Many people would probably want to kill Vladlen Tatarsky, the pro-war Russian blogger who died in a bomb blast at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was known for his vehement support for the invasion of Ukraine, where he regularly called for Russia to engage in total war and advocated extreme violence, including war crimes. “We will beat everyone, kill everyone, rob whoever we need and everything will be just the way we like it,” he told a camera last year after a Kremlin ceremony confirming the “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions.
A former miner from eastern Ukraine, Fomin was convicted of bank robbery and was serving a prison sentence in eastern Ukraine when Russian proxy forces launched a war against the government. Fomin claims he then escaped from custody and joined Russian-backed forces. He later became a blogger and moved to Moscow a few years before Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022. After the war began, he claimed to have joined a volunteer battalion and fought in Mariupol.
Early in the war, he became a member of a small but influential group of war bloggers who vocally supported the conflict, regularly posting updates citing front-line troops or dangling scoops about potential offensives or major political decisions such as mobilizations.
At the same time, they were also some of the fiercest critics of Russia’s war effort, condemning the army’s high command as inefficient and lazy and uncaring for the lives of Russian soldiers sent into battle.
Their Telegram posts have become a popular alternative to state media. Claiming to provide unfiltered news from the front lines, they often presented the equally aggressive version that told Russians the country was too volatile and should mobilize for all-out war against Ukraine and the West.
In particular, Tatarsky has repeatedly called on the generals to take responsibility: for large retreats from cities, including Kherson last year, or ineffective efforts to train and equip mobilized soldiers. He had joined other critics of the military leadership, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Putin ally who founded the Wagner paramilitary group.
“What are we shedding our blood for? Why can Zelensky safely come to Kherson?” Tatarsky asks in a video post last year, calling for an assassination attempt on the Ukrainian president after Russia’s retreat. “Either we’re going to have an all-out war or…we’re not going to make it.”
Among the small community of pro-military bloggers, Tatarsky was accused of exaggerating his military service. He had feuded with Igor Girkin, a former leader of the Russian-backed militia who was also critical of the war effort.
Most importantly, he was a classic soft target – someone who was the visible face of the war and yet lacked the protection of a civil servant or army personnel. The event he spoke at was widely publicized and the woman accused of bringing the bomb to the event was even reported to have joked with him about whether she was carrying an explosive device hidden in a soldier’s bust. Soon after, it was the statue that blew up.
“Events have shown how vulnerable these active supporters of war are,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R Politik, a political analysis firm. “I don’t think there will be a massive reaction from the government: as experience shows, the Kremlin will try to make these situations routine.”
“We are facing the routinization of terrorist attacks, which will undoubtedly become one of the factors leading to internal political destabilization,” she added.
Analysis by Andrew Roth for The Guardian.
