Russia accused Ukraine on Monday of having orchestrated, with the complicity of supporters of imprisoned Russian opponent Alexei Navalni, the attack that killed a well-known military blogger and fervent supporter of the offensive against Kiev the day before in St. Petersburg.
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The investigators announced the arrest of a woman, Daria Trépova, a Russian national and presented as a militant of the Navalni Anti-Corruption Foundation, banned in Russia since 2021.
(Video shows St. Petersburg bombing: killed pro-Russian blogger)
Police released a video in which the 26-year-old woman He admits to having brought the explosive statuette that killed blogger Maxim Fomin, known by the pseudonym Vladlén Tatarsky.
To a policeman’s question as to who had given her this bomb, she replies that she would explain “later”.
Why are they accusing followers of Navalni in the case of a blogger?
The opponent, imprisoned for more than two years, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for fraud and is also accused of extremism.
The attempt “was planned by the Ukrainian special services, who recruited agents among those who collaborate with the so-called Navalni Anti-Corruption Foundation,” the Russian anti-terrorism committee announced on Monday.
The Russian president’s spokesman, Vladimir Putin, denounced an “act of terrorism”.
The day before, a person in charge of the Ukrainian presidency, Mikhailo Podoliak, denied on Twitter any involvement of kyiv and considered that it was “internal terrorism” due to rivalries with the Russian regime.
(Read: Navalni faces a new accusation in Russia that would cost him 15 years in prison)
Following the accusations against Navalni’s organization, its spokesperson, Kira Yarmyshdenounced a coup organized by the Kremlin. “Alexei will soon be tried for extremism, he faces 35 years (in jail). And the Kremlin said, it’s great to be able to add a ‘terrorism’ charge,” he tweeted.
Russian military blogger concealed his true identity
Tatarsky’s real name was Maxim Fomin, 40 years old and, although the Russian media describe him as a war correspondent, Tatarsky also participated actively on the battlefront.
This blogger accumulated more than half a million followers on Telegram and was part of a group that has come to criticize the Russian authorities, especially to the army and even to President Vladimir Putin for the setbacks on the battlefield.
(You can read: What does the secret ICC file against Putin for war crimes contain?)
We’ll win everyone over, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob as many people as we need.
The blogger was from Donbas, a region in eastern Ukraine and the epicenter of the conflict.
According to the Russian press, He was jailed in Ukraine for a mugging in 2011. In 2014, taking advantage of the clashes in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian separatists, he escaped from prison and joined these fighters.
In 2019, he left the separatist forces, according to the Kommersant newspaper, to focus on his blog.
In September, his comments at a celebration in the Kremlin about the annexation of several Ukrainian regions they created a stir. “We’ll win everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob as many people as we need. All the way we like it,” she said on camera.
⚡️ In St. Petersburg there was a terrorist attack. The military journalist V.Tatarsky, who spoke about what is REALLY happening in Ukraine, has died.
In addition to him, 15 other people were injured.
We believe that everyone is clear who is behind this murder pic.twitter.com/vBS1EZv10x
— Embassy of Russia in Mexico (@EmbRusiaMexico) April 2, 2023
Ruthless crackdown on Vladimir Putin’s detractors
Russia is carrying out a ruthless crackdown on critics of the Kremlin, especially those who denounce the military intervention in Ukraine.
The woman arrested on Monday, according to the Tass news agency, was already detained for ten days in 2022 for demonstrating against the Russian offensive.
He Blogger Tatarsky was killed Sunday in a bomb attack in a St. Petersburg cafe where he was speaking at a conference of a support organization for the Russian offensive in Ukraine, called “Cyber Z Front”.
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According to various media outlets, Trépova would have carried a bomb hidden in a statuette that was given to the blogger during the conference. The latest balance reported 32 people injured in the explosion, eight of them in serious condition.
The cafe where the incident happened attack belongs to the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeni Prigozhin, who declared on Telegram on Monday that he had made it available to the organization.
The attack is reminiscent of the one carried out in August against Daria Dugin, a great defender of the offensive in Ukraine and daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. Russia then accused kyiv, which denied having participated in the assassination.
‘We will kill everyone’: the dangerous warning that circulated
Prigozhin, in opposition to the Russian authorities, seemed to exclude that these murders were organized by the Ukrainian special services.
“I would not accuse the Kiev regime of these acts. I believe that a group of radicals is acting,” he said on the Telegram channel of his press service.
The flag that Wagner put on the center administration building in Bakhmut.
“Vladlen Tatarsky, eternal memory of all Russia pic.twitter.com/FXUgCu2rLr
— Lorraine (@ Afroditaa1984) April 3, 2023
Suspect acknowledges that she delivered the statuette
The main suspect in the terrorist attack that ended the life of the well-known Russian military blogger Vladlén Tatarski on Sunday acknowledged that she delivered the statuette that caused the explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe.
“I took the statuette that exploded there (to the cafe), “said Daria Trépova, according to the video of the interrogation released by the Ministry of the Interior.
Supposedly, Trépova gave the figure to Tatarski, 40, with an explosive inside that would have been activated by remote control.
Agents of the police and the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained the 26-year-old woman shortly after being declared a wanted man. As reported by the Russian Ministry of Health on Monday, 10 of the 32 injured in the attack in which Tatarski died are in serious condition.
(Keep reading: Ukrainians risk their lives every day to leave: ‘Russians planted mines on everything’)
Trépova was already sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest in February 2022 for an unauthorized action against the military campaign in Ukraine.
Attack revives attack on Daria Dugin
He The attack against the pro-Russian military blogger is reminiscent of the one who killed Daria Dugin in August, daughter of the leader of the Neo-Eurasianist Movement, Alexandr Dugin, considered close to the Kremlin.
(Continue reading: Ukraine war: what impact will long-range rockets detected by Russia have?)
The Russian journalist died when a bomb exploded in the underbody of her vehicle as she was driving on a road on the outskirts of Moscow.
STEPHANY ECHAVARRÍA
INTERNATIONAL EDITOR
TIME
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