An explosion at a St Petersburg cafe kills Vladlen Tatarsky, an influential blogger with 560,000 Telegram followers, Russian news agencies say.
The well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has been killed in an explosion at a café in St Petersburg, according to Russian news agencies.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers who often commented critically on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He was one of hundreds in attendance at a lavish ceremony at the Kremlin last September to declare Russia’s annexation of four partially occupied regions of Ukraine, a move most countries at the United Nations condemned as illegal.
A St Petersburg website said the explosion happened in a cafe that once belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner group of mercenaries who fought for Russia in Ukraine.
Investigators work at the site of the blast in St Petersburg, Russia (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)
The RIA news agency said six other people were injured in the blast. There was no indication who was responsible.
Interfax news agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying: “One person was killed in the incident. He was military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky. Sixteen people were injured.”
If Tatarsky was deliberately targeted, this would be the second murder on Russian soil of a figure linked to the Ukraine war.
Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services of killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultranationalist, in a car bombing near Moscow last August that President Vladimir Putin called “bad.” Ukraine denied involvement.
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