The Investigation Committee of Russia, which is in charge of investigating the most serious crimes, reported on Monday that it had arrested Daria Trépova, a woman born in 1997 and who is the main suspect in murdering the well-known Russian military blogger Vladlén Tatarski with a bomb. . The deflagration, in a Saint Petersburg cafe-restaurant, also caused 32 injuries, 19 of whom had to be hospitalized.
“The Investigative Committee together with the operational services have arrested Daria Trépova on suspicion of being involved in the explosion in a cafe in Saint Petersburg,” the investigators explained in a statement published on Telegram.
Previously, the Ministry of the Interior had issued an order and arrest against the woman.
According to the local online newspaper Fontanka.ru, the arrest took place in a previously rented apartment in the Vyborg neighborhood of St. Petersburg.
On the afternoon of April 2, a patriotic movement organized a meeting of the communicator with his followers at the Street-Food Bar No. 1, located on the Universitetsky embankment in Russia’s second city. About a hundred people attended. During the event there was a powerful explosion inside the premises.
According to testimonies from those present, just before the explosion a young woman who introduced herself as Anastasia gave Tatarski a statuette as a gift. The figure was to her right when, minutes later, she exploded. Tatarski, who was also a military commander in the pro-Russian militias in Donbass and whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed instantly.
The Russian Ministry of Health issued a report on Monday indicating that 10 of the 32 injured in the attack are in serious condition. Among the victims is a 14-year-old teenager.
A police source told the RBK newspaper that Trépova’s phone calls and social media activity are being investigated.
Investigators are also working on a list of participants in an anti-war protest that took place in February 2022 in St. Petersburg. Trépova participated in that action and was sanctioned with 10 days of administrative arrest.
The agents, according to RBK, do not rule out that the young woman was used to commit the attack, in which case she would not have known that there was an explosive in the statuette.
Police believe that Trépova had corresponded with Tatarski and had attended various events where the blogger participated.
The attack is reminiscent of the one that killed Darya Duguina, daughter of the well-known ultranationalist political scientist Alexander Duguin, considered an influential figure for his thinking in the Kremlin environment in August last year.
Dugin died when a bomb exploded in the underbody of her vehicle while driving on a road on the outskirts of Moscow. It is assumed that the attack was directed against his father, since he was the one who used to drive the car.
The Russian FSB accused the Ukrainian secret services of having planned the attack. Ukraine, however, denied any involvement.
From Kyiv, Mikhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, tweeted on Sunday that “spiders eat each other” and attributed the explosion to “domestic terrorism as an instrument of political struggle” in Russia.
