The apparent assassination of a prominent Russian military blogger over the weekend placed a spotlight on a group that serves an often overlooked but crucial role in Russia’s war machine.
Before he was killed in an explosion over the weekend, Vladlen Tatarsky was a blogger with hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Telegram who read his frequent updates on the war in Ukraine.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, relayed a pro-war agenda and an ultranationalist perspective to his followers, part of a network of patriotic Russian military bloggers who have risen to prominence during the war in Ukraine.
Although many of the bloggers are hawkish supporters of the war, the writers are sometimes critical of the Kremlin for its many setbacks and failures in Ukraine. Yet they are largely embraced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Leon Aron, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Russia’s “mil-bloggers” are able to “supplement” state-run media, which often sugarcoats the war on state-run television, and protect Putin from blame for setbacks on the battlefield.
“Putin keeps them [like] dogs who snap at the heels of the regular military,” Aron said. “This is a device for Putin to channel people’s anger towards the military, rather than himself.”
Russia’s military bloggers first garnered wider attention in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists launched an armed rebellion against the Ukrainian government in the eastern Donbas region.
The bloggers shot to further popularity after Russia invaded Ukraine last year and struggled to make headway, providing detailed updates as the Russian people were looking to understand the complexities of the war.
Bloggers post frequently on Telegram and often include maps, pictures and videos to accompany written analysis. Many of them have contacts deep in the military or on the front line.
Western media outlets and other organizations that provide war coverage, such as the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), sometimes cite the bloggers in articles for insight into Russian thinking.
And they are likely to remain a central cog in Russia’s propaganda machine as long as Putin sees their value, with the Kremlin able to elevate favorable bloggers by offering them television appearances.
Natasha Groom, a senior adviser with the nonprofit negotiation organization Inter Mediate, wrote in an analysis piece published in NATO’s Defense College that Russian bloggers offer “largely unfiltered updates and eyewitness accounts has transformed them into popular sources of information.”
“The pro-war bloggers are fulfilling multiple and nuanced functions in Russia,” Groom wrote in the article first published in January and updated last month.
“And while their influence should not be overstated, they are becoming an increasingly prominent factor in Russian domestic affairs and the information space.”
Some of the most popular blogger accounts include Rybar, with more than a million subscribers, Igor Girkin, Reverse Side of the Medal and The Grey Zone.
Bloggers also dive into issues outside the battlefield, discussing international and domestic news that relates to Russia or the war effort.
The popular Russian blog account The Grey Zone published a stern warning to readers on Finland’s accession on Tuesday to NATO, writing the alliance was now “a couple of hundred kilometers from the northern capital of Russia.”
Many bloggers are veterans of the Russian military and some are also affiliated with the mercenary company Wagner Group, as Tatarsky was. Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is leading a vicious assault against Ukraine on the town of Bakhmut.
Those who are more critical of the armed forces for its numerous setbacks are careful not to cross the line, often targeting the Ministry of Defense or Kremlin officials but not Putin himself.
Girkin, a former Russian commander in Ukraine, stands out as a more publicly dissenting voice. He remarked this week that Russia was headed toward defeat and last year said the “fish’s head was rotten,” in a veiled reference to Putin.
But generally they keep their ire focused on military leadership.
After Russia lost significant combat power last fall from Ukrainian advances, bloggers slammed the Ministry of Defense for inadequacies. A deadly Ukrainian strike at a Russian base in Makiivka in January also led to intensive blogger criticism of military policies, including stationing a large number of troops in close quarters.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with ISW, said Russian bloggers have become so dominant they are now even appointed to working groups, including for human rights councils.
And Russian bloggers are able to help not just with pro-war information, but also with recruitment drives and crowdfunding campaigns to support the war, Stepanenko added.
“Bloggers are very much integrated in the policy world,” Stepanenko said. “Putin has been tolerating these bloggers because he sees a purpose in them.”
Tatarsky, with nearly 600,000 subscribers, played a major part in this evolution of Russia’s military bloggers.
A former convict from Ukraine’s Donetsk region who served time for armed robbery, Tatarsky claimed he joined separatists when they freed him from jail. He would go on to become a military blogger and an author of several books.
Tatarsky advanced the pro-war message and helped proliferate radical political messages from the Kremlin, such as casting the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against an encroaching and decadent West.
In one of his last posts, Tatarsky quoted a Bible verse and referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, as the “antichrist who kill Russians in the Donbass, dream of gay parades and transgender people.”
Tatarsky is also known for a video he posted to Telegram during an October ceremony marking the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
“We will win over all, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone, and everything will be as we like,” he said at the time.
Tatarsky was killed on Sunday when a bomb inside a small sculpture crafted in his likeness exploded at a cafe in St. Petersburg, also injuring around 30 people, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry. The cafe was owned by Prigozhin.
Moscow has charged a Russian anti-war activist, Darya Trepova, in connection to the killing, accusing her of carrying out a terrorist attack facilitated by Ukraine. Kyiv has denied involvement in the murder.
Others have speculated that Russian agents may have been behind the attack. Tatarsky was critical of Russian generals and called to prosecute them, while being a Putin loyalist who attended several of the Russian president’s speeches, according to ISW.
Russia’s bloggers also operate in a tight-knit community, often sharing each other’s posts and feeding off the commentary and analysis.
The death of Tatarsky shocked and upset several bloggers, according to posts on their accounts. Group of Democratic reps urge state department and OAS to back independent investigation into group’s secretary general McCarthy hails ‘peace’ in meeting with Taiwan’s Tsai as China fumes
Alexander Kots, a Russian military blogger who also works with the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, said he first met the “ridiculous-looking” Tatarsky a few years ago when he came into the publication’s offices.
Kots wrote on Telegram to his more than 650,000 followers that he was impressed by Tatarsky that day and stayed in touch with him, adding he and other bloggers “will not back down” following his death.
“Around him, he managed to gather a whole army of enthusiastic supporters who will certainly continue his work,” Kots said.
A British fintech which counts Standard Life among its key clients is close to finalising one of the industry’s biggest funding rounds so far this year.
Sky News understands that Hyperlayer, which is run by the former Morgan Stanley executive Rob Rooney, is lining up a major equity injection led by CDAM, a UK-based investment firm, and several new institutional investors.
City sources said this weekend that the new capital from CDAM and other backers could total at least £30m.
The funding round is expected to take place at a post-money valuation of about £160m.
Hyperlayer, which operates a consumer-facing digital wallet called Hyperjar, intends to use the new funding as growth capital to finance the development of new partnerships with global banks and asset managers.
The company provides smart account technology on existing client infrastructure, and is said to work with a number of the world’s 10 largest banks – although it has not publicly disclosed their identities.
Its work with Standard Life involves the future launch of a consumer money app aimed at people approaching or in early retirement.
Hyperlayer’s consumer-facing platform sees customers organise their money in what the company calls “digital jam jars”, enabling them to earn rewards which give them access to partner brands such as Asda, Morrisons and Starbucks.
IKEA and the John Lewis Partnership are among the other merchant partners with which Hyperlayer is working to develop distinctive loyalty-based initiatives for its financial institution clients.
Founded in 2006 by Adam Chamberlain and Scott Davies, CDAM has $1.5bn in assets under management and is an experienced investor in financial services technology.
Mr Davies has had a seat on Hyperlayer’s board for several years.
Mr Rooney, who was a prominent Wall Street executive for years, ultimately serving as Morgan Stanley’s technology operations, joined the company as CEO in 2023.
The new capital injection led by CDAM is understood to be subject to approval by Hyperlayer’s shareholders.
Thoroughbred racing suffered its most ignominious, industry-deflating moment 50 years ago today with the breakdown of Ruffian, an undefeated filly running against Foolish Pleasure in a highly promoted match race at Belmont Park. Her tragic end on July 6, 1975, was a catastrophe for the sport, and observers say racing has never truly recovered.
Two years earlier, during the rise of second-wave feminism, the nation had been mesmerized by a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. King’s win became a rallying cry for women everywhere. The New York Racing Association, eager to boost daily racing crowds in the mid-1970s, proposed a competition similar to that of King and Riggs. They created a match race between Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian, the undefeated filly who had dominated all 10 of her starts, leading gate to wire.
“In any sport, human or equine, it’s really impossible to say who was the greatest,” said outgoing Jockey Club chairman Stuart Janney III, whose parents, Stuart and Barbara, owned Ruffian. “But I’m always comfortable thinking of Ruffian as being among the four to five greatest horses of all time.”
Ruffian, nearly jet black in color and massive, was the equine version of a Greek goddess. At the age of 2, her girth — the measurement of the strap that secures the saddle — was just over 75 inches. Comparatively, racing legend Secretariat, a male, had a 76-inch girth when he was fully developed at the age of 4.
Her name also added to the aura. “‘Ruffian’ was a little bit of a stretch because it tended to be what you’d name a colt, but it turned out to be an appropriate name,” Janney said.
On May 22, 1974, Ruffian equaled a Belmont Park track record, set by a male, in her debut at age 2, winning by 15 lengths. She set a stakes record later that summer at Saratoga in the Spinaway, the most prestigious race of the year for 2-year-old fillies. The next spring, she blew through races at longer distances, including the three races that made up the so-called Filly Triple Crown.
Some in the media speculated that she had run out of female competition.
Foolish Pleasure had meanwhile ripped through an undefeated 2-year-old season with championship year-end honors. However, after starting his sophomore campaign with a win, he finished third in the Florida Derby. He also had recovered from injuries to his front feet to win the Wood Memorial and then the Kentucky Derby.
Second-place finishes in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes left most observers with the idea that Foolish Pleasure was the best 3-year-old male in the business.
Following the Belmont Stakes, New York officials wanted to test the best filly against the best colt.
The original thought was to include the Preakness winner, Master Derby, in the Great Match Race, but the team of Foolish Pleasure’s owner, trainer and rider didn’t want a three-horse race. Since New York racing had guaranteed $50,000 to the last-place horse, they paid Master Derby’s connections $50,000 not to race. Thus, the stage was set for an equine morality play.
“[Ruffian’s] abilities gave her the advantage in the match race,” Janney said. “If she could do what she did in full fields [by getting the early lead], then it was probably going to be even more effective in a match.”
Several ballyhooed match races in sports history had captured the world’s attention without incident — Seabiscuit vs. Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938, Alsab vs. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway in 1942, and Nashua vs. Swaps in 1955. None of those races, though, had the gender divide “it” factor.
The Great Match Race attracted 50,000 live attendees and more than 18 million TV viewers on CBS, comparable to the Grammy Awards and a pair of NFL “Sunday Night Football” games in 2024.
Prominent New York sportswriter Dick Young wrote at the time that, for women, “Ruffian was a way of getting even.”
“I can remember driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, and the lady that took the toll in one of those booths was wearing a button that said, ‘I’m for her,’ meaning Ruffian,” Janney said.
As the day approached, Ruffian’s rider, Jacinto Vasquez, who also was the regular rider of Foolish Pleasure including at the Kentucky Derby, had to choose whom to ride for the match race.
“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure, and I knew what he could do,” Vasquez told ESPN. “But I didn’t think he could beat the filly. He didn’t have the speed or stamina.”
Braulio Baeza, who had ridden Foolish Pleasure to victory in the previous year’s premier 2-year-old race, Hopeful Stakes, was chosen to ride Foolish Pleasure.
“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure and ridden against Ruffian,” Baeza said, with language assistance from his wife, Janice Blake. “I thought Foolish Pleasure was better than Ruffian. She just needed [early race] pressure because no one had ever pressured her.”
The 1⅛ mile race began at the start of the Belmont Park backstretch in the chute. In an ESPN documentary from 2000, Jack Whitaker, who hosted the race telecast for CBS, noted that the atmosphere turned eerie with dark thunderclouds approaching before the race.
Ruffian hit the side of the gate when the doors opened but straightened herself out quickly and assumed the lead. “The whole world, including me, thought that Ruffian was going to run off the screen and add to her legacy,” said longtime New York trainer Gary Contessa, who was a teenager when Ruffian ruled the racing world.
However, about ⅛ of a mile into the race, the force of Ruffian’s mighty strides snapped two bones in her front right leg.
“When she broke her leg, it sounded like a broken stick,” Vasquez said. “She broke her leg between her foot and her ankle. When I pulled up, the bone was shattered above the ankle. She couldn’t use that leg at all.”
It took Ruffian a few moments to realize what had happened to her, so she continued to run. Vasquez eventually hopped off and kept his shoulder leaning against her for support.
“You see it, but you don’t want to believe it,” Janney said.
Baeza had no choice but to have Foolish Pleasure finish the race in what became a macabre paid workout. The TV cameras followed him, but the eyes of everyone at the track were on the filly, who looked frightened as she was taken back to the barn area.
“When Ruffian broke down, time stood still that day,” Contessa said. Yet time was of the essence in an attempt to save her life.
Janney said that Dr. Frank Stinchfield — who was the doctor for the New York Yankees then and was “ahead of his time in fixing people’s bones” — called racing officials to see whether there was anything he could do to help with Ruffian.
New York veterinarian Dr. Manny Gilman managed to sedate Ruffian, performed surgery on her leg and, with Stinchfield’s help, secured her leg in an inflatable cast. When Ruffian woke up in the middle of the night, though, she started fighting and shattered her bones irreparably. Her team had no choice but to euthanize her at approximately 2:20 a.m. on July 7.
“She was going full bore trying to get in front of [Foolish Pleasure] out of the gate,” Baeza said. “She gave everything there. She gave her life.”
Contessa described the time after as a “stilled hush over the world.”
“When we got the word that she had rebroken her leg, the whole world was crying,” Contessa said. “I can’t reproduce the feeling that I had the day after.”
The Janneys soon flew to Maine for the summer, and they received a round of applause when the pilot announced their presence. At the cottage, they were met by thousands of well-wishing letters.
“We all sat there, after dinner every night, and we wrote every one of them back,” Janney said. “It was pretty overwhelming, and that didn’t stop for a long time. I still get letters.”
Equine fatalities have been part of the business since its inception, like the Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup. Some have generated headlines by coming in clusters, such as Santa Anita in 2019 and Churchill Downs in 2023. However, breakdowns are not the only factor, and likely not the most influential one, in the gradual decline of horse racing’s popularity in this country.
But the impact from the day of Ruffian’s death, and that moment, has been ongoing for horse racing.
“There are people who witnessed the breakdown and never came back,” Contessa said.
Said Janney: “At about that time, racing started to disappear from the national consciousness. The average person knows about the Kentucky Derby, and that’s about it.”
Equine racing today is a safer sport now than it was 50 years ago. The Equine Injury Database, launched by the Jockey Club in 2008, says the fatality rate nationally in 2024 was just over half of what it was at its launch.
“We finally have protocols that probably should have been in effect far sooner than this,” Contessa said. “But the protocols have made this a safer game.”
Said Vasquez: “There are a lot of nice horses today, but to have a horse like Ruffian, it’s unbelievable. Nobody could compare to Ruffian.”
The UK has re-established diplomatic ties with Syria, David Lammy has said, as he made the first visit to the country by a British minister for 14 years.
The foreign secretary visited Damascus and met with interim president Ahmed al Sharaa, also the leader of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and foreign minister Asaad al Shaibani.
In a statement, Mr Lammy said a “stable Syria is in the UK’s interests” and added: “I’ve seen first-hand the remarkable progress Syrians have made in rebuilding their lives and their country.
“After over a decade of conflict, there is renewed hope for the Syrian people.
“The UK is re-establishing diplomatic relations because it is in our interests to support the new government to deliver their commitment to build a stable, more secure and prosperous future for all Syrians.”
Image: Foreign Secretary David Lammy with Syria’s interim president Ahmed al Sharaa in Damascus. Pic: X / @DavidLammy
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has also announced a £94.5m support package for urgent humanitarian aid and to support the country’s long-term recovery, after a number of British sanctions against the country were lifted in April.
While HTS is still classified as a proscribed terror group, Sir Keir Starmer said last year that it could be removed from the list.
The Syrian president’s office also said on Saturday that the president and Mr Lammy discussed co-operation, as well as the latest developments in the Middle East.
Since Assad fled Syria in December, a transitional government headed by Mr al Sharaa was announced in March and a number of western countries have restored ties.
In May, US President Donald Trump said the United States would lift long-standing sanctions on Syria and normalise relations during a speech at the US-Saudi investment conference.
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From May: Trump says US will end sanctions for Syria
He said he wanted to give the country “a chance at peace” and added: “There is a new government that will hopefully succeed.
“I say good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”
