Woman who gave bomb to blogger gets 27 years

Darya Trepova, 26, has been handed the longest sentence givem to a female defendant by a Russian court.

Darya Trepova at her verdict in Saint Petersburg on Thursday. Picture: AFP

A woman who handed a pro-Kremlin military blogger a golden statuette that killed him when it exploded in his hands has been jailed for 27 years, the longest sentence given to a female defendant by a Russian court.

Darya Trepova, 26, was arrested in April 2023 after presenting Vladlen Tatarsky with a bust of himself at an event in a cafe in St Petersburg in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It blew up moments later, killing Tatarsky and injuring more than 50 others.

Trepova, an art school graduate, claimed she was set up by a Russian opposition journalist and an unknown second person.

She told the court that she had been ordered to hand the bust to Tatarsky but she had believed it contained a hidden microphone that would be used to spy on him.

“I was sent to my death with a bomb. I brought the statuette (to the cafe), I did not support the ‘special military operation’ and I wanted to go to Ukraine,” she said.

“I was willing ... to risk my freedom to find out the truth, but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice other people’s lives.”

Tatarsky, one of a group of hardline military bloggers in Russia, was a convicted bank robber from eastern Ukraine who escaped prison in 2014 after the invasion. He gained notoriety after an online video in which he promised to “defeat everyone, kill everyone we need to, and rob, like we love doing!”

Igor Girkin is sentenced at Moscow City Court on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Investigators said the bombing was organised by Ukrainian intelligence with the help of exiled Russian opposition and that Trepova knew the bust contained explosives. Her lawyer, Daniil Berman, said he would appeal against the verdict. “If Tatarsky had not shielded her with his back, she would have suffered in the same way as the other victims there,” he said.

Trepova said she had been instructed to take the statuette to the cafe by Roman Popkov, a Russian journalist and former member of the outlawed National Bolshevik Party, and a person she knew only as “Gestalt”. Her husband, Dmitry Rylov, accused Popkov of using his wife as a “walking bomb”.

Kyiv has neither confirmed not denied its role in the blast. In a Telegram post, Popkov said Trepova was telling the truth but he would not reveal the details of the “operation” to kill Tatarsky until “evil” had been defeated in Russia. He called Trepova “the brightest thing that has appeared in Russia over the past 30 years”.

Her sentence came on the same day that a court in Moscow imprisoned Igor Girkin, a former Russian FSB officer who once commanded pro-Kremlin forces in eastern Ukraine, to four years on extremism charges.

Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was arrested last year after he called Vladimir Putin a “talentless coward” and said he would challenge him for the presidency.

He was found guilty in 2022 by a court in The Hague of shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison.

The Times