MOSCOW -- The Moscow City Court has rejected an appeal filed by Darya Trepova against her pretrial detention for her alleged role in the assassination of a prominent Russian war blogger at a St. Petersburg cafe earlier this month.
The hearing on April 24 was held behind closed doors, as according to the court, the materials of the case include classified data.
Trepova's defense team requested their client be released to house arrest.
The 26-year-old Trepova was arrested and is being held at a detention center for at least two months on a charge of committing "a terrorist act with an organized group that caused intentional death" shortly after a blast in St. Petersburg on April 2 killed Vladlen Tatarsky, the pen name of prominent blogger Maksim Fomin. Dozens of others were wounded in the attack.
Tatarsky was known for his support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and support for Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
Investigators say Trepova was working on the instructions of people representing Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February 2022, sparking a war that has killed thousands.
Russian media have said that Tatarsky was meeting with attendees when a woman presented him with a box containing a small bust of him that apparently exploded.
Following her arrest, Russia's Interior Ministry posted a video of Trepova, who may have been speaking under duress, telling an interrogator that she "brought the statuette there that exploded." When asked who had given her the bust, she replied that she would say "later."
Tatarsky's death marks the second assassination of a prominent advocate of Russia's war against Ukraine. In August, nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina was killed in a car bombing near Moscow.
Russian authorities blamed Ukrainian military intelligence for the death of Dugina, whose father is well-known Russian war supporter and idealogue Aleksandr Dugin. Kyiv denied involvement in Dugina's death.