St. Petersburg blast: What to know about Russian military blogger killed and anti-war activist arrested

A military blogger was killed and at least 30 left dead in a blast at a café in Russia on Sunday. Russia has accused Ukraine of orchestrating the murder of Vladlen Tatarsky and arrested a 26-year-old anti-war protester for her alleged involvement in the incident. Let’s take a closer look at what happened, who was killed, who is involved, and who has been arrested: What happened? On Sunday, Vladlen Tatarsky aka Maxim Fomin was leading a discussion at a cafe on the bank of the Neva River in the historic heart of St. Petersburg. Tatarsky, a Russian military blogger and cheerleader for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was meeting with members of the public at the “Street Food Bar No. 1”, located along the Neva river not far from the historic city centre. A group called Cyber Front Z, which refers to itself on social media as “Russia’s information troops”, said it had hired out the cafe for the evening.

The group whose name refers to the letter ‘Z’ that Russia has adopted as a symbol of the war.

A local media outlet, Fontanka, said there were at least 100 people at the event. In remarks recorded on video, a witness said that a woman who identified herself as Nastya asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky during the discussion. The witness, Alisa Smotrova, quoted Nastya as saying she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. Nastya and Tatarsky joked and laughed. She then went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky. He reportedly put the bust on a nearby table. Then, suddenly, an explosion occurred. Who was killed? Tatarsky was killed in the blast. “One person was killed in the incident. He was military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky,” the interior ministry said on Telegram.

More than two dozen were left wounded including six in serious condition.

The interior ministry said police had been called to the scene at 6:13 pm. Officers cordoned off the street outside the building with around 20 police cars, alongside six ambulances as well as fire trucks, according to an AFP journalist at the scene. Footage of the moment the blast ripped through the cafe released by the Fontanka.ru news outlet showed a powerful explosion shaking the length of the ground floor venue, bringing down parts of its outside terrace in the process. Another video posted on Russian messaging app channels showed the cafe after the explosion. Tables and chairs were broken and stained by blood, and shards of glass littered the floor. The TASS news agency quoted a law enforcement source as saying the blast was “caused by an improvised explosive device hidden inside a statue given to Tatarsky as a gift”. The Ria Novosti agency, quoting a source close to the inquiry, said “a girl” had supposedly dropped off a package with a “figurine” inside intended for the blogger. “She gave it to him… and all of a sudden there was an explosion,” Alissa Smotrova, a woman who was at the cafe, told AFP. “There was blood and pieces of glass…” Another source told Ria Novosti that Tatarsky “knew” the suspected deliverer of the package, and that they had crossed paths at other “events”, without giving further details. Who was Tartasky? Tatarsky, 40, hailed from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia claims to have annexed and which is currently mostly held by Russian troops. Tatarsky, who has more than 500,000 followers on Telegram, made his name early in the operation by publishing videos analysing the military situation on the ground and offering advice for mobilised troops, according to TASS. Tatarsky, who had himself fought in Ukraine in the past, mixed ultra-nationalist messaging with criticism of the way Moscow is prosecuting what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Kherson after Russia retreated from the city last November, Tatarsky demanded to know why Moscow had not taken the chance to assassinate him with a drone. He last year spoke of the need to “kill everyone” and “rob everyone” in Ukraine in order for Russia to achieve victory.

Tatarsky also had ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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Prigozhin is head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting for Russia in Ukraine and also the former owner of the cafe. [caption id=“attachment_12400192” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] This video grab taken from a video posted on the Telegram channel @concordgroup_official on 3 March shows Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Wagner speaking to the camera from a rooftop at an undisclosed location. Back then, Prigozhin declared his fighters had ‘practically encircled’ Bakhmut. AFP[/caption] Prigozhin is a highly divisive figure who has frequently argued with the defence establishment, accusing it at times of starving his men of ammunition and denying them credit for advances. The killing is an attack on the hardline pro-war camp in Russia, and sends a warning to other members of this group that they could be targeted anywhere. Tatarsky had survived extensive reporting trips on the war’s front lines but was killed hundreds of miles away, in the heart of Russia’s second city. Who was arrested? Russia has arrested a young Russian woman in connection with the incident and pointed the finger at Ukraine.

The woman, Darya Trepova, is a 26-year-old from St Petersburg.

Trepova in a video released by the interior ministry confessed that she had planted the bomb that killed him. But unconfirmed Russian media reports said she had told investigators that she had been set up and had not known she was carrying a bomb. Interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said that Trepova had been arrested in a rented flat in St Petersburg as part of an operation by the police and the FSB security service. Trepova’s husband Dmitry Rylov told Russian media that a friend of his who was renting the same flat had been detained. Rylov is a member of the Libertarian Party of Russia, as per TASS. CNN quoted Rylov as telling a Russian outlet he is ‘convinced’ it was a set up.

“She was really just set up and used,” CNN quoted Rylov as saying.

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“Over the last day I contacted her, but I lost contact about 4-5 hours ago.” “All I knew was that Daria needed, either for some task, or for some reason, to give some gift, I didn’t even know what,” he said, referring to the event at which the explosion took place. [caption id=“attachment_12400532” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] This undated handout picture obtained on 3 April , 2023 from the Russian Interior Ministry wanted notice of Darya Trepova, a suspect over the April 2 bomb blast in a cafe in Saint Petersburg that killed military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. AFP[/caption] “There is one very important point that she told me several times: she was sure that this thing would allow access to a person. That is, it was not something that should have exploded,” he said. “Dasha [Daria], in principle, is not the kind of person who could kill anyone.” Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Trepova had bought plane tickets to flee to Uzbekistan. Reuters could not immediately confirm that detail. The interior ministry earlier placed Trepova on its wanted list. Court records showed she was detained on 24 February last year, the day Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for taking part in what the authorities deemed an illegal anti-war protest. “Trepova participated in an unsanctioned rally on the day the special military operation began in Ukraine and was subjected to administrative arrest,” CNN quoted a TASS report as saying. Russia’s National Anti-terrorism Committee (NAC) said Ukraine’s intelligence services had organised the bombing with help from supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. That appeared to be a reference to the fact that the Russian woman arrested on Monday - Trepova - once registered to take part in an anti-Kremlin tactical voting scheme promoted by Navalny’s movement. Navalny’s allies, who have fled abroad since their movement was branded extremist by the Kremlin, rejected the accusation, saying it was more likely that Russia’s own intelligence services were behind the killing. This isn’t the first time a figure involved with the Ukraine war has been killed on Russian soil. In August 2022, Russia’s FSB security services accused Ukraine of being behind a car bombing outside Moscow that killed the daughter of hard-line Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin – charges denied by Kyiv. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said bloggers like Tatarsky “are defenders of the truth”, and lashed out at Western governments for not reacting quickly to the bombing. A failure to comment “despite their concerns for the welfare of journalists and the free press speaks for itself”, she said, an apparent reference to widespread condemnation of the arrest of US reporter Evan Gershkovich. Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is occupied by Russia, said: “The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there’s no other way to stop it.” Prigozhin, however, said he would not blame Kyiv.

But Ukraine has blamed “domestic terrorism” for the incident.

Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter the “question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time”. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.