Well-known Russian military blogger dies in ‘terrorist attack’ at café in St Petersburg | Abroad

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has confirmed the death of Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin. The cafe where the bomb exploded was once owned by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. The organizers of the meeting, the Cyber ​​Front Z movement, said in a response, according to local media, that security measures had been taken, but that they had proved insufficient. “There was a terrorist attack. Condolences to all who knew the excellent war correspondent,” it says on Telegram.

The notorious military blogger was allegedly given a statuette during the meeting, which then exploded. If Tatarsky were targeted, it would be the second murder on Russian soil of a high-profile figure linked to the war in Ukraine. Moscow accused Ukraine of the murder of Daria Dugina in August. This daughter of ideologue Aleksandr Dugin was killed in a car bomb attack.

Vladlen Tatarsky had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers. He was also one of those present at a September ceremony at the Kremlin that proclaimed Russia’s annexation of four partially occupied regions in Ukraine.

“We will beat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob anyone who is needed. Everything will be as we want it to be,” he said on that occasion. But the defense blogger was also critical of Moscow at times. At the beginning of this year, he pleaded for a tribunal for the Russian military leadership, whom he described as “untrained idiots”. Public criticism of the war is very rare in Russia.

Russian security services are investigating whether the attack was the work of Ukrainians who penetrated “the lion’s den”. But military analyst Sean Bell told Sky News that it “seems really unlikely” that the Ukrainian army was behind the attack because it was not a military target.

With more and more Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine, domestic unrest is increasing because more and more families have lost relatives. A motive may need to be found there, Bell said. According to the analyst, Tatarsky was not a heavyweight, but in his videos he called on young Russians to fight in Ukraine.