Pro-Kremlin blogger and supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Vladlen Tatarskiï, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was killed in the explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023.
A Russian court on Thursday sentenced Daria Trepova to 27 years in prison for a cafe explosion that killed a prominent blogger who strongly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The prosecution had requested 28 imprisonment.
Daria Trepova, 26, was found guilty by a St. Petersburg court of committing a terrorist attack, illegal trafficking in explosive devices and forgery of documents. On April 2, 2023, in a café in the city, the blogger was killed after accepting a booby-trapped statuette from Daria Trepova. 52 people were injured. Quickly arrested, Daria Trepova remained in detention until her trial.
During her interrogations and her trial, Daria Trepova insisted that she did not know that the statuette contained a bomb, claiming to have been manipulated. She claims to have acted at the request of a person in Ukraine, who assured her that the booby-trapped statuette contained a microphone. According to her, she acted because of her opposition to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia. Russian authorities accused Ukrainian intelligence services of orchestrating the attack. An accusation to which the kyiv authorities have not directly responded.
Then aged 40, blogger Vladlen Tatarskiï – real name Maxim Fomin – was an ardent supporter of the Kremlin’s military action in Ukraine and regularly reported on the fighting from the front lines.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Kyiv of being behind targeted attacks on its territory, such as the one that caused the death in August 2022 of Daria Dougina, daughter of the ultranationalist ideologue Alexandre Dougineor even that which seriously injured in May 2023 the writer Zakhar Pripelin, fervent support of the assault in Ukraine.