Woman accused of assassinating pro-Putin blogger in cafe explosion denied bail
A Russian court on Monday rejected an appeal seeking bail for an accused female assassin charged in a bombing that killed a prominent pro-war Russian military blogger.
Prosecutors have accused 26-year-old Darya Trepova of bringing an explosive device concealed inside a statuette and presenting it to Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, during an event at a St. Petersburg café on April 2.
Russian authorities accused Trepova of working on behalf of a pro-Ukrainian group with ties to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny — claims rejected by both Navalny’s team and Kyiv — and charged her with terrorism.
On Monday, Moscow City Court rejected Trepova’s appeal against being held in pre-trial detention until at least June 2.
Trepova said she “madly” regretted what had happened and was “praying daily” for the health of the nearly 50 surviving victims of the blast, the TASS news agency reported from the court.
Trepova’s husband previously told independent Russian media outlets he believed she had been framed and had not known the bust that she delivered to the riverside café hosting Fomin’s talk contained a bomb.
Video clips showed Trepova carrying a cardboard box with the booby-trapped artwork into the café, and later gifting it to Fomin.
Footage shared by the Russian news site 112 earlier this month featured the woman having a verbal exchange with Fomin and trying to leave the café, before taking a seat away from the blogger and reacting as he examined the bust.
Trepova was swiftly arrested after the explosion, and Russia’s Interior Ministry later released a video in which she confessed to bringing the bust to the café.
Russian media reported that Trepova told investigators she was asked to deliver the statuette but claimed she didn’t know what was inside it.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that Trepova was a supporter of Navalny, and that the Kremlin critic’s top associates, Ivan Zhdanov and Leonid Volkov, have made repeated calls for a revolt in Russia.
Zhdanov has argued that authorities could try to use Fomin’s killing to extend Navalny’s 11-and-a-half-year prison term and to add the anti-corruption foundation he established to Russia’s list of terrorist organizations.
Earlier this month, the FSB alleged that a Ukrainian citizen identified as Yuriy Denysov had gathered information about Fomin and supplied Trepova with explosives through a courier service.
The FSB maintained that Denysov acted on orders from the Ukrainian security services and fled Russia the day after the bombing.
Fomin was an enthusiastic cheerleader for Russia’s war in Ukraine who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.
He had joined separatists in eastern Ukraine after a Moscow-backed insurgency erupted there in 2014 and fought on the front lines for years before turning to blogging.
With Post wires
