Moment ‘female assassin delivers bomb hidden in gift’ that killed pro-Putin blogger

A woman has been arrested after pro-Putin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a cafe blast in St Petersburg.

The 40-year-old blogger died while leading a discussion at the cafe on the banks of the Neva River. Russian reports claimed the bomb was concealed in a statuette of the blogger given to him as a gift just before the explosion.

CCTV footage has been released which appears to show a woman carrying a box walking towards the ‘Street Bar’ cafe in Russia where the blogger was killed.

The seconds-long clip sees the blonde-haired woman, wearing a long brown coat and heeled ankle boots, enter through the glass doors at the front of the establishment. Her face is not shown.

More than 30 people were wounded by the blast, and 10 of them remain in serious condition, according to Russian authorities.

The Russian Interior Ministry on Monday identified the suspect in the explosion as Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old St Petersburg resident who had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies.

The Interfax news agency said that Ms Trepova was on the run and was put on the wanted list, while her mother and sister were summoned for questioning.

Shortly after, Russia’s Investigative Committee said that Ms Trepova had been detained.

Witnesses said that the suspect asked questions and exchanged remarks with Mr Tatarsky before the blast.

One witness, Alisa Smotrova, said a woman told Mr Tatarsky that she had made a statuette of him but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. They joked and laughed, and then she went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Mr Tatarsky, she said.

A video showed Mr Tatarsky making jokes about the bust and putting it on the table next to him just before the explosion.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state’s top criminal investigation agency, opened a probe on charges of murder.

No one has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russia‘s National Anti-terrorism Committee claimed on Monday that Ukrainian intelligence had been aided in the killing of the war by “agents” from a banned campaign group.

The state-owned TASS news agency said members of the Anti-Corruption Fund, set up by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, had been involved in the bombing.

Citing Russia’s counter-terrorism committee, the Kremlin called the killing a “terrorist act” and said security measures would be tightened for Russia‘s Victory Day holiday in May

Military bloggers and patriotic commentators also blamed Ukraine, comparing the bombing to last August’s assassination of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.

Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Ms Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.

Ms Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Mr Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.

Reacting to Mr Tatarsky’s death, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said his activities “have won him the hatred of the Kyiv regime” and noted that he and other Russian military bloggers have long faced Ukrainian threats.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian owner of the Wagner Group military contractor spearheading Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the cafe and had handed it over to a patriotic group for meetings.

He said he doubts the Ukrainian authorities’ involvement in the bombing, saying the attack was likely launched by a “group of radicals” unrelated to the government in Kyiv.

A top Ukrainian government official cast the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal turmoil.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English on Twitter late Sunday.

“Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

Vladlen Tatarsky was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel. He had filed regular reports from Ukraine.

Born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Mr Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison.

He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Mr Tatarsky joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

With additional reporting from the Associated Press