Above: Darya Trepova (L), the suspected St Petersburg’s cafe bomber, delivering the bomb (C) that killed Vladlen Tatarsky (R), a prominent pro-Russia war blogger.<\/p>\n
A woman suspected of killing a prominent Russian war blogger and injuring dozens of others at a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday has been detained, the country’s top counterterrorism agency said Monday.<\/p>\n
Russian police believe 26-year-old Darya Trepova was behind the bombing that killed Vladlen Tatarsky, known for his coverage of the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
Tatarsky was speaking during an event at \u2018Street Bar 1\u2019 cafe in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Sunday evening when a powerful bomb exploded, killing him and injuring at least 32 others, according to Russia’s state media.<\/p>\n
According to RT, Tatarsky regularly reported on developments in Donbas and authored several books. In January, he was sanctioned by Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russian Investigative Committee, which promptly launched a criminal case into the incident, treated it as a \u201cmurder in a publicly dangerous way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee, in a statement on Monday, said that the attack on Tatarsky was \u201cplanned by Ukrainian special services\u201d with the involvement of people associated with jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.<\/p>\n
The statement further noted that the arrested woman was an \u201cactive supporter\u201d of Navalny\u2019s group.<\/p>\n
After the deadly blast on Sunday, Trepova had been identified online by some local media as a suspect in the incident.<\/p>\n
Some reports said the bomb was hidden in a bust of the blogger that was handed to him as a gift by Tryopova, as he was leading a discussion at the cafe that had at one time belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private army that is fighting for Russia in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russia’s TASS news agency cited an emergency services source saying the bomb detonated somewhere near the stage where Tatarsky was speaking.<\/p>\n
The power of the improvised explosive device (IED) used in the incident was equivalent to 200 grams of TNT, the agency reported, citing sources.<\/p>\n
Trepova was detained on Monday in a St. Petersburg apartment that belonged to a friend of her husband, according to the Fontanka news website, adding that she had a plane ticket for a flight to Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s cafe bombing marks the second assassination operation on Russian soil targeting a high-profile public figure.<\/p>\n
Last August, Darya Dugina was killed in a car bomb attack near Moscow. At the time, Russia’s Federal Security Service said Ukraine’s secret services were behind the killing.<\/p>\n
Dugina was the daughter of prominent Russian writer and philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who has been described by the Western media as an influential ideologue of Russian nationalism and a former aide to President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine in late February, following Kiev\u2019s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow\u2019s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.<\/p>\n
At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of what he called a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d was to \u201cde-Nazify\u201d Ukraine.<\/p>\n