Pro-Putin Military Blogger Killed In Cafe Bombing — Explosive Was Concealed In Miniature Statue

Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed by a bomb blast in a cafe on Sunday.

What Happened: Russia’s state Investigative Committee opened a murder investigation after a blast in St Petersburg killed Tatarsky and wounded about 25 people, reported Reuters.

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This was the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the Ukraine war. Last year, the daughter of a close ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and a prominent ultra-nationalist ideologue was killed in a car bombing. 

According to the Russian state news agency TASS, an unnamed source said the bomb was hidden in a miniature statue that was handed to Tatarsky as he addressed a group of people in the cafe.

Maxim Fomin — popularly known by the pseudo name Tatarsky — had a significant following of over 560,000 on Telegram. He was among the most notable military bloggers who supported Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region occupied by Russia, said Ukraine was to blame. “He was killed vilely. Terrorists cannot do otherwise. The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there’s no other way to stop it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said he would “not blame the Kyiv regime” for it. Prigozhin said the cafe earlier belonged to him, but he has since given it to “patriotic” activists who have been holding meetings there. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not directly blame Kyiv for the blast but slammed the absence of reaction in the West. 

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