According to police, the shooting of Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky is being probed as a “high-profile homicide.”
Tatarsky, an outspoken supporter of Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday evening.
According to the health ministry, twenty-four people were transported to hospitals, and six were in critical condition.
Social media videos depicted an explosion and injured individuals on the street. It was unclear who was responsible for the attack immediately.
Around 18:13 local time, police were called to Street Food Bar No. 1 near the Neva, according to the Interior Ministry (15:13 GMT).
Russia’s highest criminal investigation body, the Investigative Committee, has begun an investigation into a “high-profile murder”, as described by the agency.
Criminalists have been dispatched to the scene, the Telegram message added. Tatarsky was a featured speaker at a cafe-hosted event when the bomb detonated.
There are contradictory reports regarding the explosive device in Russian media. According to official sources cited by Russian state media, Tatarsky received as a gift a statue in a box that contained a bomb.
After the explosion, a Telegram video showed him being given a monument and making jokes about it. The BBC was unable to confirm if it was the explosion.
Tatarsky, unlike many other Russian military bloggers and state media journalists in Ukraine, participated in combat operations, according to Olga Ivshina, BBC Russian correspondent.
Last year, he garnered prominence after sharing a video taken inside the Kremlin in which he declared,
“We will vanquish everyone, murder everyone, and loot everyone as necessary. Just how we like it.”
The event was a Kremlin ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin, who declared Russia’s annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian areas. This land grab was criticized internationally.
The cafe that was attacked on Sunday was formerly owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s infamous Wagner mercenary gang, according to the St. Petersburg news site Fontanka.
President Putin is a native of St. Petersburg, where he first rose to prominence.
Tatarsky had over 500,000 Telegram followers, where he and other military bloggers criticized elements of the Russian assault in Ukraine.
Cyber Front Z, which referred to itself on Telegram as “Russia’s information troops,” stated that it had rented out the cafe for the evening.
Unfortunately, our security measures were insufficient in the face of a terrorist attack, as stated in a post on Telegram.
“We extend our condolences to all of those who knew the distinguished war correspondent and dear friend, Vladlen Tatarsky.”
Darya Dugina, a prominent journalist and admirer of the Russian military, was assassinated by a car bomb near Moscow last August.
She was the daughter of Mr. Putin’s close ally, the ultranationalist intellectual Alexander Dugin.
Tatarsky joined the Russian rebel troops in 2014, when they captured a large portion of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas in eastern Ukraine, according to Olga Ivshina of the BBC.
He was born in the Donetsk area city of Makiivka
Tatarsky joined the Donetsk rebels after they released him from prison, where he was serving time for armed robbery, according to Tatarsky himself. One of the regions that Russia claims to have annexed in Donetsk.
Tatarsky returned to the fight when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and reported on the war via social media and Russian official media. He asserted his participation in launching combat drones and constructing fortifications.
Tatarsky, according to Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was “hazardous” for Ukraine but “bravely fulfilled his duty till the end.”
She blasted on Telegram the failure of Western governments to respond to the incident.
Zakharova stated,
“The reaction in Kiev is stunning, as those who receive subsidies from the West do not conceal their glee at what has occurred.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, asserted that Russian political infighting was on the rise and that the tragic explosion indicated the outbreak of domestic terrorism.
Mr. Podolyak refuted Russian accusations of Ukrainian complicity in the assassination of Darya Dugina in August of last year.
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