Russia says suspect in deadly bombing that killed war blogger detained

A woman suspected of killing a prominent Russian war blogger and injuring dozens of others at a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday has been detained, the country's top counterterrorism agency said Monday.

Russian police believe 26-year-old Darya Trepova was behind the bombing that killed Vladlen Tatarsky, known for his coverage of the Ukraine war.

Tatarsky was speaking during an event at ‘Street Bar 1’ cafe in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Sunday evening when a powerful bomb exploded, killing him and injuring at least 32 others, according to Russia's state media.

According to RT, Tatarsky regularly reported on developments in Donbas and authored several books. In January, he was sanctioned by Ukraine.

Russian Investigative Committee, which promptly launched a criminal case into the incident, treated it as a “murder in a publicly dangerous way.” 

Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee, in a statement on Monday, said that the attack on Tatarsky was “planned by Ukrainian special services” with the involvement of people associated with jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The statement further noted that the arrested woman was an “active supporter” of Navalny’s group.

After the deadly blast on Sunday, Trepova had been identified online by some local media as a suspect in the incident.

Some reports said the bomb was hidden in a bust of the blogger that was handed to him as a gift by Tryopova, as he was leading a discussion at the cafe that had at one time belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private army that is fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

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Russia's TASS news agency cited an emergency services source saying the bomb detonated somewhere near the stage where Tatarsky was speaking.

The power of the improvised explosive device (IED) used in the incident was equivalent to 200 grams of TNT, the agency reported, citing sources.

Trepova was detained on Monday in a St. Petersburg apartment that belonged to a friend of her husband, according to the Fontanka news website, adding that she had a plane ticket for a flight to Uzbekistan.

Sunday's cafe bombing marks the second assassination operation on Russian soil targeting a high-profile public figure. 

Last August, Darya Dugina was killed in a car bomb attack near Moscow. At the time, Russia's Federal Security Service said Ukraine's secret services were behind the killing.

Dugina was the daughter of prominent Russian writer and philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who has been described by the Western media as an influential ideologue of Russian nationalism and a former aide to President Vladimir Putin.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of what he called a “special military operation” was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

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