Russia: twenty-eight years in prison requested for the accused of the murder of a blogger favorable to the offensive in Ukraine
The Russian prosecutor’s office requested on Friday twenty-eight years in prison against Daria Trepova, a 26-year-old young woman accused of the explosive murder, in April 2023, of a Russian nationalist blogger who covered the offensive in Ukraine.
“The prosecutor asked the court to recognize Mme Trepova guilty and sentence her to twenty-eight years of imprisonment in a penal colony”announces in a press release the press service of the courts of Saint Petersburg, where she is being tried.
This assassination, for which Moscow blamed Ukraine, caused a stir in Russia, particularly among the most fervent supporters of military intervention in neighboring Ukraine.
Blogger Vladlen Tatarski, whose real name is Maxime Fomin, was killed in April 2023 after accepting a booby-trapped statuette, in a Saint Petersburg cafe, from the hands of Daria Trepova, who was quickly arrested for “terrorism”. Around thirty people were injured in the explosion.
During her interrogation and trial, the young woman said she did not know that she was carrying a bomb, believing that she had been manipulated by a contact in Ukraine. Moscow quickly accused kyiv and “agents” of the imprisoned opponent Alexeï Navalny for being behind the operation.
“I want to apologize for what happened. I’m still ashamed”, she told judges this week, according to comments reported by Russian media. Mme Trepova said she acted at the request of a person in Ukraine whom she knew only as “Guechtalt”. According to her, he assured her that the statuette contained ” a mic “. The young woman said she accepted the mission because of her opposition to the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
kyiv has never confirmed its involvement in the assassination of Vladlen Tatarski and Ukrainian officials had considered that it was a settling of scores between Russian nationalists.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for multiple assassinations or attempted assassinations of personalities, such as the one which caused the death in August 2022 of Daria Dougina, daughter of the ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, or the one who seriously injured him in May 2023 the writer Zakhar Prilepin, a fervent supporter of the offensive in Ukraine.