Pro-Russian blogger killed by cafe explosion in Saint Petersburg

Vladlen Tartarsky, a well-known pro-Russian military blogger, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Saint Petersburg on Saturday, April 1. Russian state media reported that Tartarsky was given a small statue as a gift which was laced with more than 200 grams of TNT, causing the explosion that killed him and injured at least 25 others.

Russian authorities, who blamed Ukraine for the attack, later claimed to have found the person responsible for the explosion. In a video released by authorities, 26-year-old Darya Trepova admitted to handing over the statuette, but did not admit to knowing about the explosion or any further involvement.

In 2022, Trepova was detained by police for participating in a rally against the war on Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, and spent 10 days in jail, as reported by The Associated Press.

Vladlen Tartarsky, whose real name was Maxine Fomin, was born in the disputed Donetsk region and was a vocal supporter of Russian war efforts in Ukraine. Having accumulating more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel, he was also critical of Moscow’s top military brass and some of their strategies in regions like Kherson and Bakhmut.

His assassination follows the killing of a pro-Russian journalist in August 2022, and a string of unusual deaths of top officials linked to the Kremlin.

While Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the recent blast, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak casted it as a result of political infighting in Russia. “Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” he tweeted in English late Sunday, April 2. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time,” he added.