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Russia’s anti-terrorism agency on Monday blamed Ukraine’s intelligence agency for a bomb attack that killed a prominent Russian military blogger who supported Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Russian officials said 40-year-old Vladlen Tatarsky was killed Sunday as he led a discussion at a cafe along the Neva River in the historic heart of St. Petersburg. More than 30 people were injured in the explosion, and 10 people remain in serious condition, according to authorities.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee, a state structure that coordinates counterterrorism operations, said that the “terrorist act” against Tatarsky was “planned by the special services of Ukraine” with the involvement of people who had cooperated with the anti-corruption foundation. created by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
He noted that the arrested suspect was an “active supporter” of Navalny’s group.
Shortly before the announcement, the country’s highest criminal investigation agency reported the arrest of Darya Tryopova, a resident of St. Petersburg is 26 years old who is suspected of involvement in the attack. Tryopova had previously been detained for participating in anti-war demonstrations.
Investigators believe the bomb was hidden in the blogger’s chest which the suspect gave as a gift before the explosion.
The Ukrainian government denies involvement
According to Russian media reports, Tryopova told investigators that she was used as a carrier to deliver an explosive device, but did not know that it was hidden in her chest.
Witnesses said the suspect asked questions and exchanged comments with Tatarsky during the discussion. One witness said the woman told Tatarsky that she had made a bust of the blogger, but the guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. They joked and laughed, and then went to the door, grabbed the chest and presented it to Tatarsky.
Video shows Tatarsky making a joke about the chest and placing it on the table next to it before it exploded.
No one claimed responsibility, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately blamed Ukraine for the attack and compared the bombing to last August’s killing of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remote-controlled explosive device attached to her SUV detonated while they. driving on the outskirts of Moscow.
Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supported the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.
Ukraine has denied involvement in the killings.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the billionaire Russian owner of the Wagner Group military contractor that led Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the cafe and was handing it over to patriotic groups for meetings. He said he doubted the involvement of Ukrainian authorities in the bombing, saying the attack was launched by a “radical group” not affiliated with the government in Kyiv.
Tatarsky, who has filed regular reports from Ukraine, is the pen name of Maxim Fomin, who has amassed more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.
Born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he got into financial trouble, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled custody after a Russian-backed separatist rebellion swept through Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Later he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front lines before turning to blogging.
Competing claims about Bakhmut
Since the war in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have not claimed responsibility for the various fires, explosions and murders seen in Russia. At the same time, officials in Kyiv happily hailed the event and asserted Ukraine’s right to launch an attack on Russia.
A top Ukrainian government official set off the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal unrest.
In the battle, Prigozhin said that his troops had raised the Russian flag on the administrative building of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian city, but the Ukrainian military said that the defenders were still fighting in the destroyed streets.
Bakhmut has been the scene of the bloodiest battle of the war, now in its second year, with huge casualties on both sides and many eastern cities destroyed by bombardments.
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