Prominent Russian military blogger killed in bomb blast at St Petersburg cafe
- Russian news agencies quoted the interior ministry as confirming the death of Vladlen Tatarsky and saying that 32 people had been wounded
- Russian media said Tatarsky was meeting members of the public and that a woman presented him with a box containing a statuette that apparently exploded
Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a bomb blast in a cafe in St Petersburg on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
They quoted the interior ministry as confirming the death of Tatarsky and saying that 32 people had been wounded at the Street Food Bar No 1 cafe in Russia’s second-largest city
The reports did not mention any claim of responsibility or provide details beyond saying that a cafe visitor carried an “explosive device”.
Russia’s Interior Ministry said everyone at the cafe at the time of the explosion was being “checked for involvement.”
Russia media and military bloggers said Tatarsky was meeting members of the public and that a woman presented him with a box containing a statuette that apparently exploded.
“Today an unidentified explosive device exploded in a cafe in central St Petersburg. According to preliminary data, as a result, a military blogger, known by the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky, died and 19 people were also injured to varying degrees,” Russian investigators said in a statement.
A group called Cyber Front Z, which refers to itself on social media as “Russia’s information troops”, said it had hired out the cafe for the evening.
A local media outlet, Fontanka, said there were at least 100 people at the event.
“There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures but unfortunately they were not enough,” the group said on Telegram.
“Condolences to everyone who knew the excellent war correspondent and our friend Vladlen Tatarsky,” it said.
“We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it,” he was shown saying in a video clip on that occasion.
If Tatarsky was deliberately targeted, it would be the second assassination on Russian soil of a high-profile figure associated with the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine denied involvement.
Russia’s foreign ministry on Sunday paid tribute to Tatarsky and lashed out at Western governments for failing to react to the attack.
Bloggers like Tatarsky “are defenders of the truth”, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram, adding that the lack of reaction from Western governments “despite their concerns for the welfare of journalists and the free press speaks for itself”.
“Russian journalists constantly feel the threat of reprisals from the Kyiv regime,” she said.
“It is thanks to Russian war correspondents that the world sees true, operational images and finds out what is happening in Ukraine,” she said.
Tatarsky was “dangerous” for Ukraine “but bravely went on until the end, fulfilling his duty”, she added.
The 40-year-old Tatarsky came from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia claims to have annexed and which is currently mostly held by Russian troops.
