Russian authorities would identify another suspect in the explosion that killed pro-war military blogger Vladlen Tatarki in a cafe in St. Petersburg, writes the Russian state news agency TASS, quoted by The Guardian.

The attack was allegedly “prepared by a member of the Ukrainian terrorist-sabotage group, a citizen of Ukraine, Yuriy Denisov, born in 1987, who sent an explosive device disguised as a plaster bust of the military commissar to Moscow through a courier service,” writes TASS with reference to the Russian authorities.

The Russian state agency also writes that “the procedure to register him on the international watch list has begun.”

On April 2, Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg owned by the leader of the “Wagner” Communist Party Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Moscow accused Kyiv and the “agents” of imprisoned opposition leader Oleksiy Navalny of complicity in this murder. Ukraine, for its part, claimed that this was an internal settlement of accounts between those who support the attack on Russia.

Who was video blogger Tatarsky

Maxim Fomin was one of the most famous pro-Kremlin military bloggers, over 500,000 people subscribed to his Telegram channel.

The influence of these activists, who publish stories about Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and share their own analysis of the situation on the front lines, has grown significantly since the start of the Russian offensive in February 2022. Although some criticize the way the operation in Ukraine and the Russian military leadership are set up, they always avoid direct criticism of Vladimir Putin.

Tatarsky, 40, was among those who publicly urged Russia to continue the war even more aggressively. For example, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson after Russia withdrew from the city last November, Tatarsky wondered why Moscow did not risk killing him with a drone.

Originally from Donbas, Maksym Fomin had war experience, because in 2014 he joined the forces of pro-Russian separatists.

• Read also: Footage of tortured and killed prisoners, enemies – “latent homosexuals”, “schizophrenics”, “pigs” – what the Russians who followed the video blogger Tatarsky found out

He died in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg during a conference in front of an audience of about 100 people. More than 30 of them were injured as a result of the attack. The event was organized by a group called “Cyber​​​​​​Z Front”, the name of which refers to the letter “Z”, which Russia adopted as a symbol of war.

According to Russian media reports, the explosion occurred minutes after the woman presented Tatarsky with a statuette, a bust she said she made herself, representing Tatarsky. 26-year-old Daria Trepova from St. Petersburg was arrested and charged with terrorism, but the woman claims that she was lured into a trap and did not know that the statuette contained a bomb.

• Also read: “Don’t worry, bring it here, we’ll check.” A Russian blogger killed in St. Petersburg joked about bombs before the explosion

Tatarsky is the second known war propagandist to be killed in Russia since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The first was the journalist Daria Dugin, daughter of the famous ultra-nationalist activist Oleksandr Dugin. Last August, Daria Dugina died in a car trap near Moscow.

The killings are an attack on Russia’s hard-line pro-war camp and appear to be a warning to other members that they could be targeted anywhere. Tatarsky had close ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner’s mercenary group fighting on Russia’s side in Ukraine, who was also a frequent critic of the Russian Defense Ministry.

• Read also: Putin posthumously awarded a Russian military blogger killed in a terrorist attack