Famous military blogger who defended war in Ukraine dies
Russian authorities blame Ukraine for blast
An explosive exploded at a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city, on the 2nd (local time), killing a famous military blogger who had supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and injuring at least 30 others.
According to Russian local media reports, including Sputnik, an explosion accident occurred at a cafe in downtown St.
Russian authorities identified the deceased as Vladran Tatarsky, 40, a popular military blogger. At the time of the accident, it was reported that a discussion with readers led by Tatarsky was being held in the cafe.
Local media reported that at the event, a woman presented Tatarski with a statuette in the shape of a soldier, believed to contain explosives. Interfax news agency reported that Darya Triopova, a woman from the city, was arrested for detonating explosives, and that she had a history of being detained for participating in anti-war rallies in the past.
The Russian investigative authorities are investigating the case as ‘terrorism’. Investigative authorities are looking at the statue as a likely cause of the explosion, but it is said that they do not rule out the possibility that explosives were installed in the cafe before the incident.
The Russian government blames Ukraine for the explosion. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was threatening Russian journalists while Western international organizations turned a blind eye, saying Tatarsky’s activities had “spurred hatred towards the Kiiu regime”.
Russian commentators and military bloggers have claimed that the blast was also a targeted attack by Ukraine, following last year’s death in a car explosion of Darya Dugina, daughter of Russian far-right nationalist Alexander Dugin. Dougina, the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and editor-in-chief of a news site that strongly supports Putin, was killed in an explosion while driving her father Dugin’s car near Moscow last August. Dugin was originally scheduled to move in with her Dughina, but she saved her life by rescheduling her at the last minute.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has been pointing to the Ukrainian government as the culprit since the incident, but Ukraine has repeatedly denied this. Afterwards, a New York Times report came out that the U.S. intelligence authorities also believed the Ukrainian government was behind the incident. Dugin praised Tatarski, who was killed in the explosion, as an “immortal hero.”
Tatarsky, whose real name is ‘Maxim Fomin’, hails from Donetsk, Ukraine, which is largely occupied by Russia, and has 560,000 subscribers on his Telegram channel. In the past, he worked as a miner in a coal mine in Ukraine. He was arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank in 2011, and escaped from prison in 2014 as chaos escalated due to fighting between Ukrainian forces and rebels. After his prison break, he was active in the separatist rebel Donbass militia.
Since then, he has transformed into a military blogger under the pseudonym ‘Tatarsky’ and has strongly supported the invasion of Russia by reporting on the war situation in Ukraine. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has used military bloggers advocating a war of aggression for propaganda while suppressing and disbanding its media that have criticized the war.