A pro-war, pro-Putin Russian military blogger was killed in an apparent assassination at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Vladlen Tatarsky was giving a speech during a “patriotic” event at Street Food Bar No. 1 cafe when a woman handed him a statuette, Russian media reported. Minutes later, the object exploded, killing Tatarsky and wounding at least 30 other people, many of whom were hospitalized.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was known for his staunch, blustery defense of the invasion of Ukraine. He had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram.
“We’ll defeat everybody, kill everybody, rob everybody we need to. It will all be the way we like it,” he said in a video filmed inside the Kremlin after Russia claimed to annex four Ukrainian territories last year.
Darya Tryopova, a St. Petersburg woman previously arrested for anti-war protests, was detained shortly after the bombing, Russian media reported. Everyone inside the cafe when the bomb went off was considered a possible suspect, Russia’s interior ministry said.
Russian authorities blamed Ukraine for the attack, though Russia’s foreign ministry did not make any such claims.
A Ukrainian presidential advisor suggested an anti-war group inside Russia targeted Tatarsky.
“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said.
Tatarsky’s death appeared to be the second assassination inside Russia of a prominent pro-war figure since the invasion of Ukraine began last year. Darya Dugina, a nationalist TV talking head and daughter of prominent Putin backer Alexander Dugin, was killed by a car bomb in August 2022.
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