Woman Suspected Of Killing Pro-Kremlin Blogger Handed Final Charges

Darya Trepova attends a court hearing at the Basmanny district court in Moscow on April 4.

Russia's Investigative Committee has filed final charges against Darya Trepova, who is suspected of involvement in the April killing of Vladlen Tatarsky, the pen name of prominent pro-Kremlin blogger Maksim Fomin.

Media reports quoted Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin on July 25 as saying that the 26-year-old Trepova was charged with "a terrorist act with an organized group that caused intentional death."

Trepova was arrested after a blast in a restaurant in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, on April 2 killed Tatarsky. Dozens of others were wounded in the attack.

In May, Russia's Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen, Yuriy Denisov, saying that he was suspected of organizing the deadly attack.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said at the time that Denisov and Trepova had decided to assassinate Tatarsky and further tried to link the killing to associates of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

The FSB has not provided any evidence proving the allegations and Navalny's aides said the authorities were trying to link the anti-corruption crusader to the explosion to lay further criminal charges against him in the future.

Tatarsky was known for his support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and for Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

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 detention, the 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 answer the question "later."

Tatarsky's death marked the second assassination of a prominent advocate of Russia's war against Ukraine. In August 2022, 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 has denied involvement in Dugina's death.

With reporting by RIA Novosti