Russian authorities on Monday blamed Ukrainian intelligence for the cafe bombing that killed Russian military blogger and war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky in St. Petersburg.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee claimed the attack was “plotted by Ukrainian special services” and also involved members of a foundation started by Alexey Navalny, a jailed Russian opposition figure.
According to The Associated Press, Ukrainian officials have not responded directly to the accusation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday brushed questions about the bombing, saying he didn’t think about what happens inside Russia.
“I don’t think about what is happening in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Russia should think about this. I am thinking about our country,” Zelensky said.
Russian officials say Tatarsky was killed by an explosive that was placed inside a figurine that was handed to him by Darya Trepov, a 26-year-old Russian woman who has been detained on suspicion of being involved in the murder. According to Russian media, Trepov admitted to handing Tatarsky the figurine but said she didn’t know it was explosive, and she hasn’t said who gave her the figure.
Tatarsky’s killing was the second high-profile assassination inside Russia since the invasion was launched last year. In August 2022, Darya Dugina, the daughter of the prominent Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow. The New York Times later reported that the US believes the Ukrainian government was behind Dugina’s killing, although Kyiv officially denies involvement.
While possible, seems like a waste of precious resources. Those guys have more important things to do. He probably didn’t kill himself though
Navalny is a known Terrorist Ultra Nationalist Terrorist.
Anyone from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine against the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policies is labeled a terrorist, traitor, neo nazi, and the list goes on.
The West has been bastardizing that term for decades.
And I guess it was Russia’s time to continue the bastardizing and take it to the next level of ridiculous.
Lower level and still novices at it. We set the standard.
Vladlen Tatarsky was not a journalist – he was a military blogger and a former coal miner and furniture salesman, convicted of a bank robbery in 2014 and escaped shortly after Kremlin backed separatists sized control of large parts of the Donbas.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/who-was-vladlen-tatarsky-russian-blogger-2023-89jjrm5sc
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-do-we-know-about-russian-blogger-tatarsky-bomb-that-killed-him-2023-04-03/
He has been saying stuff like:
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1575931295854919680
And he has claimed to be fighting in the Ukraine in 2022:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/killed-russian-blogger-vladlen-tatarsky-soft-target-many-enemies
In other words Vladlen Tatarsky was not an innocent civilian journalist but a propagandist and actual combatant at least according to himself.
Does that make him a legitimate target – maybe not, but we are at the very least approaching a gray zone.
Nothing you cite supports your claim that he was “not a journalist.”
If a reporter for the New York Times turns out to have had other jobs previously, and to have been cited for public urination, does that make him “not a journalist?”
I guess you are right – though I have searched in vain for his accreditation – so really blogger is more appropriate – but as journalist is not a protected title I’ll concede the point he could call himself a journalist – can you find any evidence that he ever worked as such for anyone but himself?
I’ve worked in journalism for 44 years — since I started writing club notices for my local daily newspaper — and for much if not most of that time I’ve not been “accredited” in the sense of being affiliated with a particular newspaper or magazine. I did request (and receive) press credentials a few years back from CounterPunch for a particular event where it seemed like there might be access issues, but I’m about 99% freelance. And I’m a Marine infantry veteran. Does that mean it’s OK to murder me at Starbucks?
Arguing from the case that it was the Iraq war you participated in (if not replace with the correct country.
If your nation is still at war with Iraq and you are engaged in promoting that war as best you can, I’d argue that you would indeed be very close to if perhaps not actually a legitimate target.
You may better appreciate the position if I put it in a slightly different way:
Vladlen Tatarsky went to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians – he has stated that he believes that any Ukrainian resisting the Russian forces were as he saw it legitimate targets.
Claiming that there is some specific violation of the rules of war because someone did to him what he did to Ukrainians, just because he now makes a living from promoting the war is in my opinion to give all soldiers of the more powerful nations protection from the weaker nation striking back – all they need to do is to post on a blog.
The notion that he was a veteran is not well substantiated, as in there is not much proof that he would not have returned to fight again later. Had the Vietnamese been able to kill US soldiers still engaged in promoting the Vietnam war, when they had finished a tour and were potentially just at home between deployments – would you have called it a war crime?
My war was the 1991 Gulf War.
“Had the Vietnamese been able to kill US soldiers still engaged in promoting the Vietnam war, when they had finished a tour and were potentially just at home between deployments – would you have called it a war crime?”
I wouldn’t have called it a war crime unless it was carried out by troops. We don’t know who killed Tatarsky (if I had to bet, I’d bet the killer’s initials were “FSB”). I’d have just called it a crime, period. The guy was supposedly killed for his opinions, full stop.
On this we can agree – it is ‘just’ a crime – what I spoke out against was the notion that it was somehow a larger part of trying to silence Russian journalists.
Well, like I said — if I was absolutely forced to lay a bet on who killed him, I’d bet on the FSB, because he’s more useful to the Russian regime as a dead martyr than as a living monster (they managed to try to blame both Zelenskyy AND Navalny, a twofer!).
But I wouldn’t be especially confident in that bet. I’d say maybe a 30% chance. Which is 25% greater than the chance that it was an operation planned in and ordered from Kyiv. There seem to be a number of both pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin groups operating inside Russia. They seem to be getting increasingly violent and they probably operate relatively independently.
Same logic would justify assassination of all Zionists.
If they have travelled into the Palestinian territories to kill Palestinians sure.
Or to put it in a different way – you do not get to go to an other country and take part in a war and then to go home and claim that you are a sacred journalist which may not be killed when they decide to try to kill you.
So all military veterans are subject to assassination if they engage in journalism?
Again, Zionists.
???
Are you paid for this?
No, are you?
They are there – the Settlers.
Even more reason they should not be thought of as innocent victims.
More “terrorism” by Ukraine.
Terrorism. It is to be denounced anywhere it happens. This cannot be justified or excused, and ignoring it as “I don’t care” is not acceptable.
Even blowing up a natural gas pipeline is a crime!
“Russia Blames Ukrainian Intelligence for Bombing That Killed Russian Journalist When asked about the incident, Zelensky said he doesn’t ‘think about what is happening’ inside Russia ”
None of us think or care about Zelensky’s well being!
The amount of money he has extracted from America is shameful as are the kleptokrat politicians who gave him the handouts.
Just like the former Prime Minister of Finland who brought NATO to her country, now she has all the time in the world to go to night clubs.
Looks like the voters in Finland didn’t care for her globalism, WEF, and NATO beguilement.
Zelensky will be out of office soon enough!
They are both smitten school girls! One killed off a whole generation of Ukrainians and the other took herself out of politics.
Simply just wrong the PM’s party got more votes in this election than in the last it is no longer the largest party because the voters in general moved further to the right – and that was voters opting for primarily a party which has advocated joining NATO for about 15 years.
But never let facts or informing yourself stand in the way of your desired narrative. Links to the pertinent sources can be found in my earlier answers to Renata Littlejohn on the page Turkey’s Parliament Ratifies Finland’s NATO Membership – use this link to get to the specific comment: https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/30/turkeys-parliament-ratifies-finlands-nato-membership/#comment-6153074514
ешь дерьмо и умри
Good of you to admit that you’ve completely lost here – which is what being reduced to this kind of low brow ad-hominem is!
Not really Mr. Troll. You passed the test. You and your MI6 buddies understand Russian language.
You just outed yourself!
Have you heard of google translate?
Going by your tacit admission that you have not, you have just outed yourself seeing as you can write Russian – are we really to go by this kind of childish feeble attempts at logic?
The fact that they go after political/ideological civilian targets rather than military/strategic/government figures is a clear sign that they don’t have a plan or strategy to end the war.
Except that it’s probably not a fact.
Two high profile ideological killings, deep in Russia.
My assumption is that by “they” you mean “the Ukrainian regime.”
When it comes to actually verifiable, publicly disclosed evidence that the Ukrainian regime ordered and carried out the two killings, we have:
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Is it possible that the killings were actual, official Ukraine regime operations? Sure. But not very likely.
The way that the pro Ukrainian side has conducted itself the last be 14 months has shown a strong need for publicly visible wins, as opposed to realistic strategies to defeat Russia. Assassination of ideological figures in Russia fits that template.
Update – it looks like the writers at Bellingcat think both attacks were done by Ukrainian militants. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/04/03/bellingcat-terror-attack-st-petersburg-cafe/
The article you link to has the Bellingcat guy thinking it was “either a legitimate Ukrainian operation carried out in the context of ‘hybrid warfare,’ or a potential Russian false flag.”
Personally I’d rank the likelihoods from most to least as:
1) FSB operation;
2) independent operation by either Ukrainian or Russian resistance group;
3) Ukrainian regime operation
But that ranking is based on history and cui bono calculation, not evidence.
The trouble with claiming it’s a false flag is the fact that the pro Ukrainian side can’t bring themselves to condemn it. Ever heard of the law of the merited impossibility? “It’s impossible that Ukraine killed this journalist, and boy did he deserve it”.
Compare and contrast to how bin Laden condemned the 9/11 attacks for killing civilians. When the pro-Ukrainian side can’t bring themselves to condemn the killing of a journalist, how can you take their denials seriously? It’s contemptible.
I didn’t claim it was a “false flag.” I just classified that as the most likely possibility.
I also didn’t say it was impossible that the Ukrainian regime planned/ordered the killing. I just classified that as the least likely possibility.
It is entirely possible for the death of a person to be desirable for different reasons to conflicting parties.
Why would it be desirable for the FSB to take out a Russian mil-blogger? I can think of at least two reasons.
One is that they can blame it on Ukrainian terrorists and drum up panic with it.
Another is that over time the Russian regime has had a certain amount of trouble with mil-bloggers going somewhat rogue and complaining about this, that, or the other (e.g. insufficient commitment of resources to the war, etc.). Killing one or three will likely shut up a few of them entirely, and make the others consider watching their step a bit.
The supposed motive of the fsb is speculative. The pro Ukraine factions being positive about the killings is a fact. The law of the merited impossibility is water tight.
The “law of the merited possibility” doesn’t seem to be a law. Rather, it seems to be a dumb as a box of rocks heuristic that produces zero valuable output.
We don’t know who killed the guy. We just know that several groups might have had reason to. And that the Ukrainian regime’s reasons were the weakest, most trivial, and least likely to be acted upon.
To the contrary, the law of the merited impossibility is a very useful heuristic for identifying ideological hypocrisy, where an obvious truth is denied because it is inconvenient, whilst simultaneously being praised in a manner resonant with Orwellian double speak.
We don’t know that multiple groups had reason to kill these victims, that’s merely hypothesised. The pertinent fact is that only one group celebrated the killings, and that is the pro-Ukraine side.