensive was stopped, among other things, thanks to the actions of helicopters of the army aviation of the Russian Armed Forces, which launched anti-tank missiles at Ukrainian armored vehicles from close range.
shelling
On the morning of April 18, Russian forces shelled Kherson, hitting the central market and nearby houses. According to Suspilne, citing a representative of the regional military administration (OVA), one person died, nine were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds.
On the night of April 18, Russian forces shelled Slavyansk. According to the head of the city military administration, Vadim Lyakh, S-300 missiles and kamikaze drones were used, residential buildings and office buildings were damaged. Also, the central market of the city of Ukrainsk, Donetsk region, was shelled, 10 people were injured.
Volodymyr Rogov, a member of the council of the pro-Russian “administration” of the Zaporozhye region, said on his Telegram channel that the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired on the city of Vasylivka, as a result of which four people were injured. Z-channels write that a Ukrainian kamikaze drone of an unknown model was shot down in Donetsk.
Armaments and military equipment
Egypt froze plans to supply 122-mm rockets to Russia and decided to sell 152-mm and 155-mm shells to the United States for transfer to Ukraine, The Washington Post reported , citing classified American intelligence documents that fell into the hands of journalists as a result of a leak. After last month's talks with senior US officials, the Egyptian authorities abandoned their previous plans for cooperation with Russia and instead decided to produce artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
Another undated document states that US intelligence found Russian SA-23 (C-300VM) air defense systems in the war zone in Ukraine, which were "very likely" intended for export to Egypt. In 2017, Cairo signed an agreement with Moscow for the supply of four such air defense systems, and two of them were delivered in 2020-2021. The document does not say whether Egypt returned these air defense systems to Russia.
Among the declared characteristics of the S-300VM is the ability to combat short and medium-range ballistic missiles, which is extremely necessary for Russian forces, given that Ukraine continues to periodically use Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as against the background of rumors about the refinement of the Ukrainian missile system " Grom-2" and ongoing talk about the supply of ATACMS ballistic missiles for HIMARS and M270 systems.
The problem of the shortage of artillery ammunition in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the search for alternative sources of it often becomes the subject of foreign media materials. The possible scale of the Egyptian shipments has not been disclosed, but it is interesting what is being said about ammunition of both the “NATO” caliber 155 mm, which is used in most Western artillery pieces supplied to Kiev, and the “Soviet” 152 mm caliber, of which there is a particularly serious shortage in front recently wrote the same The Washington Post.
The German Ministry of Defense reported that the American air defense system promised to Kiev Patriot with missiles has already been handed over to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In addition, Ukraine received 16 more Zetros trucks (76 in total) and two new border patrol vehicles (124 in total).
Mobilized were presented with icons with Putin
Mobilized from the Perm region, who are in the war zone, received icons with the image of Vladimir Putin for Easter. This was told by one of the mobilized. The icons were sent by deputies from United Russia.
FBI will check Donbass Devushka
The FBI launched an investigation into American Sarah Beals, who posed as a native of Luhansk and was engaged in pro-Russian propaganda. According to CNN, investigators are trying to figure out her role in the distribution of classified American intelligence documents on social networks. Beals admitted that she was one of the administrators of the Telegram channel Donbass Devushka, but she denies her involvement in the publication of secret documents. It is worth noting that the earliest of the publications of the document found by Bellingcat with losses edited in favor of Russia appeared in the mentioned Telegram channel.
About the main events of the war on April 17 – in the previous report: “Slovak MiG-29s are already in Ukraine, 750 thousand will become “veterans of the SVO”, spring conscription with electronic agendas. What's going on at the front .