In the trial surrounding the fatal bomb attack on a well-known Russian military blogger, a court in St. Petersburg sentenced a woman to 27 years in prison in a penal colony. The court said on Thursday that Daria Trepova was found guilty of, among other things, terrorism.
The verdict was slightly less than the 28-year prison sentence demanded by the public prosecutor. Trepova sat in the glass cage for defendants when the verdict was announced, as a photographer from the AFP news agency observed.
The public prosecutor’s office had accused the 26-year-old woman of having handed over a statue prepared with an explosive device to blogger Vladlen Tatarski in a café in St. Petersburg on behalf of Kiev in April last year. The object exploded minutes later. The explosion killed Tatarski and injured more than 30 people.
Trepova was arrested less than 24 hours after the explosion. After her arrest, she admitted that she had given the statue to Tatarsky, but that she had been framed by contacts in Ukraine. She assumed that the statue only contained a hidden listening device. She didn’t know anything about a bomb.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin and was posthumously honored with an Order of Valor by President Vladimir Putin, was one of Russia’s most popular pro-government military bloggers, whose influence has grown sharply since the offensive in Ukraine began in February 2022. They often have sources in the military and often release information before the government or Russian state media. But they also criticize Russia’s military strategy.
The attack on Tatarsky caused a stir in Russia, particularly among supporters of the offensive in Ukraine. Moscow accused Kiev of being involved in the attack. Ukraine, on the other hand, stated that it was an internal reckoning in Russian nationalist circles.
Since the offensive in Ukraine began, Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of being behind attacks in Russia, including the one on Daria Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was killed in a bomb attack in August 2022.
