Vladlen Tatarski, who died in a bomb attack in St. Petersburg on Sunday, strongly supported Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
A well-known Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky died on Sunday in a bomb explosion in a St. Petersburg cafe, Russian authorities said. In addition, 25 people were injured in the explosion, the news agency AFP says the Ministry of Health has informed. 24 of the injured have been taken to the hospital, and six of them are said to be seriously injured.
Tatarsky, real name Maxim Fomin, strongly supported Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. The 40-year-old blogger was from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. His Telegram channel had more than half a million subscribers.
According to a source who spoke to news agency Tassi and RIA Novosti, the bomb would have been inside the statue given to Tatarski as a gift. According to the source, the package was given by a “girl” already known to the victim.
The explosion took place at the Street Food Bar no.1 restaurant located on the bank of the Neva River, which a group called Cyber Front Z has said they booked for the evening for their event. Tatarski was speaking at the event as an invited guest.
– We took certain security measures, but unfortunately they were not enough, the group says on its Telegram channel.
According to the Fontanka media from St. Petersburg, the restaurant was previously owned by the head of the mercenary army Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin. Fontanka says that there were at least a hundred people in the cafe at the time of the explosion. According to the Russian Ministry of the Interior, the police received an alert a little after six on Sunday evening.
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has said that it will start a murder investigation into the case.