Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Saint Petersburg on Sunday.
Russian news agencies quoted the Interior Ministry as confirming Tatarsky’s death and saying 16 people were injured at the Street Bar cafe, the BBC reported.
Russia’s state Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder investigation, the outlet added.
A senior Russian official “pointed the finger at Ukraine”, without providing evidence. A Ukrainian presidential aide said “domestic terrorism” was breaking out in Russia.
A video posted on social networks shows the moment the cafeteria explodes in St. Petersburg, where the blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was:
The explosion is believed to have been caused by an explosive device.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on the Telegram social network and was one of the most prominent influential military bloggers who has provided often critical commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He was among hundreds of attendees at a lavish ceremony in the Kremlin last September to proclaim Russia’s annexation of four partially occupied regions of Ukraine, a move most countries at the UN condemned as illegal.
“We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone we need. Everything will be the way we like it”, he was shown saying in a video clip on that occasion.
A St. Petersburg website said Sunday’s blast took place in a cafe once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private army fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
There are no indications of who is responsible for this attack.
If Tatarsky were a deliberate target, it would be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure associated with the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services last August of killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist, in a car bombing near Moscow that President Vladimir Putin called “evil.” Ukraine denied its involvement.
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