On Sunday, April 2, in an explosion in a cafe in the center of St. Petersburg, war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed, the Russian Interior Ministry reported. According to the governor of the city Alexander Beglov, as a result of the emergency, at least 25 people were also injured, most of them were hospitalized.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the explosion occurred at about 18:10 in the institution at 25 Universitetskaya Embankment.
"As a result of the incident, one person was killed, it turned out to be a war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky," the ministry said in a statement.
The leadership and a group of employees of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation went to the scene. Employees of the St. Petersburg police and emergency services also work there, all the circumstances of the emergency are being established.
The Investigative Committee announced the initiation of a criminal case, the course of its investigation was put under control in the Central Office of the IC. Investigators and criminologists of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for St. Petersburg also arrived at the scene.
"On the fact of murder in a generally dangerous way, a criminal case was initiated on the grounds of a crime provided for in Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation," the department said.
- vk.com
- © Vladlen Tatarsky
The explosion in the cafe occurred when the creative evening of Tatarsky was held in the institution. In the community that organized the event and rented the institution, a message later appeared regarding the emergency.
"There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures, but, unfortunately, they were not enough. We express our condolences to the families and friends of the victims. Special condolences to all who knew the excellent war correspondent and our good friend Vladlen Tatarsky," the recording says.
According to the source of RT, before entering the room there were no frames of metal detectors and mine detectors, the security did not check the personal belongings of visitors.
An eyewitness of the events in the St. Petersburg cafe Nikolai in a conversation with RT confirmed the information circulated in the media that shortly before the explosion Tatarsky was presented with a statuette. According to an eyewitness, during the dialogue between the military officer and the girl who presented the gift, Tatarsky said that he allegedly knew her.
The TASS news agency, citing a source, reported that law enforcement agencies are checking everyone present in the cafe at the time of the explosion and establishing who could have carried explosives with them.
Vladlen Tatarsky's real name is Maxim Fomin. He was born in Makiivka, Donetsk region, joined the militia in 2014, and later gained fame thanks to his coverage of the events in donbass. In the years that followed, he wrote several books, including War and Running.
After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, he continued to cover the course of events around the Donbass. He was present in the Kremlin on the day of the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the entry of new regions into Russia.
Military expert Boris Rozhin told RT that he spoke at Tatarsky's creative evening via video link. According to Rozhin, he personally knew the military commander since 2022.
"He himself participated in hostilities, conducted propaganda of unmanned aircraft, provided assistance to the front, agitated the rest to help. His activities benefited society and the state. Therefore, his popularity was absolutely deserved," he said.
The acting head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, called Tatarsky a great patriot of Donbass and Russia. As the head of the republic noted, Tatarsky "managed to fight, and in the status of a military officer to make his contribution."
"Killed meanly. Terrorists can't do it any other way. The Kiev regime is a terrorist regime. It is subject to destruction, it is impossible to stop it in any other way, "Pushilin wrote in Telegram. "A man with a difficult fate, Vladlen earned the respect of his associates, because he lived and worked for the sake of truth and justice, for the sake of victory."
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In turn, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova stated that Russian journalists on a regular basis experience threats of reprisals from the Kiev regime, which are increasingly being implemented.
"All this is happening with tacit ignoring by the relevant international structures, which is no longer possible not to interpret as conciliation, if not complicity," she said. "Not in any case of the violent death of a Russian journalist, which was assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a "success", neither Western countries, nor international organizations, nor foreign professional communities not only did not conduct investigations, but did not even show elementary human sympathy."
"It is thanks to the Russian military that the world sees truthful and operational personnel and learns information about what is happening in Ukraine. These are people who stand guard over the truth, which the world mainstream has already violated. Vladlen Tatarsky's professional activity and his service to the Fatherland aroused hatred among the Kiev regime. He was dangerous for them, but boldly went to the end, fulfilling his duty, "Zakharova emphasized.