A Sunday explosion tore through a St. Petersburg café on Sunday, killing Vladlen Tatarsky, a prominent military blogger and supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Summary
A Sunday explosion tore through a St. Petersburg café on Sunday, killing Vladlen Tatarsky, a prominent military blogger and supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
- The bomb was reportedly embedded in a statue the writer was given as a gift, and it detonated as he was leading a talk at the café about the war. Approximately 30 Russians were injured in the bombing.
- The perpetrator of the attack was not immediately clear. According to Reuters, Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin said he would “not blame the Kyiv regime,” but other officials blamed Ukraine for the attack. One Ukrainian official said the attack could be “domestic terrorism.”
- Tatarsky was a well-known backer of the invasion of Ukraine, and a frequent critic of Moscow’s military leadership for not pursuing the war aggressively enough. Tatarsky reported from the front lines, including posting a notorious video where he vowed: “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it.”
- The St. Petersburg explosion is the second attack on pro-war Russian media figures since August, when Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian imperialist and a commentator in her own right, was killed in a suspected car bombing.
- CNN reported six people were critically injured in the bombing, and Russian investigators were questioning survivors in the Street Bar Café, the site of the attack.
- The New York Times covered social media videos that appeared to show Tatarsky receiving a small statue of himself onstage at the café shortly before the attack. One witness said Tatarsky asked the woman, allegedly a sculptor named Nastya, to hand him the statue after she said she could not take it inside the café due to fears of a bomb.
- The Guardian noted the popular Tatarsky had over 560,000 followers on Telegram. He “was one of the country’s most influential military bloggers” and was known for his frequent trips to the front lines.
- Fox News covered eyewitness claims that Tatarsky appeared to know the woman who handed him the small statue that allegedly concealed the bomb. The woman has been placed on a wanted list, even though she has not yet been identified by authorities.
- The group sponsoring the event, pro-war organization Cyber Front Z, called it a “terrorist attack,” per the New York Post. They continued, “We took certain security measures but unfortunately they were not enough.”
- According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian government spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed Ukraine in a statement: “Russian journalists are constantly experiencing threats of reprisals from the Kyiv regime and its inspirers, which are increasingly being implemented.” The Ukrainians blamed internal conflicts in Russia, with one official likening Russia’s factional disputes to “Spiders are eating each other in a jar.”
Return to Freespoke 
© Dominic Moore, 2023
