MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian state prosecutor on Friday asked a court to jail Darya Trepova, a woman accused of killing a prominent military blogger by blowing him up at Ukraine’s behest, to 28 years in jail, the RIA news agency reported.
Pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed by a bomb hidden in a figurine that Trepova, 26, 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. Witnesses told the court that he had jokingly called it “Golden Vladlen” and turned it over in his hands before it had 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.
Trepova said 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.
Russia accused Ukraine immediately after the attack of organising Tatarsky’s murder. Senior Ukrainian officials have neither claimed responsibility nor denied involvement, with presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak describing it as “internal terrorism”.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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