A high-profile pro-Russian military pundit was killed in a bomb blast at a St. Petersburg cafe Sunday, April 2nd, in what Kremlin officials are labelling a terror attack engineered by the Ukrainian state.
Vladlen Tatarsky was killed while addressing a crowd at the Street Food Bar No. 1 in an explosion that left six others in critical condition.
Russian police arrested a female anti-war activist named Daria Trepova Sunday night with unconfirmed reports that the bomb was hidden in a gift, a bust of Tatarsky, handed to him by Trepova prior to detonation.
Video of Trepova admitting her guilt while detained has surfaced on social media, where she refuses to explain who provided her with the bomb on camera. Police announced they were also looking for Trepova’s boyfriend, believed to be linked to the anti-Putin underground.
A Ukrainian-born pro-Russian war correspondent and military volunteer with the Lugan’s People Republic, Tatarsky had amassed an audience of over 560,000 followers on his personal Telegram channel for his war correspondence. Tatarsky was a prominent figure in the Kremlin’s media campaign justifying the war in Ukraine and was included in western sanctions for his role.
The attack occurred at a café formerly owned by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin which was hosting a panel discussion by a collection of pro-Kremlin Telegram correspondents, the ‘Cyber Z Front.’
Ukrainian government official Mykhailo Podolyak denied any involvement in the attack, blaming it instead on power struggles within the Russian state.
This attack is the latest killing of a pro-Kremlin figure within Russian territory, with the daughter of philosopher Alexandr Dugin assassinated in a car bomb in August 2022. Mystery still surrounds the murder of another Russian nationalist journalist Igor Mangushev who was shot dead in Luhansk last month.
An audacious attack on Russian soil, regardless of its perpetrator, indicates the potential for a new domestic front to open up in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine and the threat of information warfare.
