Russian Investigative Committee Monday said suspect in bomb blast admitted Monday that she was responsible fatal killer blast that happened inside a Saint Petersburg cafe

Pro-Putin war blogger Maxim Fomin, aka Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, was killed in the blast in Saint Petersburg on Sunday

Blast allegedly engineered by 26-year-old Russian woman killed Tatarsky by giving him the explosive-laden statuette

Daria Trepova, is seen in video pleading her innocence as she is filmed being interrogated while chained to a radiator

Trepova, 26, dubbed the ‘Statue assassin’, is accused of bringing explosives to a crowded cafe where war blogger Tatarsky was killed in an explosion

Moscow bombing suspect Daria Trepova, [photo], appeared in an interrogation video on Monday where she admitted taking the small statue to Kremlin propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky, before he was blown to pieces in the blast on Sunday

The Russian woman arrested on suspicion of assassinating one of Vladimir Putin’s propagandists in a bomb attack has today admitted she carried the statue laden with explosives into a cafe in Saint Petersburg – but insisted she had been ‘set up’.
Daria Trepova, 26, was filmed with her hands chained to a radiator while being interrogated by Russian investigators over the assassination of Kremlin propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky, 40. 
In the video, where Trepova kept looking away from the camera as she spoke, the anti-war activist admitted taking the statue to Tatarsky at the Street Food Bar No. 1 cafe before he was blown to pieces in Sunday’s blast.

Daria Trepova, is escorted inside the building of Russian Investigative Committee, in Saint Petersburg

Footage shows Daria Trepova with her hands chained to a radiator while being interrogated by Russian investigators in Sait petersburg over the assassination of Tatarsky

Trepova told the Russian investigators she would tell them who gave her the explosive-laden statuette ‘later’. It is not clear why Trepova was not in a cell when being questioned.
But Trepova, who had appeared in a video said to show her carrying the explosive-laden statuette into the cafe, had earlier insisted that she had been ‘set up’ and ‘was being used’ after she was arrested on suspicion of Tatarksy’s murder.
Tatarsky, a staunch supporter of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, had been speaking at a political event at the cafe when the bomb exploded next to him, killing the propagandist and injuring 32 others in what the Kremlin claimed was a ‘terrorist attack’. 

Authorities in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Monday announced that Daria Trepova [left], has admitted responsibility for bringing the rigged that statue that ki exploded and killed Vladlen Tatarsky, [right]. The explosion reportedly happened after she left the cafe 

A video shows a woman, Russian authorities believed is Daria Trepova, walking to the cafe carrying a box containing what may have been the statuette said to be filled with 450g of TNT 

Russia’s Investigative Committee today said they had detained Trepova in a rented flat in St Petersburg on suspicion of carrying out the assassination of Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin.
According to Russian media reports, police tracked Trepova down using surveillance cameras, though she reportedly cut her long blonde hair short to change her look and rented a different apartment in an apparent attempt to escape. 
In the interrogation video, Trepova said she understood why she has been detained. When asked why, she said: ‘For… I’d put it this way, for being at the assassination site of Vladlen Tatarsky.’ ‘I brought the statuette there that exploded,’ Trepova said.
When asked who gave her the statuette, she replied that she would say ‘later’. 

Vladlen Tatarsky, a staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, had been speaking at a political event at the cafe when the bomb exploded next to him, killing the propagandist and injuring 32 others

Russia’s top counter-terrorism agency had earlier claimed that Trepova had carried out the attack with the help of ‘Ukrainian special services’ and activists who are linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
It came after chilling video appeared to show Trepova, a St Petersburg resident who had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies, walking into the cafe carrying a box said to have contained the statuette that was filled with 450g of TNT, just minutes before the explosion.
The Russian Interior Ministry Monday morning put Trepova on Russia’s wanted list on suspicion of murdering Tatarsky after she fled from the scene. She was arrested within hours of the arrest warrant being released.

This Image from inside the cafe appear to show Trepova [circled], handing Tatarsky a bust of himself before she began walking back to her seat

Tatarsky is seen being handed a statuette believed to have been hiding the bomb that exploded at Street Food Bar No. 1

According to Russian media reports, Trepova told investigators that she was used as a carrier to deliver the explosive device, but didn’t know that it was hidden in the bust of the statuette.
Meanwhile, Trepova’s partner, Dmitry Rylov, also a member of the ‘so-called ‘Russian Liberation Army, insists that she had been ‘set up’.
Rylov, who had previously been detained at anti-war rallies in Russia, on Monday said: ‘I believe that my wife was set up. I am in full confidence that she would never be able to do something like that on her own volition.
‘Yes, with Daria we really do not support the war in Ukraine, but we believe that such actions are unacceptable,’ Rylov said.

Russian investigators are searching the cafe where a pro-Kremlin blogger who called for the destruction of Ukraine was ‘assassinated’ and 32 others were wounded in a bomb attack

An image shows Daria Trepova on Russia’s wanted list as published by the Interior Ministry. She was arrested hours later on suspicion of murder

Suspect Daria Trepova, with her partner Dmitry Rylov, who insisted that she had been ‘set up’

‘I am 100 per cent sure that she would never have agreed to such a thing if she had known.’
According to him, she ‘completely misunderstood the purpose’ of the statuette she gave to Tatarsky.
The plot thickened further after Russian investigators said they had identified a second female suspect, Maria Yaran, 40, as being involved in the blast.
Yaran is reportedly in hospital in St Petersburg following the bombing.

Russian investigators said they had identified a second female suspect, Maria Yaran, [photo], as being involved in the blast. She is reportedly in hospital in St. Petersburg following the bombing

Witnesses said that Trepova had used a false name of Nastya when she handed Tatarsky the statuette inside the cafe, and was then reluctant to get close to him when he asked her to sit next to him.
A witness said ‘Nastya’ told Tatarsky that she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb.
But Tatarsky joked and laughed with ‘Nastya’ and insisted on seeing the statuette. She then went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky.
The pair took the sculpture out of the box and put it down on a nearby table, and then continued his interaction with his seminar audience. An explosion followed that had people running in panic, some hurt by shattered glass and covered in blood. 
Images from inside the cafe appear to show Trepova handing Tatarsky a bust of himself before she began walking back to her seat.
‘Tatarsky stopped her, and asked her to sit next to him,’ a witness claimed, adding that she said she was shy and didn’t want to sit too close. 
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee claim the attack on Tatarsky was ‘planned by Ukrainian special services’ with the involvement of people who have cooperated with an anti-corruption foundation created by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
It noted that the arrested suspect was an ‘active supporter’ of Navalny’s group.
Izvestia reported that Trepova had a ticket for a flight from Pulkova airport in St Petersburg last night following the blast, but she did not show up for it, suggesting that she was headed for Georgia via Turkey.

Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky (pictured) was killed in a bomb blast in a cafe in St Petersburg on Sunday

Municipal workers clean an area near the site of an explosion at the cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Monday

Investigators swooped on Trepova’s apartment early Monday, missing her they arrested her mother. Trepova was taken into custody shortly after. 
Telegram channel VCK-OGPU reported it had access to Trepova’s private web exchanges with a friend in a secret web chat, that revealed that she returned to St Petersburg from Moscow late last week and intended to fly to the Georgia capital, Tbilisi, via Istanbul.
Trepova, a former shop worker in St Petersburg, reportedly had breakfast with her friend on Sunday.
After the explosion Trepova reportedly messaged her friend to say: ‘I could have died there, I’d rather have died there, I was set up.’
No one publicly claimed responsibility for the bombing, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately pointed a finger at Ukraine and compared the bombing to the killing last August of Darya Dugina, a nationalist TV commentator who was killed when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.
Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.
Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an ‘immortal’ hero who died to save the Russian people. 
Reacting to Tatarsky’s death, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said late Sunday his activities ‘have won him the hatred of the Kyiv regime’ and noted that he and other Russian military bloggers have long faced Ukrainian threats. 
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian millionaire owner of the Wagner Group military contractor spearheading Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the cafe and handed it over to a patriotic group for meetings. 
He said he doubts the Ukrainian authorities’ involvement in the bombing, saying the attack was likely launched by a ‘group of radicals’ unrelated to the government in Kyiv. 

A view of the scene of an explosion at the cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday 

Russian investigators work at the side of the St. Petersburg  explosion on Sunday night

The moment of the explosion that killed Kremlin top war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and wounded dozens of people

Tatarsky was killed in a blast at Street Food Bar No. 1, located in the St Petersburg city center, on Sunday

‘I have indeed passed the cafe to a patriotic movement called Cyber Front Z,’ he said. ‘They were doing various seminars there.
‘I think it was a group of [Ukrainian] right wing radicals who did it, which is unlikely to be linked to the government.’
A top Ukrainian government official cast the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal turmoil.
‘Spiders are eating each other in a jar,’ Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a Tweet.
‘Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.’