Who blew up Vladlen Tatarsky? Assassination of pro-war blogger sparks mystery

Vladlen Tatarsky was a man of many enemies.

He was hated by millions of Ukrainians for telling them all to be killed and robbed in videos that earned him a reputation as a hardliner even among the ultra-nationalist world of Russian military bloggers.

Then there was the Russian government and prominent generals whom he openly blamed for the failed war effort and called for to be fired and prosecuted.

More enemies lurked in the shadows: perhaps from his days as a bank robber in Ukraine, when he went by the name of Maxim Fomin; perhaps pro-Ukrainian dissidents in Russia; or perhaps enemies of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was one of Tatarsky’s few allies.

Whoever they were, on Sunday they found their target.

A bomb hidden in a gold bust of the 40-year-old propagandist exploded during one of his speaking engagements in St Petersburg, injuring 30 people and leaving one big unanswered question: who dunnit?

Officially, the blame has been placed on 26-year-old Daria Trepova – a well-known dissident who was filmed handing the statue to Tatarsky just before it exploded.

She confessed on camera after being arrested, though notably did not admit that she knew the arrest was a bombshell and said nothing about who gave it to her.

Those who knew Trepova say she would not have been capable of murder and even the Russian investigators doubt she was the mastermind.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the immediate suspicion fell on Ukraine.

The attack on Tatarsky has parallels with a bomb explosion that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of pro-war propagandist Alexander Dugin, in the Moscow suburbs last year.

In both cases, the intended target was a vocal supporter of Putin’s invasion — even if the blast intended for Dugin ended up killing his daughter.

In both cases, the attack was carried out by a female assassin planting explosives – in Dugina’s case, they were hidden in a car that her father was supposed to drive.

And in the Dugin case, a CIA official has said off-the-record that they believe the Ukrainian secret services were behind it.

It goes without saying that Ukraine would also be suspected of the murder of Tatarsky.

Kiev has, predictably, denied any involvement, but the Ukrainians are not alone in expressing such denials.

Prigozhin himself wrote a Telegram entry doubting that the “Kiev regime” was behind the killing, and instead blamed “a group of radicals… who probably have no connection whatsoever with the government.”

Significantly, he did not say which government he was referring to: the one in Kiev or the one in Moscow.

There are many who believe that the Russian state itself may be responsible for the blast, seeking a voice that has become increasingly critical of its blunders on the battlefield.

Tatarsky had lashed out at nearly all senior leaders, including Putin, for the way the war is being fought — and it’s no secret that critics of the Russian leader don’t last long.

But any number of powerful military figures, with ready access to explosives, could be responsible: from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to General Valery Gerasimov.

The American think tank The Institute for the Study of War thinks the attack served a dual purpose, both to silence Tatarsky and to send a message to ally Prigozhin.

Wagner’s boss led criticism of the regular Russian army – at one point calling Gerasimov a “fa****” – and grew bolder with each victory his mercenaries scored.

But he seems to have fallen out of favor recently, and Tatarsky’s murder was perhaps intended as the most powerful warning yet to get back in line.

It certainly seems worth noting that St. Petersburg is Prigozhin’s birthplace, and that the cafe in which Tatarsky died belongs to Prigozhin – a fact that seems coincidental, except that he had attended a similar event in a similar event earlier in the same day. other cafe loved and walked away unharmed.

Another possibility is that dissidents in Russia plotted the assassination, either out of hatred of Putin or solidarity with Ukraine – or both.

Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian MP now living in exile in Ukraine, has claimed that a group he is in contact with in his home country carried out the bombing.

He told the Daily Beast that he was “informed in advance of the preparations for the attack” and gives the organizers “financial and political” support.

Ponomarev did not name those responsible, but rather claimed ties to the National Republican Army — a group of anti-Putin artisans he blamed for Dugina’s assassination last August.

US and German officials have also accused a pro-Ukrainian group not affiliated with the government, but possibly linked to Russia, of blowing up the Nord Stream pipes.

Meanwhile, Ukraine blamed a cross-border attack on Russia’s Bryansk region — which targeted two civilians and planted bombs — on dissidents within Putin’s own ranks.

If such groups exist, it seems well within their capabilities to stage a bombing in a major city.

There are also plenty of skeletons in Tatarsky’s closet from his colorful past, one of whom may have taken advantage of his newfound fame to target him.

Before being a pro-Russian war blogger, he was a Ukrainian criminal from Donbas named Maxim Fomin who was jailed for bank robbery shortly before Putin’s first invasion in 2014.

When pro-Russian groups, incited by Igor Girkin, launched a proxy war in Donbas, Tatarsky claims to have escaped prison and joined their ranks to fight against his homeland.

After that war reached a stalemate, he traveled to Moscow, where he reinvented himself as a blogger and writer, returning to eastern Ukraine in early 2022, just before Putin invaded for a second time.

In addition to documenting the war and spreading pro-Kremlin narratives, Tatarsky claims to have taken an active part in the fighting, including in the city of Mariupol.

But he was reportedly in violation of Girkin and mocked by other war bloggers for exaggerating his military service, any of whom could have decided to retaliate for his supposed “stolen courage.”

Russia has even tried to pin the blame on imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who accused his political party of being involved.

This theory has been largely rejected, not least by the Navalny movement itself, but is likely to be used by an increasingly paranoid Kremlin as an excuse for a crackdown on dissenters.

And it will almost certainly be used by Putin and his allies to portray Russia as a state under threat – from enemies from without as well as enemies from within.

It is a sign of how closely involved Putin and Russia are in this conflict that a bombing in Russia’s second city could conceivably have been perpetrated by so many people.

A war that Putin hoped would be over in days with a bloodless victory is getting closer to home.