(Reuters) – A Russian court denied bail on Monday to a woman charged with terrorism over a bomb attack that killed a pro-war Russian military blogger earlier this month.
Prosecutors have accused Darya Trepova, 26, of killing blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, by presenting him with an explosive device concealed within a statuette at a public talk he was giving in a St. Petersburg cafe on April 2.
Investigators say she was working on behalf of a pro-Ukrainian group with connections to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny – claims rejected by Navalny’s associates and Kyiv – and charged her with terrorist offences.
A court in Moscow on Monday rejected Trepova’s appeal against being held in pre-trial detention until at least June 2. The appeal was largely procedural and did not concern the substance of the charges against her.
Trepova said she regretted what had happened and wished a speedy recovery to other victims, the TASS news agency reported from the court. More than 40 others were injured in the blast.
Trepova’s husband previously told independent Russian media outlets he believed she had been framed and had not known the statuette she had been told to deliver contained explosives.
Tatarsky was among the best-known of an influential group of bloggers who have surged to prominence since Russia invaded Ukraine. They have often been scathing in their criticism of Russia’s defence establishment and its conduct of the war, pushing for a more aggressive assault on Ukraine.
Last year, in a video shot at a ceremony in the Kremlin to mark Russia’s unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Tatarsky said Russia should “kill everyone” and “rob everyone” in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Trevelyan)
