Woman arrested over killing of pro-Kremlin blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in cafe blast

Darya Trepova – a Russian woman – has been arrested by authorities in connection with the killing of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a blast at a St Petersburg cafe.

Trepova was earlier placed on the interior ministry’s wanted list and her arrest was later confirmed by Russia’s Investigative Committee.

The cafe, Street Food Bar No 1 near the River Neva, was once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin – who runs Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group which has taken part in much of the fighting in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Prigozhin paid tribute to Tatarsky in a late-night video which he declared was filmed from the town hall in Bakhmut.

He displayed a flag which he said had the words “in good memory of Vladlen Tatarsky.”

Tatarsky was a well-known blogger with more than half a million followers and a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

His murder is reminiscent of the killing of Darya Dugina, a vocal supporter of the war and the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist, who died in a car bomb attack near Moscow last August.

There are now a lot of angry men carrying guns in Russia, as the military runs low on troops and convicts have been let out of prison, handed weapons and sent to the front.

The number of murders committed in Russia last year rose for the first time in 20 years.