Pro-Russian propagandist killed in blast in St. Petersburg

KYIV — An infamous pro-Russian combatant turned propagandist, known by the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday, in an explosion that injured at least 25 others, according to the Russian government.

Footage captured on a cellphone just before the explosion showed Tatarsky examining a statuette of a miner. Tatarsky was himself formerly a miner, and his Ukrainian hometown is in a region known for its coal mining and heavy industry. “What a beautiful guy,” Tatarsky said, while examining the statue, before joking, “I’m much prettier!”

Moments later, the explosives hidden inside the bust detonated, killing Tatarsky instantly.

Attendees who survived the blast claimed Tatarsky was presented with the statue by a woman. Five minutes after the statue was handed to Tatarsky, an explosion tore through the cafe. Russian media reported that 26-year-old St. Petersburg resident Darya Trepova, who had previously been arrested for participation in antiwar rallies in February 2022, was detained as a suspect in the attack.

Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, is from Makiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that was previously under the control of the Soviet Union. In 2014, he was in prison as a convicted bank robber, but he managed to escape as Russian-backed forces seized the region. He joined the military of the Luhansk People’s Republic, a Moscow puppet government set up in Eastern Ukraine, before later becoming an influential military blogger, amassing nearly 560,000 followers on Telegram. Despite his blogging career, Tatarsky was often pictured armed, in full combat dress, and wearing Russian military identification during his frequent forays into Ukraine.

Tatarsky was best known outside of Russia for his extreme rhetoric, calling Ukrainians “brain-damaged Russians,” urging increased attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and celebrating the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. “We'll conquer everyone, we'll kill everyone, we'll loot whoever we need to," Tatarsky said in a recording after attending a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin in October of last year.

On Sunday, Tatarsky was addressing an ultranationalist trolling group referred to as Cyberfront Z in a cafe known as Street Food Bar No. 1, situated in the Vasileostrovsky district in St. Petersburg. Both the venue and the Cyberfront Z group are connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who supplies Moscow with mercenaries for its wars.

Cyberfront Z was established in February 2022, with Prigozhin admitting to journalists earlier this year that he had “held a meeting with a group of patriotic bloggers and offered them all possible help” in order to push pro-Russian propaganda on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Prigozhin claimed the group refused financial assistance but took him up on his offer of basing themselves in office space owned by the catering magnate turned warlord.

Street Food Bar No. 1, where the group held its regular meetings, was also previously owned by Prigozhin. In a Telegram post published last month, Tatarsky can be seen standing in front of a black pickup truck emblazoned with the black-and-red logo of the Reverse Side of the Medal Telegram channel, run by figures linked to the Wagner mercenary group. On March 28, Tatarsky accompanied Prigozhin on a visit to Wagner’s positions in Bakhmut, the focal point of the current Russian offensive effort in eastern Ukraine.

Some observers speculated that the blast could have been the result of the rift between the Wagner mercenaries and the Russian defense ministry. Tatarsky was a vociferous critic of the Russian military leadership’s management of the war. In January he called for a military tribunal for Russia’s top generals — whom he described as “untrained idiots” — after a Ukrainian artillery strike killed hundreds of Russian troops.

On Russian state television, the pro-Kremlin commentator Dmitry Kiselyov called the bombing a “brutal act of terror,” adding, without evidence, that the “style and target obviously points to the Ukro-Nazis,” a pejorative reference to the Ukrainian government. Another Russian military blogger, rattled by the loss of one of their own, called for strikes on “decisionmaking centers in Kyiv”.

The Ukrainian government itself denied responsibility. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggested that the blast was the result of infighting in the Russian elite.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Podolyak said.