(Moscow) Russian prosecutors on Friday requested 28 years in prison for Daria Trepova, a 26-year-old woman accused of the explosive murder in April 2023 of a Russian nationalist blogger specializing in the assault on Ukraine.
“The prosecutor asked the Court to recognize Mme Trepova guilty and to sentence her to 28 years of imprisonment in a penal colony,” the press service of the St. Petersburg courts where she is being tried said in a statement.
This assassination, orchestrated according to Moscow by Ukraine, caused a stir in Russia, particularly among the most fervent supporters of military intervention in neighboring Ukraine.
The blogger Vladlen Tatarskiï, whose real name is Maxime Fomin, was killed in April 2023 after accepting a booby-trapped statuette, in a Saint Petersburg cafe, from the hands of Daria Trepova, who was quickly arrested for “terrorism” and placed in prison.
Around thirty people were injured in the explosion.
During her interrogation and her trial, the young woman always assured that she did not know that she was carrying a bomb, believing that she had been manipulated by a contact in Ukraine.
She claimed to believe that the statuette contained a listening device, while the Russian prosecutor’s office considers that the accused knew perfectly well that she was carrying a booby-trapped object.
“I want to apologize for what happened, I am still ashamed,” she declared this week in front of the judges, quoted by Russian media.
Moscow quickly accused Kyiv and “agents” of imprisoned opponent Alexeï Navalny of being behind the operation.
Mme Trepova said she acted at the request of a person in Ukraine whom she only knew as “Guechtalt” and that the latter assured her that the booby-trapped statuette contained “a microphone.”
Multiple assassinations
The young woman said she accepted the mission because of her opposition to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, which the victim supported and covered on social media.
President Vladimir Putin had more generally pointed out the supposed role of Western secret services in attacks described as “terrorist” on Russian soil.
He also decorated Tatarskii posthumously, awarding him the “Order of Courage”.
Kyiv, for its part, has never confirmed its involvement in the assassination of Vladlen Tatarskiï and Ukrainian officials had considered that it was an internal settling of scores within Russian nationalist circles.
In almost two years of conflict, Ukraine has been accused by Moscow of multiple assassinations or attempted assassinations of personalities, such as the one which caused the death in August 2022 in the explosion of his car of Daria Douguina, daughter of the ultranationalist ideologue Alexandre Dugin, or the one who seriously injured in May 2023 the writer Zakhar Prilepin, fervent support of the assault in Ukraine.