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Russian authorities said Monday they had arrested a suspect and concluded that Ukraine worked with backers of a jailed opposition leader to carry out the bombing attack that killed one of the country’s most prominent military bloggers.
Vladlen Tatarsky, an outspoken supporter of the war who helped shape the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian narrative, was killed in an explosion Sunday night as he held an event at a cafe in the center of St. Petersburg. The blast, which the Kremlin called a “terrorist attack,” left more than 30 people injured.
The killing of Tatarsky, 40, left Russia’s pro-war establishment shaken and demanding retribution, as authorities moved swiftly to assign blame. Officials in Kyiv and Western military analysts suggested that the incident could have been the result of internal splits.
The Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement early Monday that it had arrested a woman by the name of Daria Trepova, 26, in connection with Tatarsky’s death.
A release from the committee did not share any evidence linking Trepova to the incident, or any details about who she is, with the spokesman only saying that investigators were working with her to establish a motive.
Shortly after, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that Ukraine’s security services were behind the blast. It also accused “agents” working with jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption organization of being involved.
The counterterrorism agency said Trepova, a St. Petersburg native who had hours earlier been placed on a wanted list, was a supporter of Navalny.
Neither agency provided any evidence of the involvement of Ukraine or Navalny’s backers in the explosion. Kyiv did not claim responsibility for the incident, but hinted that it could have been a case of “domestic terrorism.”
The arrest comes after Russian state media reported Sunday that a young woman allegedly handed Tatarsky a bust of himself, containing explosives, shortly before the blast.
In a video shared by Russia’s Interior Ministry, a woman identified as Trepova is interrogated by an unknown man behind the camera. “I brought a figurine that exploded” to the scene, she says. Asked who gave her the figurine, she sighs and asks to share those details later before the video cuts off.
A ‘useful’ ultranationalist who rose to wartime prominence
Tatarsky’s death dominated the headlines in Russia, highlighting the prominence and near-celebrity status of military bloggers in a country in which independent media has been all but eradicated and the Kremlin tightly controls the war narrative.
Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was born in Ukraine but gained fame for his nightly reports from the front lines in Ukraine and analysis of Moscow’s war strategy.
Tatarsky is originally from the Donbas region and worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture trade business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, joining the separatists and fighting on the front lines before turning to blogging.
He had amassed more than half a million followers on Telegram, a popular messaging app in Russia on which he shared his videos and thoughts.
Tatarsky was often critical of how Russia’s top military brass was handling the war, which he ardently supported. His last post on Telegram criticized Russian forces for not having the same drone munition capabilities as the Ukrainians as Kyiv is planning an offensive.
Known for his brash and often expletive-laden language, he made an appearance at the Kremlin event dedicated to Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions last year. There, he recorded a video saying: “We’ll defeat everybody, kill everybody, rob everybody we need to. It will all be the way we like it.”
Tatarsky’s death marks the first high-profile assassination of an ultranationalist military blogger in Russia since the start of the invasion, said the Institute of the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, in its daily assessment Sunday.
His killing “may reveal further fractures within the Kremlin and its inner circle,” the assessment said. Despite his “deep connections” with the Kremlin and the Wagner mercenary group fighting in eastern Ukraine, Tatarsky does not appear to have been a target “worthy of special attention from Kyiv,” it added.
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