The cafe blast in St. Pete killed a Russian military Blogger

The Blast in the Cafe where Maxim Fomin was killed during a communique with the Russian Embassy on the Crimea de Janeiro, Ukraine

The governor said 25 people were injured in the blast, of which 19 were hospitalized. Investigators were questioning everyone who was inside the cafe, state media reported.

Russian media and military bloggers said Tatarsky was meeting with members of the public when a woman presented him with a box containing a bust of him that apparently blew up. A patriotic Russian group that organized the event said it had taken security precautions but acknowledged that those measures “proved insufficient.”

The agency said that investigators and forensic specialists were on scene. All the circumstances and details of the crime are being established.

Tatarsky supported the war in Ukraine, had gained popularity since the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation” by providing analysis and commentary.

Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

In May last year, he told CNN that he was not criticizing the overall operation, rather “individual episodes,” and that he still believed Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine.

An explosive bust of a military blogosphere blogger killed in Moscow during an anti-war rally and the death of her father, Alexander Dugin

The prosecutor in St. Petes traveled to the scene to coordinate actions of emergency services and law enforcement agencies. The governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, was overseeing the coordination of the work of the special services and the provision of assistance to the victims of the explosion, TASS said.

An explosion tore through a cafe in Russia’s second- largest city killing a well-known military blogosphere and ardent war supporter. A bomb was embedded in a bust of the bloggers, as a gift, according to some reports.

Russian officials claimed that Tatarsky was killed as he led a discussion at the cafe on the bank of the river. The Health Ministry in Russia said 30 people had been wounded in the blast.

In remarks recorded on video, a witness said that a woman who identified herself as Nastya asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky during the discussion.

The witness, Alisa Smotrova, quoted Nastya as saying she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. They talked and laughed. She then went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky.

The explosion followed when the bust was placed on the table. People were injured and covered in blood as they ran in panic.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that a St. Petersburg woman, Darya Tryopova, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the bombing. It said that she had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies.

Russian media said investigators were looking at the bust as the possible source of the blast but have not ruled out the possibility that an explosive device was planted in the cafe before the event.

No one publicly claimed responsibility, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately pointed a finger at Ukraine and compared the bombing to the killing last August of Darya Dugina, a nationalist TV commentator. She was killed when a device planted in her vehicle blew up as she drove outside of Moscow.

Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/02/1167675096/explosion-russia-pro-war-military-blogger-ukraine

Domestic Terrorism is an Instrument of Internal Politics: Kiev Attacks on Crime and Democracy in the Light of the Crimea Insurrection

Ukrainian authorities have not yet claimed responsibility for any fires, explosions or assassinations in Russia. At the same time, officials in Kyiv have greeted the events with joy and insisted that Ukrainian citizens can go ahead with attacks in Russia.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English on Twitter. It was a matter of time when domestic terrorism would be an instrument of internal politics.

Tatarsky made a video in which he promised that there would be no more annexations after the Kremlin’s annexation of four regions of Ukraine last year. We will kill and steal everybody we need to. We will like it the way it is. You are with God.

At the same time, the Russian government has limited the public’s access to information and jailed critics in opposition to the war.