An explosion that occurred on Sunday at a cafe in St. Petersburg claimed the life of one of the most well-known and widely read military bloggers and journalists in Russia.
Maxim Fomin, better known by his nickname Vladlen Tatarsky, was giving a discussion when a bomb tore through the arena. The incident occurred when Maxim Fomin was speaking. According to official Russian state media, there have been a total of fifteen additional people injured.
The explosive device, according to the police, was concealed in a statue that held more than two hundred grammes of TNT. There were pictures floating around the internet that showed the blogger being presented with a monument.
With more than 560,000 people following him on Telegram, Fomin was one of the most popular military bloggers in Russia.
His writings were, on several occasions, damning of Russia’s military leadership and the strategy it employed during its invasion of Ukraine. He was also a fanatical nationalist, and the following statement he made at a reception in the Kremlin encapsulates his perspective on the war: “We’ll conquer everyone, we’ll slaughter everyone, we’ll rob anyone we need to, and everything will be just how we like it.”
A photo posted from Tatarsky’s talk, moments before the explosion. The venue is reportedly owned by Evgeny Prigozhin. https://t.co/4Pw6COBADJ https://t.co/Fa2DNciAhk pic.twitter.com/9dvDF7MbUV
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) April 2, 2023
On September of 2016, he was one of hundreds of people who attended a spectacular ceremony at the Kremlin to announce Russia’s annexation of four partially occupied areas of Ukraine. This was a move that the majority of countries at the United Nations denounced as unlawful.
According to a website based in St. Petersburg, the explosion took place at a coffee shop that had previously been owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private army, which is currently fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
No person or organisation has come forward to claim responsibility for the explosion. If there is evidence that Mr. Fomin was the intended target, then this would be the second time that a figure connected to the conflict in Ukraine has been murdered on Russian soil.
In August of last year, Russia’s Federal Security Agency accused Ukraine’s secret services of carrying out a vehicle bomb assault in Moscow that resulted in the death of Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist. President Vladimir Putin described the act as “evil.” Ukraine denied participation.
English