According to reports from Russian news agencies on Sunday, a well-known military blogger named Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a cafe explosion in St Petersburg, which was caused by an explosive device.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had over 560,000 followers on Telegram and was a vocal supporter of Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine. He had attended a Kremlin ceremony last September when Russia proclaimed its annexation of four partially occupied regions of Ukraine.
The cafe where the blast occurred once belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private army, whose mercenaries are fighting alongside Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Sixteen people were injured in the incident, and it is unclear if Tatarsky was deliberately targeted. If it was a targeted attack, it would be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure associated with the war in Ukraine.
In August of last year, Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist, was killed in a car bomb attack near Moscow, and Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services of the killing. Ukrainian officials denied any involvement in the attack, and Russian President Vladimir Putin called it ‘evil.’
At this time, no group or individual has claimed responsibility for the blast that killed Tatarsky in St Petersburg.
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