According to local media, an explosion in a St Petersburg cafe killed a pro-Putin military blogger and injured 15 others. The incident has been reported to emergency agencies, according to the TASS news agency. According to RIA, a well-known military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was slain. According to interior ministry officials cited by Russia's RIA news agency, a bomb was hidden in a statue given to Tatarsky in a box. Tatarsky, actual name Maxim Fomin, had over 560,000 Telegram followers. He was regarded as one of the most famous military bloggers, providing ongoing commentary on Russia's ongoing conflict in Ukraine. According to the Interior Ministry, everyone who was in the cafe at the time of the explosion was being "checked for involvement." Various fires, explosions, and apparent assassinations have occurred in Russia since the conflict in Ukraine began in February 2022, with no obvious connection to the conflict.
Following the annexation of four Ukrainian regions by the Kremlin last year, Tatarsky uploaded a video in which he declared: "That's it. We'll defeat everyone, murder everyone, and rob everyone we can. Everything will be just the way we want it. God bless you." Many nations have declared the annexation to be illegal.
A senior Ukrainian government official surmised that the blast was caused by internal Russian opposition to the Kremlin's invasion. "In a jar, spiders are eating each other," Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted in English. "It was only a matter of time before domestic terrorism became an instrument of internal political struggle." Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator for a nationalist Russian TV channel, was killed last August when a remotely controlled explosive device placed in her SUV exploded as she drove on the outskirts of Moscow.
By Covenantblog
