Russia announced on Monday the arrest of a woman suspected of having taken part in the attack in which a famous blogger supporting the offensive in Ukraine was killed the day before, accusing Kiev and “agents” of the imprisoned opponent Alexei Navalny.
Investigators presented this 26-year-old Russian citizen, Daria Trepova, as an activist of Mr. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund, banned in Russia since 2021.
She is accused of having brought a booby-trapped statuette whose explosion caused the death of blogger Maxime Fomin, known under the pseudonym of Vladlen Tatarskiï, in a café in Saint Petersburg, in the north-west of the country.
The case was described as a “terrorist act”, “planned and organized on Ukrainian territory”, said the Investigative Committee, highlighting the “opposition” to the Kremlin of Mr.me Trepova in her “opinions”.
The police then released a video in which this young woman admits to having brought the trapped statuette, while refusing to say for the moment where the bomb came from and not saying a word about the organization of Alexeï Navalny.
The latter, the main opponent of the Kremlin, imprisoned for more than two years, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for fraud and is also the subject of prosecution for extremism.
The attack “was planned by the secret services of Ukraine who recruited agents among those collaborating with the so-called Navalny Anti-Corruption Fund”, assured the Anti-Terrorism Committee of Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman denounced “an act of terrorism”.
Asked about the case on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he did not care what was happening in Russia.
Wagner and “Cyber Front”
The day before, an official of the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, had denied any involvement on Twitter, believing that it was “internal terrorism” due to rivalries within the Russian regime.
After the accusations against Mr. Navalny’s organization, his spokesperson, Kira Iarmych, denounced a set-up by the Kremlin.
« Alexei [Navalny] will soon be tried for extremism, he risks 35 years. And the Kremlin said to itself: it’s great for the sequel to be able to add “terrorism” to it, ”she wrote on Twitter.
Russia is cracking down mercilessly on critics of its government, especially those criticizing the military intervention in Ukraine.
According to the state news agency TASS, the young woman arrested on Monday was known to justice for having been imprisoned for ten days after demonstrating against the Russian offensive.
On Sunday, the blogger was killed in a cafe in Saint Petersburg where he was speaking at a conference of an organization called “Cyber Z Front” favorable to the operation of Russian forces in Ukraine.
According to a latest report, 32 other people were injured, eight of whom are in serious condition. The explosion was of a power equivalent to 200 grams of TNT.
The cafe belonged to the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The latter stressed Monday morning on Telegram that he had entrusted the establishment in question to the “Cyber Z Front”.
The attack is reminiscent of the one in which Daria Douguina, an ardent defender of the offensive against Ukraine and daughter of the ultranationalist author Alexander Dougin, died last August. Russia then accused kyiv despite its denials.
Kill “everyone”
Taking the opposite view of the authorities, Yevgeny Prigojine seemed to rule out that these assassinations were prepared by the Ukrainian secret services.
“I will not accuse the kyiv regime of these acts. I think a group of radicals are in action, ”he said on the Telegram channel of his press service.
The previous evening, he had paid tribute to the blogger in a video apparently filmed from the town of Bakhmout, the epicenter of the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The 40-year-old blogger killed on Sunday was from Donbass, an eastern Ukrainian region at the heart of the conflict.
Vladlen Tatarsky, who was regularly on the front on the Russian side, had more than half a million subscribers on his Telegram channel.
According to Russian media, he had been imprisoned in Ukraine for a robbery in 2011. In 2014, taking advantage of clashes sparked in eastern Ukraine by separatists led by Moscow, he escaped from prison to join these fighters .
In 2019, he left the separatist forces, according to the daily Kommersant, to make a name for himself as a blogger.
Last September, he shocked during a reception at the Kremlin celebrating the unilateral annexation of Ukrainian regions.
“We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will steal all the people we need, everything will be as we like”, he had dropped in front of the camera.