Political assassination is not something new in Russia. It’s the kind of place Russia is: corrupt, oppressive, treacherous, and murderously dangerous. It’s all Russians know. God could come out of a cloud and set them free from it all, but Russians wouldn’t know what to do with that freedom. Their only comfort seems to come from being under the thumb of tyranny of some sort: czarist, communist, or Putin’s klepto-totalitarianism.
Would Russian intelligence agency FSB ever be involved in blowing up an internet cafe, killing and wounding Russians in Russia? Is this the kind of ruthless subterfuge the successor of the KGB and NKVD could find itself involved with?
In a word, yes.
Very recently there was an explosion in an internet cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia, that county’s second-largest city. One person was killed and about a dozen others badly injured. The dead man was Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian military blogger who has amassed over 500,000 followers on his Telegram channel under the pen name of Maxim Fomin.
Russian authorities have quickly pointed to the Ukrainian intelligence agency as the culprit, although it’s not entirely sure why the Ukrainians would do this. But for me, the first suspect will be the FSB, every bit as cynical and ruthless as their forerunners. When I hear guys like Dmitry Peskov say that it’s things like this that make it so important for Russia to pursue its “special military operation” in Ukraine, then I immediately see a smoking gun and smell the gunpowder.
Tatarsky was pro-war but often critical of Russia’s military and of Vladimir Putin himself. He’s a fairly close associate of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries and seen to be a possible political rival to Putin. In fact, Prigozhin actually owns the cafe where the bomb went off, a nice little piece of coincidence. There was even speculation that Prigozhin himself was supposed to be at the cafe to listen to Tatarsky that day, but he wasn’t and, again, it’s speculation.
Tatarsky was gifted with a statue/bust of himself by a young woman, 26 year-old Darya Trepova. It was this gift that was packed with explosives, and it blew up as Tatarsky set it down on a table beside him after making a couple of jokes about it.
Trepova was quickly identified and arrested. She claims she was given the bust to present to Tatarsky, but wouldn’t immediately say from whom. She also just happens to be someone who was arrested last year for anti-war protests in Russia. She is also a big follower of Alexi Navalny, the imprisoned Russian dissident and rival to Putin.
Russian authorities have exploited the death as an example of why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place and use it as justification for continuing the war.
All I know is this.
The blown-up guy was a critic of the Russian military and of Vladimir Putin. Not only is he silenced now but the rest of the Russian milblogger space should read the writing on the wall when they see one of their own in pieces. The explosion happened at a place owned by Prigozhin, which gets some mud on him after his regular complaints and criticisms of his own against Putin. Hell, had Progozhin been there, and killed as well, that would have been pretty sweet for the Kremlin. And the cherry on top is Trepova, an anti-war activist and follower of Navalny being the “bomber.” Watch to see if Navalny somehow gets “sucked” into this and ends up sentenced to an even longer term in prison.
So, would the Russians blow up their own people to achieve the content of the previous paragraph? Yes they would. They have before, they did now, and they’ll do it again.
They’ll do it all day long if they feel they have to. It’s all they know.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 