A pro-war blogger assassinated by a bomb hidden in a gift when he was delivering a speech at a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia, made himself a target, an expert says.
Vladlen Tatarsky, who was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, was a Russian supporter and took a very hard line on the war, said Arne Kislenko, an associate professor at the Department of History of Toronto Metropolitan University.
“That would make him a very viable target,” Kislenko said.
Kirill Makarov, Youth Policy Minister of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on his Telegram channel that Tatarsky died in a terrorist attack.
“I knew Maxim personally, he was a real and fair man,” Makarov wrote on his Telegram channel in Russian. “No one could have imagined the fatal blow would be struck in St. Petersburg.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it has opened a terrorist act investigation and arrested who they described as the main suspect, Darya Trepova.
Russia's Investigative Committee said Daria Trepova was charged with the offence of terrorist act committed by an organized group, for her alleged participation in the bomb attack at a cafe at St. Petersburg. Photo credit: Daryna Vieniertseva
The committee also posted a video in which Trepova said she brought to the cafe the gift statue which exploded.
The Russian government said the attack was connected to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who is now in jail, and Ukrainian Special Forces.
Kislenko said the Kremlin’s statement is a giant cover-up.
“How on earth would [Navalny] be able to engineer this from a prison cell?” he said.
The cafe where the explosion took place is owned by oligarch and founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to Fontanka, a St. Petersburg’s news website.
Prigozhin has been reported to have risen over the last decade to become one of the most powerful voices in the Kremlin, according to an investigation by the Project, an independent Russian media specializing in in-depth journalism.
He is also the founder of the Wagner Group, a private military organization that has supported the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said on his Telegram press service channel the explosion had nothing to do with Ukraine, but was most likely caused by a group of radicals inside Russia.
Kislenko said the killing could even be an inside job, whether from Putin or other officials in the Kremlin, or just a Russian anti-war group.
Kislenko also said Tatarsky’s radical comments online amounted to open calls for violence against civilians.
“He really was extraordinary in the sense of how vitriolic he was, how angry he was and how far he was gone,” he said.
Tatarsky was a different blogger because he actually went to war, Kislenko said.
Tatarsky said in an interview on April 30, 2022, with Business Online, one of the leading business media sites in Tatarstan, Russia, he was imprisoned for armed robbery in 2011.
Tatarsky said he was released from prison in 2014 after Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk unilaterally declared secession from Ukraine.
He returned to Donetsk, was pardoned by the DPR leader and immediately joined the Russian army, he said.
Tatarsky started his Telegram channel in 2022 following Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where he released propaganda videos called Evening Vladlen, which currently has about 570,000 subscribers.
Vladlen Tatarsky posted on his Telegram channel on March 30, 2023, to show he can use weapons. Photo credit: Telegram/Vladlen Tatarsky
Kislenko said it is unclear how many of those subscribers have signed up for the war.
“Of his core audience of 500,000, maybe less than half are really deeply committed to that, and then half of that is dedicated to the war,” he said.
Lubomyr Luciuk, a Ukrainian professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, said Tatarsky was more than just a blogger and became a target.
“He was a member of the Russian military and so a legitimate target in terms of Ukraine’s defenders, even more so given how often he spewed out odious comments about Ukraine and Ukrainians for the entertainment of a large online audience of other fascists, war mongers and racists,” he said.
Kislenko said Tatarsky was a target of opportunity because he put himself out there.
“No matter who killed him, they’re probably thinking, ‘well, that’s our guy,, because he’s got a loud mouth and he’s really violent, so we’ll take him down,’” he said.