In St. Petersburg, Russian prosecutors asked for a 28-year sentence on Friday for Darya Trepova, 26, accused of killing Vladlen Tatarsky, a prominent military blogger who regularly reported from the front lines in Ukraine.
Tatarsky was executed by a bomb hidden in a figurine that Trepova gave him at a cafe in St. Petersburg where he was giving a talk to an audience of up to 100 people in April last year.
The figurine was a crude likeness of Tatarsky, who accepted it as a gift.
What Happened In Court?
According to Reuters, witnesses told the court that he had jokingly called it "Golden Vladlen" and turned it over in his hands before it exploded, killing him on the spot and injuring dozens. At the last court hearing on Jan. 16, Trepova told the court that she had believed that the package she handed to him had contained a listening device, not a bomb and that she was acting under orders from a man in Ukraine whom she knew as "Gestalt" (German for "Shape"), who had been sending her money and instructions for several months before the killing.
In an article published by The Associated Press, Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, charged that a Ukrainian citizen identified as Yuriy Denysov had supplied Trepova with explosives through a courier service, acting on orders from the Ukrainian security services.
Russia accused Ukraine immediately after the attack of organizing Tatarsky's murder. Vladlen Tatarsky was the pen name of Maxim Fomin, who had hundreds of thousands of followers on his Telegram messaging app channel. He had joined separatists in eastern Ukraine after a Moscow-backed insurgency erupted there in 2014 and fought on the front lines for years before turning to blogging.
CBS News revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously bestowed a top award, the Order of Courage, on Tatarsky, citing his "courage and bravery shown during professional duty."
Prominent figures in Ukraine have also been targeted since the war began.
In November, officials said the wife of Ukraine's intelligence chief was diagnosed with heavy metals poisoning and was undergoing treatment in a hospital. Marianna Budanova is the wife of Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency known by its local acronym GUR. CBS News reported that officials had told Ukrainian media last year that Budanov had survived 10 assassination attempts carried out by the FSB.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also claimed to be targeted multiple times. In an interview with the British tabloid The Sun in November, Zelenskyy said that he's survived "no fewer" than five or six assassination attempts since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
Trepova will be sentenced at a future hearing.
