Russian military blogger killed in cafe explosion - suspects arrested

The prominent military blogger Wladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion in a café in Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg, on Sunday. According to regional governor Alexander Beglow, 25 other people were injured, 19 of them taken to a hospital. The 40-year-old journalist and blogger, who goes by the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarskij, from Donbass in eastern Ukraine, died instantly, the state agency Tass reports.

According to officially unconfirmed media reports, Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, had invited to a "patriotic evening" in the "Stritfud-Bar No.1" cafe in the center of Saint Petersburg on Sunday. According to media reports, this is said to have belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the notorious Wagner mercenary group.

According to the investigators' initial findings, the explosive device was built into a bust that was presented to Tatarsky as a gift at the meeting. The gift – eyewitnesses reported of a gilded bust of the blogger – was presented to him by a young woman, local media wrote. She then sat in one of the back rows of spectators, but disappeared after the explosion. The search for her was initially in full swing.

As the AP news agency reports, the woman was arrested on Monday night. According to reports, the suspect was asked by security guards to leave the room before the detonation. This is reported by the Russian news agency Interfax. A witness said that it had already been suspected that the supposed gift could be an explosive device. However, the woman joked with the military blogger on her way out and handed him the statuette. After he put them on a table, the explosion happened.

A Russian patriotic group that organized the event said it took security precautions that "unfortunately proved insufficient".

The blogger and war correspondent initially fought as an insurgent for the independence of Russian-controlled Donbass from 2014 before turning to journalism. In his blog, he distributed videos of what was happening at the front in Ukraine and most recently gave young Russian soldiers tips on how to behave in the front lines.