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The Russian Anti-Terrorism Committee has ruled that the popular military blogger who died after an explosion in St. Petersburg was the victim of a premeditated attack. The body accused the special services of Ukraine and a group related to the opposition Alexéi Navalny. As a consequence, the woman who gave him the statuette that triggered the incident in which 32 people were also injured was arrested.
This Monday, April 3, the versions of the murder of the military blogger Vladlen Tatarski increased, which occurred last Sunday due to the explosion of an object that was delivered to him in Saint Petersburg and which also left 32 people injured, ten of them in serious condition.
From Russia, the accusations were directed towards Ukraine and the opposition. According to the local Anti-Terrorism Committee, it was a “terrorist attack” perpetrated by Kiev’s special services and Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), a figure opposed to Vladimir Putin’s government.
“It was established that the terrorist attack committed on April 2 (…) was planned by the Ukrainian intelligence services with the participation of agents who collaborate with Navalny’s FBK,” the Russian entity said in a statement.
A search and arrest alert was quickly issued for Daria Trepova, the woman who delivered the explosive figurine to Tatarski. The Anti-Terrorism Committee claimed that she was an “active supporter” of the FBK and she was arrested.
In an Interior Ministry video where Trepova is being questioned, she admits to giving up the object, though it is not clear whether she knew there were explosives inside. When asked who gave her the bust, she replied that she will say “later”.
It is not the first time that Trepova has come under the Russian scrutiny. In February 2022, she was sentenced to ten days of house arrest for an unauthorized action against the military campaign in Ukraine.
In the Kremlin they endorsed the Committee’s vision. The spokesman Dmitri Peskov stressed that it was an alleged terrorist act. “Now the investigations are being carried out, we see quite energetic steps to detain the suspects. In any case, let’s be patient and wait for the statements of our intelligence services that work there, ”he added.
The spokesman explained that President Vladimir Putin is notified of the situation and wished a “speedy recovery” to the civilian victims.
Since June 10, 2021, the FBK, together with the Fund for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights (FZPG) was declared “extremist” by the Russian Justice.
Tatarsky died after a bust he had been given as a gift detonated, apparently by remote control, in a St. Petersburg coffee shop owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group.
The journalist, who has reached more than half a million users on Telegram, rose to popularity last September after attending a speech by Putin in the Kremlin. “We will defeat them all, we will kill them all, we will rob everyone we want,” he said at the time.
The FBK denies the accusations
The group’s director, Ivan Zhdanov, denied being involved in the attack that ended in the death of Vladlen Tatarki and targeted the Federal Security Service (FSB). “Refuting the fact that we did it is idiotic, naturally we don’t do this,” he wrote in a Telegram message.
“Everything that is happening suggests that in reality it was the FSB agents who simply eliminated this propagandist. They have been doing this since 2014: poisoning and killing each other,” he added.
Zhdanov called it “convenient” for Russia to blame the FBK, something they have been trying to do “for a long time.” While he also referred to the situation of the opponent Navalny.
“In the foreseeable future there will be a trial against him, obviously they are thinking of giving him the maximum sentence and terrorism is very convenient for that,” he closed.
With EFE and Reuters
