Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday posthumously honored Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed in a bomb attack in St Petersburg on Sunday.
The presidential decree awards Tatarsky the Order of Courage “for the courage shown in the performance of his professional duty”.
Vladlen Tatarsky, pseudonym of Maxim Fomin, died and ten others were seriously injured in the explosion of more than 200 grams of dynamite Sunday at a cafe owned by Yevgeny Prigojin, the head of the Wagner Group.
The explosive is said to be hidden in a bust that a woman gave to the ‘blogger’ and which was activated remotely.
“I transported the exploded figurine,” said the prime suspect, Daria Trepova, according to video of the interrogation released by the Interior Ministry after her arrest.
The attack on the pro-Russian “blogger” is reminiscent of the one that killed Daria Duguina in August, daughter of the leader of the neo-Euro-Asian movement Alexandr Dugin, who is considered close to the Kremlin.
On that occasion, Putin also posthumously awarded the murdered woman the Order of Valor.
Tatarsky, 40, was born in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and fought for Russian-speaking separatists against Kiev’s army in 2014.
The “blogger”, who had more than 560,000 subscribers to his Telegram channel, became known in September 2022 when in the Kremlin, after watching a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he assured: “We will beat them all [os ucranianos]kill them all, we’ll steal as many as we want”.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has so far led to the flight of more than 14.6 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 8.1 million to European countries – according to the latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
At least 18 million Ukrainians currently need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million people need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and Russia to impose political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented 8,451 dead civilians and 14,156 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are well below the real ones.
Source: DN
