Lee Heidhues 4.2.2023
This is undoubtedly big news in Russia.
A Russian blogger who monitors Putin’s aggression in Ukraine was killed during an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe, at one time owned by the notorious Wagner Group. The organization which has provided thousands of mercenary conscripts to fight and die in Ukraine.
Predictably the Russian State media is blaming Ukraine for the explosion. An accusation the government in Kyiv emphatically denies.
A detailed New York Times article on the assassination follows the Deutsche Welle report.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 4.2.2023
Vladlen Tatarsky, an influential pro-Russian military blogger, had more than 500,000 followers on Telegram
Well-known Russian military blogger Tatarsky was killed in a blast at a cafe in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Sunday, Russia’s Interior Ministry said.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote in English online that he believed the attack was domestic terrorism in Russia.
“Spiders are eating each other in a jar.” It’s a Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time Podolyak wrote.
Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack in a statement, with spokesperson Maria Zakharova saying bloggers like Tatarsky were regularly threatened by Kyiv.
Zakharova said that the lack of a reaction from western governments “speaks for itself given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.”
This appeared to be a reference to American journalist Evan Gershkovic, who was arrested and accused of spying earlier this week on charges his employer and the US government have rejected as absurd.
The state Investigative Committee said 19 other people were wounded and that it had opened a murder investigation.
“One person was killed in the incident. He was military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky,” the Interior Ministry said.
The explosion took place at the Street Food Bar No. 1 cafe that had reportedly at one time belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group that is fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, had reportedly invited people to a “patriotic evening” event hosted by Cyber Front Z, a group that refers to itself as “Russia’s information troops.”
“There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures, but unfortunately, they were not enough,” the group said on Telegram.
Russia’s TASS news agency quoted a law enforcement source saying the blast was “caused by an improvised explosive device hidden inside a statue given to Tatarsky as a gift.”
It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast. The Interior Ministry said everyone inside the cafe at the time of the incident was being “checked for involvement.”
https://www.dw.com/en/russian-military-blogger-killed-in-st-petersburg-blast/a-65208776
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