This is a photo of Julia and Anna Aksenczenko – 14 years old twin sisters from Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

You will never meet them in person. No one will. On June 27th 2023 they were killed.

What have they done to deserve such a fate?

• First of all, they were Ukrainian. With Russia embarking on full-scale aggression, that alone is enough to put someone’s life in jeopardy.
• Second…they just wanted to have a pizza.

Russian troops fired two missiles on the city center of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. As a result, a local cafe was destroyed. That’s where Julia and Anna were killed. Nearby multi-story buildings, commercial premises, vehicles, a post office, and other facilities were also affected by the explosion, with windows, glass, and doors shattered. Overall, eleven dead victims have been recovered from the rubble. 56 people have been injured.

And it wasn’t the only attack on civilian targets that day. Russians shelled the Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions. 4 citizens were killed. 7 people were injured.

Such attacks have been carried out practically every day … for 500 days now.

We can’t help Julia and Anna anymore. But we can support those who still remain in Ukraine to fight for the freedom of their homeland and those who, having no other choice, became refugees.

Visit the www.viastella.pl webpage – see how we help and how you can help us to help others.

Many dictators have based their power on the army. But a strong army can turn against its master. Therefore, those who want to hold absolute power often follow the Roman maxim ‘divide and conquer’. For this reason, Adolf Hitler created the Waffen SS formation as a counterbalance to the German army, the Wehrmacht. And that’s probably one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin founded the Wagner Group – a seemingly private company employing mercenaries.

Last weekend, however, those who were supposed to be Putin’s ‘insurance’ became a threat to him.

From the beginning of the war in Ukraine, cooperation between the Wagner Group and the Russian army did not go well. The mercenaries accused the military of not providing them with enough ammunition and equipment, and of sending them to the most dangerous sections of the front. The army, in turn, claimed that the mercenaries took credit for the victories won by the soldiers. The last spark leading to the rebellion, however, was to be the shelling of the Wagner Group’s mercenary camp by the army.

On the night of June 23/24, Yevgeny Prigozhin, commander of the Wagner Group, seized the command of the Southern Military District of the Russian army in Rostov-on-Don (600 miles south of Moscow) and the nearby military airfield. According to his claims, it happened without a single shot being fired.

The aim of his actions was to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, who, in his opinion, were responsible for the tragic situation on the Ukrainian front, and in particular for the huge losses. He did not demand Putin’s resignation.

The column of vehicles with the mercenaries of the Wagner Group started to move towards Moscow. Despite a few air attacks, they managed to cover more than half of the way – to the city of Voronezh. Putin publicly declared Prigozhin a traitor.

When it seemed that a civil war was about to break out in Russia, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko announced that he had negotiated an agreement between Putin and Prigozhin to avoid bloodshed. According to the terms of this agreement, the head of the Wagner Group was to go to Belarus. His men were given three options: follow their leader to Belarus, return to their homes, or join the Russian army.

What really happened that day in Russia? We can only speculate. Perhaps Prigozhin wanted to increase his power by filling key military positions with people dependent on him. Perhaps he had learned that Shoigu and Gerasimov were planning some action against him and wanted to act first. He could also be a tool in the hands of some forces in the Kremlin that were trying to remove Putin from power. It cannot be ruled out that the entire undertaking was agreed with Putin in order to give him an excuse to get rid of people who pose a threat – now they can be accused of collaborating with Prigozhin.

Either way, the Wagner Group has been withdrawn from Ukraine. We do not know to what extent this helped the Ukrainian counter-offensive. We hope, however, that the Ukrainians will make the most of this situation.

Prigozhin’s actions may have further consequences, both for the situation in Russia and Belarus. Even under the conditions of Russian censorship, the march of Wagner’s forces to Moscow could not be completely concealed. Putin must prove to his subjects that he is still a strong leader who is not afraid of either external or internal enemies.

This can be difficult especially because Putin is afraid. It is a public secret that not even his closest associates can get close to him, and foreign visitors (those few who still want to meet him) must quarantine before the meeting.

Putin therefore resorts to more lies by sending his doppelgängers to public meetings. Such a situation took place on Wednesday in the town of Derbent in Dagestan, which is the southernmost city of Russia. The man who was supposed to be Putin approached a group of several dozen residents, mostly women and children. He shook hands with some of them and kissed one on the cheek.

The situation in Russia remains a mystery in many respects. But let’s hope it can be summed up in the words of Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during the Second World War: ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’.