Female Russian ‘assassin’ who killed Putin blogger in cafe bombing loses appeal against her arrest

A Russian court denied bail on Monday to a woman charged with terrorism over a bomb attack that killed a pro-war Russian military blogger earlier this month.

Prosecutors have accused Darya Trepova, 26, of killing blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, by presenting him with an explosive device concealed within a statuette at a public talk he was giving in a St. Petersburg cafe on April 2.

Investigators say she was working on behalf of a pro-Ukrainian group with connections to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny – claims rejected by Navalny’s associates and Kyiv – and charged her with terrorist offences.

A court in Moscow on Monday rejected Trepova’s appeal against being held in pre-trial detention until at least June 2. The appeal was largely procedural and did not concern the substance of the charges against her.

Trepova, who appeared via video link from a detention centre on Monday, said she regretted what had happened and wished a speedy recovery to other victims, the TASS news agency reported from the court. More than 40 others were injured in the blast.

Prosecutors have accused Darya Trepova (left) , 26, of killing blogger Vladlen Tatarsky (right), whose real name was Maxim Fomin, by presenting him with an explosive device concealed within a statuette at a public talk he was giving in a St. Petersburg cafe on April 2

Trepova’s husband previously told independent Russian media outlets he believed she had been framed and had not known the statuette she had been told to deliver contained explosives.

Tatarsky was among the best-known of an influential group of bloggers who have surged to prominence since Russia invaded Ukraine. They have often been scathing in their criticism of Russia’s defence establishment and its conduct of the war, pushing for a more aggressive assault on Ukraine.

Last year, in a video shot at a ceremony in the Kremlin to mark Russia’s unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Tatarsky said Russia should ‘kill everyone’ and ‘rob everyone’ in Ukraine.

Suspect Daria Trepova filmed moments after passing the box with the statuette to the war propaganda blogger Vladlen Tatarsky 

Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, is seen moments before the explosion with the small statue at a St Petersburg café

Tatarsky was killed in a blast at the Street Food No. 1 cafe, located in the St Petersburg city centre, on April 2

Daria Trepova is escorted inside a court building before a hearing in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023

Russian authorities described the bombing as an act of terrorism and blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies for orchestrating it. Ukrainian authorities have not directly responded to the accusation, but an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the bombing as part of Russia’s internal turmoil.

Earlier this month, Russia’s Federal Security Service, known under its Russian acronym FSB, charged that a Ukrainian citizen whom it identified as Yuriy Denysov had gathered information about the blogger and supplied Trepova with explosives through a courier service.

The FSB claimed that Denysov acted on orders from the Ukrainian security services and left Russia the day after the bombing, which was the latest attack inside Russia on a high-profile pro-war figure. Last year, a nationalist TV commentator was assassinated when a bomb exploded in her SUV outside Moscow.

Tatarsky was the pen name of Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel. He had joined separatists in eastern Ukraine after a Moscow-backed insurgency erupted there in 2014 and fought on the front lines for years before turning to blogging.

Military bloggers have played an increasingly prominent role in Russia amid the fighting in Ukraine, supporting the Kremlin but often exposing flaws in military strategy. The authorities have shut down independent media outlets and muzzled any criticism of the military action.

The FSB claimed that Trepova was a supporter of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and claimed that Navalny’s top allies, Ivan Zhdanov and Leonid Volkov, have made repeated calls for subversive activities in Russia.

Zhdanov has charged that authorities could try to use the explosion to extend Navalny’s prison term and to add the anti-corruption foundation he established to Russia’s list of terrorist organisations.