ANALYSIS – Warning: false flag, Kremlin intrigue or something else? Russia's Investigative Committee – the country's top state criminal investigation agency – announced the arrest of a 26-year-old woman, Daria Trepova, for the assassination of the pro-war 40-year-old Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
The blogger was killed in a bomb blast at a St Petersburg café reportedly belonging to Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Tatarksy, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was one of Russia's most influential military bloggers and a “prominent figure” in the Russian pro-war information space. He had more than half a million followers on Telegram.
He was also linked to Prigozhin and the Wagner Group.
Investigators believe the bomb used to kill Tatarsky was hidden in a bust of the blogger that the suspect had jokingly given to him as a gift just before the explosion.
Thirty other people were also wounded in the blast, with 10 of them said to be in a critical condition.
The alleged bomber, Trepova was reportedly previously arrested for participating in anti-war rallies, but nothing in her background indicates a penchant for violence, much less an assassination using high explosives.
Her husband repeatedly stated she was incapable of committing murder and said outright he believed she was set up.
Dmitry Rylov told the Russian news site SVTV News that while his wife was against the war in Ukraine, “she would never kill”.
“I believe my wife was framed. I'm pretty sure she would never have been able to do something like that on her own,” he said.
Per standard Kremlin script, counter-terror officials in Russia declared the incident a terror attack planned by Ukrainian special services and involving “collaborators” from the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation.
According to these same Russian officials, Trepova was an “active supporter” of the Foundation, also known as ACF or FBK.
The organization was founded by Alexei Anatolievich Navalny, a prominent 46-year-old Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He has organized anti-government demonstrations and run for office on an anti-corruption platform.
Navalny was also mysteriously poisoned with novichok nerve agent in 2020, which he blamed on Putin, and imprisoned for alleged fraud and contempt of court once he returned to Russia after receiving treatment in Germany.
So, this could easily be a Kremlin intelligence operation using the young hapless woman to blame the imprisoned, but still popular, Navalny for a terror attack on Russian soil.
It could also reveal ‘further fractures' in the Kremlin's inner circle and be a direct message to Wagner's Prigozhin, a growing potential Putin rival.
Sky News reported:
In its latest update on the war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian Interior Ministry sources had revealed the country's special services had known about “assassination plans against Fomin for a long time”.
It added that Fomin was a “Wagner-affiliated convict who escaped from prison in Donetsk Oblast at the outset of Russia's invasion of Donbas in 2014”.
It said that his death is likely part of a “larger pattern of escalating Russian internal conflicts” involving Prigozhin and the Wagner Group.
“Fomin's assassination may have been intended as a warning to Prigozhin, who has been increasingly questioning core Kremlin talking points about the war in Ukraine and even obliquely signalling an interest in the Russian presidency, whether in competition with Putin or as his successor,” ISW said.
Whatever the true motivation for the assassination, and whoever is ultimately behind it, it is doubtful that the 26-year-old woman arrested for the bombing was anything more than a dupe or patsy.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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