An explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg killed at least one person and injured 16, the Russian Defense Ministry said, confirming reports by news agencies.

The explosion, according to the Russian news agencies TASS and RIA, was allegedly caused by a bomb, and the dead is a Russian blogger, military expert Vladen Tatarsky.

“The power of the explosive device was more than 200 grams of TNT,” a law enforcement source told TASS.

Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, had over 560,000 followers on the Telegram app and was one of the most popular military bloggers. In his blog, he critically commented on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Tatarsky was among hundreds at a ceremony at the Kremlin last September to announce Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions that partly belong to Moscow. The annexation was condemned as illegal by most countries at the UN.

A Russian website based in St. Petersburg reported that the explosion took place in a cafe once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner mercenary army that is fighting alongside Russian military forces in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

RIA reports that six more people were injured in the explosion.

There is currently no indication of who is responsible for the incident.

If Tatarsky had been the target of the bombing, it would have been the second murder of a person on Russian soil, linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s intelligence services last August of killing Daria Dugina, the daughter of an ultranationalist, in a car bomb attack near Moscow. President Vladimir Putin called the attack “brutal.” Ukraine denies any involvement in this case.

Source: APE/MEB