Russian pro-war military blogger killed in blast at St Petersburg cafe

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A prominent pro-war Russian military blogger has been killed in a blast in a cafe in central St Petersburg, Russia’s interior ministry said in a statement.

Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the country’s most influential military bloggers.

The interior ministry said 19 people were injured in the blast on Sunday. Citing sources in the country’s security agencies, the RIA news outlet said a bomb was hidden in a statue presented to Tatarsky in a box as a gift. There was no indication of who was responsible.

Videos posted on social media show an explosion and injured people on the street.

Tatarsky was among the attendees at a Kremlin ceremony last September where Vladimir Putin proclaimed Russia’s annexation of four partly occupied regions of Ukraine, a move widely condemned by the international community.

“We’ll conquer everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll loot whoever we need to, and everything will be just as we like it,” Tatarsky said in a video message recorded at the ceremony.

The blogger, who frequently travelled with Russian troops on the frontlines, emerged as one of the loudest critics of Russia’s defence ministry over the last year for its inability to achieve military gains in Ukraine.

In one instance he called for a tribunal for the Russian military leadership, describing Moscow’s top officers as “untrained idiots”.

Tatarsky was one of the leading voices in the pro-war blogger community. The bloggers, who are frequently former veterans with contacts on the frontlines, often provide a rare insight into Russia’s real performance on the ground and are allowed a surprising amount of leeway to criticise the conduct of the war – although they rarely criticise Putin. In a sign of their growing importance, the Russian president last year established a taskforce to coordinate work between the government and the bloggers.

If Tatarsky was deliberately targeted, his death will be the second killing on Russian territory of a prominent pro-war figure.

Last August, Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue, was killed when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving. Russia has accused Ukraine’s intelligence services of carrying out the killing but Ukraine denies involvement.