Darya Trepova was recruited via Telegram and promised Kyiv-based media editor position
Fontanka, a Russian media outlet, is reporting that Darya Trepova, who was detained after the killing of propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky, said during her interrogation that she had been promised the position of editor at a Ukrainian media outlet if she handed the bust to Tatarsky. Trepova insists that she did not know anything about the explosives.
Source: Fontanka
Details: Fontanka has become aware of the details of Trepova's interrogation.
Trepova said she had been reading Ukrainian Telegram channels and had met an activist.
She was offered the chance to relocate to Kyiv and work as an editor at a media outlet, but first she had to complete an "internship".
Her first assignment was to go to the Listva (Leaves) bookshop and meet the propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky there.
Trepova was given a "secret item" via a Moscow taxi driver. According to Fontanka, the taxi driver had no idea what he was doing.
The improvised explosive device was reportedly also ordered clandestinely. It was paid for, and the person who made the device forwarded it anonymously at the right time to the right intermediary.
After returning to St Petersburg, the woman received another assignment remotely – the meet-up with Tatarsky on the University Embankment.
With regard to the package she was told: hand over the bust and say something about the heroes of the Wagner Group, and we’ll do the rest.
A ticket from Pulkovo to Uzbekistan was purchased for Trepova, and she was promised safe passage from Central Asia to Ukraine.
Trepova says she did not know about the bomb – she only guessed that it was "something bad".
She had sat down very near the package containing the explosives and believes she was framed.
Background:
- On 2 April, an explosion occurred in a cafe in the centre of St Petersburg that had previously belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner Group Private Military Company, killing "war correspondent" (military blogger) Vladlen Tatarsky and injuring 30 other people.
- Russian security forces have detained Darya Trepova, a resident of St Petersburg, on suspicion of murdering propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky.
- The Russian occupiers have posted a video of the interrogation of Darya Trepova. The woman in the video admits to having brought a bust that subsequently exploded in the cafe, but said she would say who gave her the bust "later".
- Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War have suggested that forces inside Russia may have been involved in Tatarsky’s murder, and it could have been a "warning" meant for Prigozhin.
- Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee has accused the Ukrainian security services and supporters of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation of murdering collaborator and propagandist Maxim Fomin, aka Vladlen Tatarsky, who called himself a "war correspondent".
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