Pro-Putin propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky - who was killed in a bomb blast - has been laid to rest in Moscow today.
A decorated sledgehammer was left beside the coffin of the 40-year-old hardline pro-war fanatic, which was presented by the Wagner private army he backed.
Sledgehammers have been used by the group for extrajudicial killings of captured defectors from Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The funeral was held amid massive security and attended by some of Russia ’s most pro-war figures.
Tatarsky, who was a leading advocate of the war and boasted 600,000 followers, was buried with full military honours with goose-stepping soldiers taking part in the ceremony.
But he had sharply criticised Putin’s commanders - leading to speculation he could have been assassinated by the state - and demanded “total war” against Ukraine.
The funeral at Troyekurovskoye necropolis came amid an extraordinary claim from a KGB and FSB veteran that Daria Trepova, 26, who handed him a statuette of himself with a bomb hidden inside, was supposed to have died too.
She has been detained and could face 20 years in jail on terrorism charges even though one senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev has said she was “likely” unwittingly used as a “dumb-headed” accessory who did not know explosives were concealed inside.
A former KGB and FSB major general Alexander Mikhailov said the perpetrators had expected her to die.
“During the explosion, she was in close proximity to the bomb,” he expalined.
“There was a guarantee that she should not be left alive. She was waste material for the perpetrators of the crime.
“She did her job - she could be written off.”
He added: “Young people like Trepova are expendable. All these agents are bribed for a can of condensed milk. Real agents are expensive.”
Mikhailov claimed the most likely cause of his death was as part of a "hit" operation from Ukraine and would be "very pleasing" for people in the country.
One mourner today was Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the pro-Putin Wagner private military force.
“Today I would like to say thank you to Vladlen Tatarsky on behalf of myself and the fighters of Wagner,” he said.
“Tatarsky did much to enable us to go to victory and destroy the enemy.”
It is unclear what “victory” he meant with Russia failing to make major military gains.
“Thank him for this, we will always remember him,” said Prigozhin, a close Putin ally who has also criticised the dictator’s leading commanders.
Former convict Tatarsky - real name Maxim Fomin - was “a soldier who stays with us, whose voice will live on forever and speak only the truth”.
An outfit called the National Republican Army claimed responsibility for the killing, but it is unclear who was behind it.
A statement from the group said: “We organised and carried out an action on 2 April 2023 against a group of Z-activists and personally against the notorious warmonger and war propagandist, war criminal Maxim Fomin, known as Vladlen Tatarsky.
“This action has been prepared and carried out by us independently, and we have no connection to and we have not received assistance from any foreign structures and especially the special services.”
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee claimed the killing of Tatarsky had been masterminded by Ukraine’s special services with help from agents collaborating with jailed opposition leader Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.
The Russian Investigative Committee said Trepova acted on orders from "figures based in Ukraine" and committed a "terror attack by an organised group” at a cafe in St Petersburg.
The former art student handed Tatarsky a gold-coloured statuette made to resemble him which exploded causing his death and wounding more than 40.
Medvedev blamed the Kremlin’s jailed, suppressed and exiled foes for the bomb blast.
In particular he named anti-Putin leader Alexei Navalny, 46, now jailed in Russia and seen as a political prisoner, his associate Leonid Volkov, 42, now based in the West, ex-Russian MP Ilya Ponomarev, 47, now in Ukraine, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 59, a prominent opposition campaigner and once Russia’s wealthiest man, exiled in Britain.
In a vicious threat demanding extra-judicial killings, Medvedev said: “All these stinking…Navalnys, Volkovs, Ponomarevs and other Khodorkovskys have become just ordinary terrorists and murderers.
“They voluptuously enjoy the sight of the blood of Russian citizens. They flare their nostrils with excitement at the sight of wounded and mutilated bodies.
“They devoutly swore allegiance to darkness and terror, along with the murderers of their native Kyiv Nazi regime.
“Don't negotiate with terrorists. They are exterminated like rabid dogs with poisonous saliva flowing from their mouths. No extra pompous words.
“As soon as the opportunity arises. Even if sometimes it takes years. Forgiveness is not applicable....this is what the highest justice is.”
