Is Darja T. carrying the busted bomb into the cafe here?

class=”sc-3778e872-0 cKDKQr”>

Suddenly there is a bang, walls are blown up, windows break: Sunday evening there was a violent explosion in the cafe “Street Food Bar” in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The pro-Russian military blogger Vladen Tatarskij († 40) was killed and more than 30 people were injured. The police assume an attack on him and are looking for the alleged perpetrator. She would have been against the war in Ukraine.

Vlad Tatarsky led a discussion among military fans in the cafe. Videos on social media show his performance just before the bang.

According to the press service of the Ministry of Health, the explosion at the cafe injured 32 people, 10 of them seriously. Tatarsky was killed in the process. Investigators believe the bomb was hidden in a bust.

A woman who introduced herself as “Anastasia” presented Tatarsky with the figure. According to eyewitness accounts, the bust is said to represent a gilded statue of Tatarsky himself. Videos posted on social media showed Tatarsky looking at his gift. A few minutes later there is an explosion. The woman allegedly left the cafe and then detonated the explosive from a distance.

Vladen Tatarsky is an influential military blogger. He has 560,000 followers on Telegram. Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, is known for his pro-Russian stance on the war in Ukraine.

Born in Ukraine, he joined the pro-Russian separatists in 2014 after escaping from prison, where he had been since 2011 for bank robbery. In 2019, the Ukrainian moved to Moscow, where he started blogging. Since the beginning of the war, he has reported on wartime events in Ukraine.

After Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of the four Ukrainian oblasts in September 2022, Tatarsky said in a video: “We will kill everyone, everything will come as we want. With God’s help.” Such statements were not uncommon. Since last fall, Tatarsky has begun to criticize the Russian Ministry of Defense for failures at the front.

The visitors of the event in the cafe tell about a woman who approached Tatarsky on stage and gave him a plaster figure. He would have put them on a table, where the explosion later started. “On suspicion of a crime, an unknown young woman is being sought who gave the deceased a gift in the form of a plaster figure,” the emergency services said on Sunday.

The authorities therefore currently assume a targeted attack on Tatarsky and are investigating the murder. It is being investigated whether there is a connection with the attack on Daria Dugina († 29), the daughter of Vladimir Putin’s friend Alexander Dugin (61).

The suspect Darja T.* (26) – who apparently handed over the gift to Tatarsky and introduced herself as “Anastasia” – was arrested on Monday morning, Russian media report. Her first words after the arrest were: “I was done! I was only used! », reports the Telegram channel «Shot». It is unclear if she knew about the bomb in the bust.

A short time later, the Russian Interior Ministry published a video showing the arrested person. A man behind the camera asks T. if she knows why she was arrested. “I would say I was at the spot where Vladlen Tatarsky was killed,” she replies. The man wants to know what she did. “I took the bust that exploded there.” The man wants to know from the young woman from whom she got it. “Can I tell you later?” is her answer.

She had been searched for before. Street cameras would show T. carrying a box into the cafe. On Sunday, the Russian media reported that T. had been arrested, but that it was the wrong person. Her mother and sister would have been brought to the station for questioning.

According to her circle of friends, the Russian has attended opposition meetings. On February 24, 2022, she was arrested at an anti-war demonstration.

T’s husband Dmitri R.* is also wanted. He is a member of the «Russian Libertarian Movement» and is abroad. T. also lived in Georgia for six months, but recently rented an apartment in St. Petersburg again.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, responded to the attack on Monday: “The regime in Kiev supports terrorist actions and could be behind the murder of Vladlen Tatarsky and many others since 2014 – that is why the special military operation is being carried out.”

The “Street Food Bar” in St. Petersburg used to belong to Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin (61). “I had donated the cafe to the patriotic movement Cyber ​​Front Z,” he wrote on Telegram after the incident.

He does not believe that Volodymyr Zelensky (45) is involved, although there are similarities with Dugina’s death. “I think there is a group of radicals who probably have nothing to do with the government,” Prigozhin continues.

Mourners laid flowers and pictures at the scene. Pro-Russian journalists share their displeasure, accusing politicians of not being tough enough on opponents of the war. “When will the country start responding?” wrote Tina Kandelaki, deputy director general of Gazprom-Media, on Telegram. “The terrorists have electricity, water, trains, restaurants, the internet works, the leaders of the killers travel the country with television cameras,” she criticizes.

“And now? do we forget? do we forgive?” said Margarita Simonian, editor-in-chief of RT-News.

Ukraine denies guilt. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak wrote on Twitter: “It starts in the Russian Federation… Spiders eat each other in a pot. The question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of domestic political struggle was a question of when a mature abscess erupted.”

*Name known

Source: Blick