Bomb kills Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky

A well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has been killed by a bomb blast in a St Petersburg cafe.

Tatarsky was killed on Sunday in what appeared to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the war in Ukraine.

Reports by Russia’s RIA sate news agency say the number of people wounded in the bomb blast has risen to 32.

Citing the ministry of health, RIA reports that 10 of the people are in a serious condition.

It was not immediately known who was behind the killing. Russia’s state Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder investigation.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Sunday he would “not blame the Kyiv regime” for it.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the absence of reaction in Washington, London and Paris speaks for itself given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.

Also Read: Russia assumes presidency of UN Security Council 

“The reaction in Kyiv is striking where those who receive Western grants are in no way concealing their delight at what has happened,” she wrote on the ministry’s wwebsite.

Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the military bloggers who have championed Russia’s war effort in Ukraine while often criticising the army top brass.

“We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it,” he was shown saying in a video last September at a Kremlin ceremony in which President Vladimir Putin claimed four partly occupied regions of Ukraine as Russian territory – a move rejected as illegal by most countries.

Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is occupied by Russia, suggested publicly that 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.

Tatarsky’s death followed the killing  of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist, last August in a car-bomb attack near Moscow.

Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services of carrying out that attack, which Putin called “evil”. Ukraine denied involvement.

Russia’s war bloggers, an assortment of military correspondents and freelance commentators with army backgrounds, have reacted with shock to the news of Tatarsky’s death.

The war bloggers have enjoyed broad freedom from the Kremlin to publish hard-hitting views on the war, now in its 14th month. Putin even made one of them a member of his human rights council last year.

Zainab Sa’id