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A well-known Russian military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in a bomb blast at a St. Petersburg cafe.
Russia’s state Investigative Committee said it had opened an investigation into the murder. The state-owned RIA news agency said 25 people were injured and 19 were hospitalized.
A prominent Russian official pointed the finger at Ukraine, without providing evidence. Ukraine’s presidential adviser says “domestic terrorism” is breaking out in Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry made no allegations of involvement in the attack, but said the silence in Western capitals showed the hypocrisy of expressions of concern to journalists.
Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, has more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and is one of the most prominent military bloggers who has championed Russia’s war effort in Ukraine while often criticizing the top military’s failures.
“We will beat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone we need. Everything will be as we like,” he was shown saying in a video clip last September at the Kremlin ceremony where President Vladimir Putin claimed. four territories occupied by Ukraine as Russian territory – a move rejected as illegal by most countries.
Mash, a Telegram channel with links to Russian law enforcement, posted a video showing Tatarsky, microphone in hand, being presented with a statue of a helmeted soldier. He said the explosion happened a few minutes later.
Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province, suggested publicly that Ukraine was to blame.
“He was killed badly. Terrorists cannot do anything else. The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there is no other way to end it,” he said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the lack of reaction in Washington, London and Paris “speaks for itself because of the real concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.”
“The reaction in Kyiv is surprising where those who receive Western funds do not hide their happiness about the incident,” he wrote on the ministry’s website.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, wrote on Twitter that it was only a matter of time – “like an abscess bursting ripe” – before Russia would be consumed by what he called domestic terrorism.
“The spiders are eating each other in the jar,” he said.
Tatarsky’s death follows the killing of Darya Dugina last August, the daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist, in a car bomb attack near Moscow.
Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret service of carrying out the attack, which Putin called “evil”. Ukraine denies involvement.
Russia’s Federal Security Service has blamed Ukraine for orchestrating the killing of a prominent Russian nationalist in a car bombing outside Moscow, but the video evidence has been met with skepticism.
Russian war bloggers, various military correspondents and freelance commentators with an army background, have enjoyed wide freedom from the Kremlin to publish their views on the war, now in their 14th month. Putin even made one of the members of the human rights council last year.
They reacted with shock to the news of Tatarsky’s death.
“He was in the hottest place in the special military operation and he always came out alive. But the war met him in a Petersburg cafe,” said Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the name War Gonzo.
Alexander Khodakovsky, a pro-Moscow figure in eastern Ukraine, wrote: “Max, if you are nobody, you will die of ‘vodka and headache.’ But you’re a danger to them, you go about your business like no one else can. We’ll be praying for you, Brother.”
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