Bar explosion in St. Petersburg kills one, suspect arrested – released

An evening organized in honor of the famous Russian pro-war blogger, who was killed this Sunday, April 2, in an explosion whose origin remains uncertain. Another 32 people were injured.

Russian blogger Vladlon Tatarsky, a staunch defender of the war in Ukraine, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, April 2. According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, “At 6.13 p.m. the police of the Vasiliostrovsky district received information about an explosion in a cafe on Universitetskaya embankment at number 25”. The outbreak, of unknown origin, occurred at Street Food Bar No. 1 on the banks of the Neva, far from the historic center of St. Petersburg. 1 took place in a hotel. The latest report is one death, 32 injured, eight of them critically.

This Monday, Russian authorities announced the arrest of a 26-year-old woman. Russian investigators simply wrote that they had “Daria Trebova, Suspected of Participating in St. Petersburg Hotel Bombing, Arrested” In the social network Telegram, without mentioning the reasons that led them to suspect her. According to the media, including the state agency TASS, Daria Trebova is suspected of bringing a bomb disguised as a statue to the conference, which was delivered to the blogger. According to Das, he was detained for 10 days in 2022 for demonstrating against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the first day of the war.

According to witnesses cited by Russian agencies and social networks, a few minutes before the explosion, the 40-year-old blogger, who held an evening meeting around his work as a “war reporter”, received a statue bearing his image. The girl at the party, whom he knew. “The strength of the explosive device was more than 200 grams of TNT”A source in the police force told Tass.

Born in the Ukrainian Donbass, Vladlon Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, is a well-known personality in the world of military blogs in Russia, with more than half a million subscribers to his Telegram channel. He has made a name for himself by actively supporting Moscow’s “special operation” provided by pro-Russian forces for the Ukrainian invasion, reporting from the front since the beginning of the offensive and releasing videos analyzing the situation. Basics and advice for mobilized people. Since 2014, when war broke out in eastern Ukraine, he has spent months fighting with pro-Russian separatist militias in the Donbass, according to local media. fontanka. Based in Moscow, he wrote books covering the events before resuming the route of the Donbass in 2022.

The Cyber ​​Front Z group, which includes “Russia’s information soldiers,” according to Fontanka, privatized the cafe to host the event, which drew about 100 people. “There was a terrorist attack. We took some security measures, but unfortunately they were not enough. Can you read it in the group’s Telegram thread? The government has opened a “criminal investigation” for “homicide by dangerous means”.

Update: Suspect arrested and new count at 11:10 a.m. Monday, April 3.