Russian authorities blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies on Monday for orchestrating a bombing at a St. Petersburg cafe that killed a Russian military blogger who fervently supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and they arrested a suspect.
Ukrainian authorities did not directly respond to the accusation, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in reference to the attack that he doesn’t think about events in Russia, and a senior Ukrainian official earlier described the bombing as part of Russia’s internal turmoil.
Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, was killed Sunday as he led a discussion at the cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of Russia’s second-largest city, officials said. Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from the front lines in Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin. He had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.
The bombing, which also wounded more than 30 other people, was the latest attack inside Russia on a high-profile pro-war figure. Last year, a nationalist TV commentator was assassinated when a bomb exploded in her SUV outside Moscow.
Investigators said they believe the bomb at the cafe was hidden in a bust of Tatarsky that a member of the audience gave him just before the explosion. A video showed him joking about the bust and putting it on a table next to him.
Russian authorities announced the arrest of Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old St. Petersburg resident seen on video presenting Tatarsky with the bust, and classified the case as an act of terrorism. Police had detained Trepova for participating in a rally against the war on Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, and she spent 10 days in jail.
The Interior Ministry released a video showing Trepova telling a police officer that she brought the statuette that exploded to the cafe. When asked who gave it to her, she said she would explain it later. The circumstances under which Trepova spoke were unclear, including whether she…
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