Pro-war Russian military blogger killed in blast at St Petersburg cafe
by One person has died and at least 30 people have been injured in a blast in a cafe in St Petersburg, Russia.
Pro-war Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in the explosion, the Russian interior ministry said.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers who have provided an often critical running commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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There has been no confirmation of who was responsible for the destruction at the “Street Bar” cafe in Russia’s second-largest city.
A leading Russian official pointed the finger at Ukraine, without providing evidence. The claim was rebuffed by Kyiv.
Russia’s foreign ministry made no accusations of involvement in the attack, but said silence in Western capitals exposed hypocrisy over expressions of concern for journalists.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, blamed Russian domestic terrorism for the blast.
“The spiders are eating each other in a jar,” he added.
Russian media and military bloggers said Tatarsky was meeting with members of the public and that a woman presented him with a statuette that apparently exploded.
In remarks recorded on video, a witness said that a woman who identified herself as Nastya asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky.
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, and the explosion followed. Smotrova described people running in panic, some hurt by shattered glass and covered in blood.
‘At this point nothing is certain’
If Tatarsky was deliberately targeted it would be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure associated with the war in Ukraine. Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Vladimir Putin ally, was killed after a suspected explosive device detonated on the Toyota Land Cruiser she was travelling in outside of Moscow last August.
Tatarsky was among hundreds of attendees at a lavish Kremlin ceremony last September to proclaim Russia’s annexation of four partly occupied regions of Ukraine.
“We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it,” he was shown saying in a video clip on that occasion.
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Tatarsky was known for some “extremely radical statements” including disparaging the official Russian military forces and praising the Wagner Group mercenaries, investigative reporter Christo Grozev told Sky News.
The Bellingcat reporter said it is important to remember that Tatarsky was a soldier who participated in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Discussing the blast, Mr Grozev added: “At this point nothing is certain. It could well be that this was a Ukrainian operation.
“It might also be an operation of Russian security services as a false flag operation to consolidate the pro-war sentiments in Russia.”
Military analyst Sean Bell told Sky News that it “looks really unlikely” that the Ukrainian military was behind the St Petersburg attack as it wasn’t a military target.
Fellow pro-war Russian bloggers have paid tribute to Tatarsky.
“He was in the hottest spots of the special military operation and he always came out alive. But the war found him in a Petersburg cafe,” said Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the name War Gonzo.