A new video shows slain pro-Putin propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky engaging with his ‘killer’ Daria Trepova moments before the explosion in which he dies.
More footage shows how the distressing blast came as he packed a statue of himself - which she had given him - back into its packaging.
A third video shows the 26-year-old former art student emerging minutes later outside the cafe alongside blood-soaked victims of the explosion, before quietly leaving the scene alone.
The new footage comes as the Russian propaganda machine moved to blame Trepova for being a knowing murderer, and the maker of the statuette filled with explosives which she gave him.
She is under arrest and has claimed she was “set up”.
Yet it is clear she had lied about her name - telling Tatarsky she was called Nastya [Anastasia] as he opens packaging she has given him containing the statuette supposedly depicting him on the war frontline.
In the last video to show him alive, he says enthusiastically to Trepova: “Nastya, Nastya! Come and sit here!”She replies - possibly anxious not to be close to an explosion: “I am too shy.”
He tells her to sit near him during a pro-war seminar but she edges away: “Take a seat here, or there, or wherever you want…”
She tells him she will sit “in the armchair” and moves well to the side, away from Tatarsky - real name Maxim Fomin - and the statuette.
“Yes or the armchair ,” he says.
He then examines the gold-coloured statuette: "Oh wow! What a beautiful lad, is it me? Let’s take it out….”
He appears happy, saying: “A golden Vladlen, perfect.”
Tatarsky says: “Thank God, I am much better-looking…”
Then he is seen in a video from 112 media - with links to law enforcement and the security services- packing the statuette back in its box.
This is when the bomb suddenly explodes.
Separate footage shows the scene outside the St Petersburg cafe as people bloodied from the blast emerge through the doorway.
By now he is dead - having been killed instantly by the bomb in the statuette.
Trepova is seen fleetingly in her overcoat emerging uninjured and briefly exchanging remarks with another person.
Then she walks away.
The suspect apparently went to a flat in St Petersburg where she cropped her hair with one unconfirmed report suggest she had a flight booked to Uzbekistan.
She was later held jointly by FSB secret service agents and officers of the Russian Investigative Committee and handcuffed to a radiator as her flat was searched.
Trepova was later taken for formal questioning over what the Russians have characterised as a “terrorist” strike.
On the pavement, those emerging from the cafe are plainly in shock.
They call for ambulances and tell passersby that they suspect Tatarsky had been killed.
“I think our speaker is gone,” said one.
Others say it was a “terrorist attack…a bomb exploded.”
It emerged that a Telegram channel linked to Trepova allegedly showed she had previously made statuettes from gypsum - a material that might prevent detection of explosives.
Law enforcement initially appeared in doubt whether the woman was a “useful idiot” who carried the statuette and presented it to Tatarsky without knowing it was a bomb - or a knowing participant in an assassination plot.
Russian propagandists and pro-Putin media were turning on her by early today.
Influential Margarita Simonyan, head of the RT propaganda empire, hailed Tatarsky - an advocate of “total war” against Ukraine - as “one of the brightest representatives of our camp of patriots” - while Trepova was an “animal” and a “murderer”.
Like Putin, they see Ukraine as taken over by neoNazis who must be expunged.
“We all want the same - the complete destruction of the **** that occupied beautiful Ukraine, so that even the memory of them is gone forever,” said Simonyan, a Kremlin mouthpiece.
“As for that animal [Daria Trepova] who, thank God, was detained…
“I want to thank everyone involved for arresting her quite quickly.
Simonyan insisted: “It’s clear she is not some mad young woman.
“No, this is an absolutely planned story.
“The murderer is now in the bear paws of Russian justice.
“I have no doubt she will never leave them before the end of her days.”
Yet there has been speculation that some in the pro-Putin camp may have wanted Tatarsky dead, just as much as anti-war campaigners or Ukraine.
He had relentlessly criticised Putin’s main generals for incompetence and lack of ambition in the war.
Pro-Kremlin Readovka said Trepova had previously made themed statuettes of soldiers, branding her a “terrorist” who “knew that she was going to kill”.
She “made with her own hands the statuette stuffed with a bomb”, alleged the outlet.
Her sculptures has been displayed online, it stated.
“Obviously, all attempts by Trepova, who has been following Vladlen for a long time, to shift the blame to curators who allegedly use her are a blatant hypocritical lie, since the terrorist clearly went to the cafe with one sole purpose - to vilely kill the military correspondent [Tatarsky].”
Readovka - which has close links to Wagner private army founder Yevgeny Prigozhin as well as the Russian authorities - said: “Daria did not expect that Vladlen Tatarsky would immediately pack the gift back into its box.
“According to her idea, he should have done this later, when the terrorist had already escaped from the cafe.
“Hence her nervous reaction - she instinctively hid her face, covered herself and tried to leave [before the explosion].”
It claimed that “not everything went according to her cruel and cannibalistic plan, but the cruel goal was still achieved - Vladlen died, and there was not a scratch on her”.
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee in Russia claimed the killing of Tatarsky had sbeen masterminded by Ukraine’s special services with help from agents collaborating with jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.
It gave no evidence for this assertion but Trepova is seen as having been a supporter of the foundation.
Another attempt to claim she was under orders from Kyiv was an assertion that she had been trained by a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Popkov.
She was asked to complete a task for a man who was an agent in the SBU - Ukrainian secret services, it was alleged.
Popkov - who runs a website on Russian partisans - denied this.
“I didn’t give any orders to Dasha [Daria],” he said.
“I didn’t introduce her to any Ukrainian intelligence officers.”
He said: “I did not command the operation to destroy this Tatar ghoul, although I regret it - he deserved what he got.
“It’s hard for me to command such things, if only because in Russia, in the clutches of this regime, my mother and younger brother live.
“Now the special forces are probably breaking into their house.”
His site is “dedicated to chronicling the Russian partisan movement - the Russian armed struggle against [Vladimir Putin’s] insane regime. An absolutely legitimate fight.”
Another propagandist Sergey Karnaukhov, a political analyst, TV host, former counterintelligence officer, expressed fear for the lives of other staunchly pro-Putin cheerleaders.
He asked: “Which one of us will they kill next? And where? When leaving home?
“A quadcopter through a window? A car bomb? Pushed under an underground train?
“How many of us will be alive by the end of [war]?”
