April 3 (UPI) -- Authorities investigating the bombing of a St. Petersburg cafe that killed Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and injured at least 30 others said Monday that they had made an arrest.
"Russian Investigative Committee officers in cooperation with operatives detained Darya Trepova on suspicion of her being behind the St. Petersburg cafe blast," a statement from the committee read.
Trepova, 26, was arrested following a raid on a flat in St. Petersburg on Sunday where her mother and sister were also interrogated, the state-run TASS news agency reported
Sunday evening's bomb blast at Streetfood-Bar No. 1 on Universitetskaya Embankment in central St. Petersburg came as the high-profile pro-Ukrainian war commentator, whose real name is Maksim Fomin, was giving a presentation to supporters.
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Trepova, who was reportedly detained last year for taking part in an anti-war protest, is suspected of handing Tatarsky a statuette packed with explosives, based on preliminary reports from videos circulating online.
Authorities shared video of Trepova being interrogated about the incident, possibly under duress, as she was asked if she knew why she was detained.
"I would say for being at the scene of Vladlen Tatarsky's murder ... I handed over the statuette which blew up," she replied.
When asked who gave her the statuette Trepova asked the interrogator "Can I tell you later please?"
The small device, containing about 7 ounces of TNT, detonated near the stage and investigators and crime scene units were still working at the scene, TASS said.
Tatarsky had carved out a place as one of the country's most prolific pro-Russia commentators on the country's invasion of Ukraine. He had more than 550,000 followers on the messaging app Telegram, where he was known to share his opinions and pro-war propaganda.
The cafe where Tatarsky died was reportedly once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, which has led much of the fighting in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Cyber Front Z, a group that dubs itself "Russia's information troops," said it had hired out the cafe for the evening.
"There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures but unfortunately, they were not enough," its post on Telegram said.
Mihailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speculated that Tatarsky's killing was a sign of infighting among pro-Russian entities.
"It begins in the Russian Federation... Spiders are eating each other in a jar," he tweeted.
"Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fighting was a matter of time, like the bursting of a ripe abscess. Irreversible processes and Troubles 2.0. await the Russian Federation. While we will watch."
