Moscow says it is holding alleged killer of blogger
The Russian government said on Monday it had arrested a woman suspected of blowing up a prominent war blogger in a St Petersburg cafe the day before as nationalist politicians and commentators pinned the crime on Ukraine, calling for revenge.
Maxim Fomin, Russian military blogger and cheerleader for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine who called himself Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed on Sunday in what seemed to be the second murder on Russian soil of a figure associated with the conflict.
The woman, Russian citizen Darya Trepova, was held before for protesting against the war in Ukraine, reports state news agency TASS.
With more than 500,000 followers on the Telegram messaging service, which is popular in Russia, Tatarsky mixed ultranationalist messaging with criticism of the way Russia is waging what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Tatarsky fought in Ukraine in the past.
More than 30 people were injured in the blast which killed him. Some Russian commentators saw the blast as the latest sign that violence related to the Ukraine war is increasingly spilling onto Russian territory.
Russian investigators said they arrested Trepova, 26, who they said was suspected of bringing the explosives into the St Petersburg cafe. TASS suggested she may have approached Tatarsky at Sunday’s cafe event and given him the statue packed with the explosives that killed him. Unconfirmed Russian media reports said she was found hiding in the St Petersburg apartment of a friend of her husband’s and had planned to flee to Uzbekistan. Reuters could not confirm those details.
Trepova appeared on an interior ministry wanted list earlier on Monday. Court records cited by TASS showed she was detained on February 24 last year, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, for taking part in what the authorities deemed an illegal anti-war protest.
Russian politicians, without evidence, on Sunday night immediately blamed Tatarsky’s killing on Ukraine’s intelligence services. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the killing.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser blamed “domestic terrorism” instead. Darya Dugina, daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist ideologue, was killed in a car-bomb attack outside Moscow last year that Russia blamed on Kyiv. Ukraine denied involvement.
Russia’s FSB security service said last month that it thwarted a Ukraine-backed car bomb attack on a prominent nationalist businessman who has been a cheerleader for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Margarita Simonyan, editorin-chief of state media outlet RT, welcomed Trepova’s arrest on Monday, saying her detention had avoided what she called “a national disgrace”.
Simonyan, like other hawkish commentators, made it clear on Telegram that she wanted Russia to hit back hard against whoever had killed Tatarsky.
Well, well. Are we going to forget and forgive this?” she asked sarcastically.