Russian war correspondent killed in explosion at St Petersburg cafe

Saint Petersburg [Russia], April 3 : A Russian war correspondent, who is also a blogger, was killed in an explosion at the country's second-largest city of Saint Petersburg, Interior Ministry confirmed, TASS News Agency reported.

The ministry's press centre said, "At 6:13 p.m. on April 2, 2023, the police received information about a blast in Universitetsjaya Embankment 25. As a result, one person was killed. It was war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky. Sixteen people were wounded."

Vladlen Tatarsky was widely known at the beginning of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine as he used to post daily videos titled Vecherny Vladlen. In the videos, he used to analyze the course of the operation and advised the mobilized.

Apart from that, he shot a video from the event in the Kremlin when Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech on the accession of the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics (LPR and DPR), the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to Russia, according to TASS agency.

In the latest development of the attack, a spokesman for the law enforcement agencies said that the explosive device that went off in a cafe was stuffed with striking elements, the blast targeted war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky.

"The makeshift explosive device that went off in a St. Petersburg cafe was stuffed with striking elements. The target was war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky," the spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, the explosive device of about a soap bar size was hidden in a figurine that was presented to Tatarsky, as per the report in TASS agency.

A blast occurred in Streetfood-bar No1 on Universitetskaya Embankment in central St. Petersburg on Sunday evening. One person - war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky - died, and sixteen more were wounded. According to preliminary data, the explosive device with a yield of more than 200 grams of TNT went off near the stage where Tatarsky was holding an event.