Russia said it had arrested a woman suspected of carrying out the bombing that killed a prominent war blogger in a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday, as nationalist politicians and commentators accused Ukraine of being behind the crime and called for revenge.
The famous Russian war blogger, Maxim Fomin, who supported the Russian war on Ukraine, and who called himself Vladlin Tatarsky, was killed on Sunday, in what appears to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a person closely linked to the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s state news agency Tass said the woman arrested was Daria Trepova, a Russian citizen who had previously been arrested for protesting the war in Ukraine.
According to Sky News, Daria Trepova is 26 years old.
Investigators believe the bomb used to kill Tatarsky was hidden in a marble statue of the blogger’s head that the suspect gave him as a gift just before the explosion.
Some media reports indicated that Trepova may not have known that the statue contained an explosive device, and those who carried out the attack used it to hand him the statue.
The country’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee claims to be an “active supporter” of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, which was previously declared a “foreign agent” and banned in Russia.
Russian media reports said Trepova was found while hiding in an apartment owned by a friend of her husband’s in St. Petersburg and that she was planning to flee to Uzbekistan.