World News | Russia accuses Ukraine of making bomb that killed military blogger

MOSCOW, April 3 (AP) Russian authorities on Monday accused Ukrainian intelligence of planning a bombing at a St. Petersburg cafe that killed a Russian military blogger who strongly supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and arrested A suspect was charged with participating in the attack.

Ukrainian authorities did not directly respond to the allegations, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was not considering events in Russia, where a senior official had earlier described the bombings as part of internal turmoil in Russia.

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Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, was killed Sunday while moderating a discussion at a cafe on the Neva River in the historic center of Russia’s second-largest city, officials said. Tatarsky, who had made regular reports on the Ukrainian front, was the pseudonym of Maxim Fomin. He has amassed over 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

More than 30 people were injured in the explosion, 10 of them seriously, according to authorities.

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Investigators said they believed the bomb was hidden in the blogger’s bust and was given to him before the blast. A video shows Tatarsky joking about the bust and placing it on a table next to him.

Russian authorities on Monday announced the arrest of Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old St. Petersburg resident who was seen on video showing a bust of Tatarsky. Last year, Trepova was detained by police for attending an anti-war rally.

The Interior Ministry released a brief video showing Trepova telling a police officer that she brought the exploded statuette to the cafe. When asked who gave it to her, she said she would explain later.

According to Russian media reports, Trepova told investigators that she was asked to transport the bust, but she did not know it was hidden inside.

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee, which coordinates counterterrorism operations, said the bombing was “planned by Ukrainian special forces” and noted that Trepova was an “active supporter” of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny .

Navalny, the Kremlin’s fiercest foe who exposed official corruption and organized massive anti-government protests, is serving nine years on fraud charges he denounced as a political vendetta.

Police tracked Trepova using surveillance cameras, Russian media reported, although she reportedly cut her long blonde hair short to alter her appearance and rented another apartment in an apparent escape.

Military bloggers and patriotic commentators compared the bombing to last August’s assassination of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remote-controlled explosive device mounted in her SUV exploded as she was driving outside Moscow.

Russian authorities have blamed Ukrainian military intelligence for Dukina’s death, but Kiev has denied any involvement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the attacks on Dugina and Tatarsky justified Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Moscow offered a range of explanations for the incursion, which Ukraine and the West denounced as an unprovoked act of aggression but offered little evidence of the charges.

“Russia faces the Kiev regime that supports terror,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “That’s why special military operations are being conducted.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian millionaire military contractor for the Wagner Group who leads Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the café and allowed patriotic groups to use it for meetings. He said he doubted whether Ukrainian authorities were involved in the bombing, saying the attack was likely carried out by a group of “radicals” unrelated to the Kiev government.

On Monday, Zelensky dodged questions about the blast.

“I’m not thinking about what’s happening in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Russia should think about it. I’m thinking about our country,” Zelensky told reporters.

Ukrainian authorities have not claimed responsibility for the various explosions, explosions and other attacks on Russian soil since the February 24, 2022 invasion, but they have often greeted them gleefully and insisted that Ukraine has the right to carry out such attacks.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak responds to news of the St. Petersburg bombing amid infighting in Russia.

“Spiders are killing each other in jars,” he tweeted in English late Sunday. “The question of when domestic terrorism will become a tool of domestic political struggle is only a matter of time.”

On Monday, Podoliak said Russia had “returned to the Soviet classics,” citing its growing isolation, rising espionage cases and heightened political repression.

Last week, Russian security services announced the arrest of an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal on espionage charges, the first time an American journalist has been detained on such charges since the Cold War.

The newspaper vehemently denies the allegations and has called for his release.

Born in Donbass, Ukraine’s industrial hub, Tatarsky was a coal miner before starting a furniture trading business. When he was in financial trouble, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison.

He escaped detention in 2014, weeks after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, as a Russian-backed separatist insurgency swept through the Donbass.

He then joined the separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)