Daria Trepova was detained by Russian authorities on Monday for her alleged role in the murder of blogger Vladlen Tatarski in a bomb attack on a cafeteria in St. Petersburg on Sunday, which injured more than 30 people.

Trepova was detained by members of Russia’s Investigative Committee, according to the agency’s Telegram account, shortly after the Interior Ministry placed her on its wanted list as part of the investigation into the attack, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

There had been reports of the suspect’s arrest hours earlier, but authorities said Trepova’s mother and sister had been taken to a police station to testify, but there had been no confirmation of the arrest. Similarly, Interior Ministry sources stated that Trepova’s relatives “are not detained.” They are being questioned. We will make a decision on their position in the case based on the results of the interviews,” they stated.

The Russian healthcare ministry, for its part, has raised the total number of people injured in the explosion to 32, with ten of the victims in critical condition. Another 16 people are in fair condition, including a 14-year-old girl.

According to sources cited by the Russian news agency TASS, the blogger, whose real name is Maxim Fomin and was born in the Ukrainian region of Donbas (east), was participating in a “creative event” in the cafeteria when he was handed a figure concealing the explosive.
Tatarski is one of the bloggers with contacts in the Russian military who regularly criticize military officers, though rarely Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has recognized the importance of these propagandists, and the Kremlin has established a body to coordinate government relations with these content creators.

Similarly, he frequently traveled embedded with Russian forces in Ukraine and was a key figure in the official ceremony that marked the annexation of the Russian-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine in September. “We will defeat them all. We will eliminate them all. We’ll take what we need and make everything exactly how we want it,” he said.

Tatarski would also be the second pro-war figure to be assassinated on Russian soil, following the death in August of Daria Dugina, the grandchild of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Duguin, in a bomb attack.