Russian authorities have claimed that a woman has admitted to planting a bomb in a St Petersburg cafe that killed a pro-Putin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and injured 30 others.
Darya Trepova, 26, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the explosion in Russia’s second-largest city on Sunday afternoon.
In a video released by the Russian interior ministry, Ms Trepova is heard admitting she handed over a statuette that later blew up. However, she does not say that she knew there would be an explosion, nor does she admit any further role. The circumstances under which Ms Trepova made the confession are unclear, including whether she was under duress.
In the brief video, Ms Trepova sighs a number of times. When her interrogator asks if she knew why she was detained, she replies: “I would say for being at the scene of Vladlen Tatarsky’s murder... I brought the statuette there which blew up.” Asked who gave it to her she responds: “Can I tell you later please?”
According to Russian media reports, Ms Trepova is said to have told investigators she was asked to deliver the bust, but didn't know what was inside it. Ms Trepova’s husband, Dmitry Rylov, told the Russian news site SVTV News that while his wife was against the war in Ukraine, “she would never kill” and he “believes his wife was framed”.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee, which coordinates counter-terrorism operations, claimed the bombing that killed Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was “planned by Ukrainian special services”. The committee went even further later in the day, saying it had evidence it was “planned and organised from Ukrainian territory” Kyiv authorities did not directly respond to the accusation, but president Volodymyr Zelensky said in reference to the attack that he doesn't think about events in Russia.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak blamed the bombing on infighting in Russia. “Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” he tweeted late Sunday. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”
Tatarsky had been attending a patriotic meeting with supporters in Street Food Bar No 1, which has ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin – an ally of Vladimir Putin and the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group. Tatarsky was a guest speaker late on Sunday afternoon. A video circulating on social media showed a young woman in a brown coat apparently entering the cafe with a cardboard box. Images showed the box being placed on a table in the cafe before the woman sat down. Another video showed a statue being handed to Tatarsky.
More than 30 people were wounded in the blast, with many in grave condition, authorities said. Videos showed the café’s windows shattering and flames coming out. Inside the building, in the wake of the explosion, broken furniture was shown spattered with blood.
With more than 500,000 followers on Telegram, Tatarsky – who had himself fought in Ukraine in the past – mixed nationalist messaging with criticism of Moscow’s war tactics. Tatarsky was born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Control of the area is one of the main aims of Mr Putin’s invasion. Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture trade business.
When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He is said to have fled custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed areas of the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. He later joined separatist rebels and fought on the frontline before turning to blogging.
Mr Prigozhin, whose mercenaries have been at the forefront of the fighting in areas of the Donbas, said he doubted the involvement of Ukrainian authorities in the bombing that killed Tatarsky, and rather that it was likely launched by a “group of radicals” unrelated to the government in Kyiv.
Russian police said they had previously detained Ms Trepova for participating in a rally against the war on 24 February 2022, the day of the invasion, and she spent 10 days in jail.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee claimed that Ms Trepova was an “active supporter” of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Kremlin’s fiercest critic, who has previously exposed alleged corruption and organised massive anti-government protests, is serving a nine-year jail sentence for fraud that has been widely denounced as a political vendetta.
An associate of Mr Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov warned that Russian authorities could use the claim of involvement by political opponents as a pretext to extend his prison term. He also suggested that the bombing would be used to cast Mr Navalny’s supporters as an “internal enemy”.
Interior ministry spokesperson Irina Volk said that Ms Trepova had been arrested in a rented flat in St Petersburg as part of an operation by the police and the FSB security service.
The Kremlin called Tatarsky’s murder a “terrorist act”, citing the statement from the National Anti-Terrorist Committee as evidence that Ukraine might have been behind the killing.
“The active phase of the investigation is now underway,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“We see quite vigorous steps to detain suspects. Let’s be patient and wait for the next announcements from our special services, which are working on this.”
Military bloggers and patriotic commentators compared the bombing to the August 2022 assassination of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remote-controlled explosive planted in her SUV blew up as she drove on the outskirts of Moscow. Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.
Mr Peskov claimed the attacks on Dugina and Tatarsky proved that Moscow was justified in launching what it describes as “the special military operation” in Ukraine. The invasion has been denounced by most of the international community.
While Russian authorities have silenced or shut down independent news outlets critical of the war thanks to a number of laws introduced after the invasion, military bloggers like Tatarsky have played an increasingly visible role.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
