Russian war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has confirmed. The circumstances of the blast are being established.
Earlier, a source told Sputnik that the blast was thought to have been caused by an explosive device brought into the cafe by a female patron.
The emergency services told Sputnik that one person was killed and 19 injured in the explosion. Authorities said the blast was not followed by fire. The explosion caused extensive damage to the cafe.
Tatarsky, 40, was a well-known former military commander and a war correspondent with hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Russian social media. Born in Makeevka, Donetsk region to a family of coal miners in April 1982, Tatarsky, real name Maxim Fomin, took the pseudonym from a novel by popular Russian author Viktor Pelevin.
Tatarksy joined the Donbass People's Militia in the wake of the Maidan coup and attempts by the new authorities in Kiev to crush independence-seeking forces in Donetsk and Lugansk by force. He served in the DPR's Vityaz Regiment, in the reconnaissance company of the LPR's Fourth Brigade, and in the DPR's Vostok Battalion. He left the military in 2019, settling in Moscow. He returned to Donbass in February 2022 after Russia began its special military operation, making a series of reports from the front. Before the conflict began in 2014, Tatarsky worked for several years as a coal miner, eventually going into business as a furniture salesman. He got into trouble with the law after getting into debt with the bank, and a 2011 bank robbery landed him in prison. He escaped from jail and joined the militias in late summer of 2014, receiving a pardon from the late DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko. He later published a series of books, including "Running," an autobiography.