Russia has accused Ukraine of organising the murder of a prominent war blogger in a St Petersburg cafe and arrested a young Russian woman shown in a police video admitting planting the bomb that killed him and injured more than 30 others.
Ukraine, which did not take responsibility for Sunday’s attack, blamed “domestic terrorism” for the murder of Maxim Fomin, a Russian military blogger and cheerleader for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine who called himself Vladlen Tatarsky.
Darya Trepova, the 26-year-old Russian woman arrested over his murder, confesses in a video released by the interior ministry that she planted the bomb that killed him.
But unconfirmed Russian media reports said she had told investigators that she had been set up and had not known she was carrying a bomb.
Footage of the moment the blast ripped through the cafe released by the Fontanka.ru news outlet showed a powerful explosion shaking the length of the ground floor venue, bringing down parts of its outside terrace in the process.
Tatarsky’s murder appeared to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely connected to the conflict in Ukraine, after the car bomb killing of Darya Dugina, daughter of a nationalist ideologue, outside Moscow last summer.
Russia also accused Ukraine at the time. Kyiv denied involvement.
With more than 500,000 followers on the Telegram messaging service, Tatarsky — who had himself fought in Ukraine in the past — mixed ultra-nationalist messaging with criticism of the way Moscow is prosecuting what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
He last year spoke of the need to “kill everyone” and “rob everyone” in Ukraine in order for Russia to achieve victory.
Mourners braved a snowstorm to lay flowers outside the cafe where he was killed, with many saying they were upset and angry.
Some Russian commentators said the bombing was the latest sign that violence related to the war in Ukraine is increasingly spilling onto Russian territory.
President Vladimir Putin saluted Tatarsky posthumously Monday with a bravery award.
Russia’s National Anti-terrorism Committee said Ukraine’s intelligence services had organised the bombing with help from supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
That appeared to be a reference to the fact that the Russian woman arrested on Monday – Ms Trepova – once registered to take part in an anti-Kremlin tactical voting scheme promoted by Mr Navalny’s movement.
Mr Navalny’s allies, who have fled abroad since their movement was branded extremist by the Kremlin, rejected the accusation, saying it was more likely that Russia’s own intelligence services were behind the killing.
In the interior ministry video, Ms Trepova confesses to giving Tatarsky a small statue that was packed with the explosives that killed him. She declines to say immediately who gave her the statue.
“Can I tell you later?” she is heard saying.
The statue, according to Russian media, was a small sculpture of Tatarsky himself.
Interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said Ms Trepova had been arrested in a rented flat in St Petersburg as part of an operation by the police and the FSB security service. Ms Trepova’s husband told Russian media that a friend of his who was renting the same flat had also been detained.
The Kremlin called Tatarsky’s murder a “terrorist act”, citing the statement from the NAC as evidence that Ukraine might have been behind the killing.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, alleged on Sunday night that the killing was part of “an internal political fight” in Russia that he likened to spiders eating each other in a jar.
He provided no evidence to back that assertion.
