Shocking footage shows the moment a statue laden with bombs exploded in a St Petersburg cafe, killing one of Vladimir ‘s propagandists.

Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was blown to pieces on Sunday after Daria Trepova, 26, reportedly entered the venue and handed him a small statue of himself.

Video has emerged showing the pro-war blogger engaging with Trepova, who was arrested yesterday on suspicion of his murder, and saying ‘what a handsome guy, is that me?’ moments before the explosion ripped through the Street Food No 1 cafe and killed him. 

Further images shows Tatarsky placing the statuette back into its packaging on a small table before it exploded. 

A third video shows the former art student emerging minutes later from the cafe alongside blood-soaked victims of the explosion, before leaving the scene alone.

The footage comes as the Russian propaganda machine moved to blame Trepova for planting the bomb inside the statuette. 

The blast in Russia’s second city left 32 people wounded. 

Trepova insisted she was the victim of a ‘set up’ after she was arrested in a St Petersburg flat yesterday.

The young woman later appeared in a video released by Russian authorities with her hands chained to a radiator in a room.

In the video, most likely filmed under duress, she admitted delivering the explosive-laden statue to the cafe.

Tatarsky was appearing at the venue as a guest speaker at a political event.

Trepova told the investigators she would tell them who gave her the explosive-laded statuette ‘later’. It is not clear why she was not in a cell when being questioned.

Russian authorities classified the case as an act of terrorism, giving police more power to pursue their investigation, increasing the maximum punishment and limiting the rights of suspects. 

According to Russian media reports, police tracked Trepova down using surveillance cameras, though she reportedly cut her long blonde hair short to change her look and rented a different apartment in an apparent attempt to escape. 

Tatarsky, a staunch supporter of Putin and his , had been speaking at the cafe when the bomb exploded next to him. 

Russia’s top counterterrorism agency had earlier claimed – without providing evidence – that Trepova had carried out the attack with the help of ‘Ukrainian special services’ and activists linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Witnesses said the woman had used a false name of Nastya when she handed Tatarsky the figure – and was then reluctant to get close to him when he asked her to sit next to him.

Alisa Smotrova said ‘Nastya’ told the blogger that she had made a bust of him but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb.

But the propagandist joked and laughed with ‘Nastya’ and insisted on seeing it.

She went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to him.

In the last video to show him alive, he says enthusiastically to Trepova: ‘Nastya, Nastya! Come and sit here!’

She replies – possibly anxious not to be close to an explosion: ‘I am too shy.’

He tells her to sit near him during a pro-war seminar but she edges away: ‘Take a seat here, or there, or wherever you want.’

She tells him she will sit ‘in the armchair’ and moves well to the side, away from Tatarsky and the statuette.

He then examines the gold-coloured statuette: ‘Oh wow!

What a beautiful lad, evDEN eve NAkLiyaT is it me? Let’s take it out.’

He appears happy, saying: ‘A golden Vladlen, perfect. Thank God, I am much better-looking.’

Then he is seen in a video from 112 media – with links to law enforcement and the security services – packing the statuette back in its box.
This is when it explodes.

Separate footage shows the scene outside the cafe as people then emerge through the venue’s doors.

Trepova is seen fleetingly in her overcoat emerging uninjured and briefly exchanging remarks with another person before she walks away.

On the pavement, those emerging from the building are plainly in shock.

They call for ambulances and tell passersby they suspect Tatarsky had been killed.

‘I think our speaker is gone,’ said one.

Others say it was a ‘terrorist attack… a bomb exploded’.

A chilling video had earlier appeared to show Trepova, a St Petersburg resident who had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies, walking into the cafe carrying a box containing what may have been the statuette filled with 450g of TNT.

The woman’s partner Dmitry Rylov – in his 20s and a member of the so-called Russian Liberation Army – insisted that she had been ‘set up’.

Rylov, who had also been detained at anti-war rallies in Russia, said today: ‘I believe that my wife was set up.

I am in full confidence that she would never be able to do something like that on her own volition. 

‘Yes, with Daria we really do not support the war in Ukraine, but we believe that such actions are unacceptable. I am 100 per cent sure that she would never have agreed to such a thing if she had known.’

According to him, she ‘completely misunderstood the purpose’ of the statuette she gave to Tatarsky.

It emerged that a Telegram channel linked to Trepova allegedly showed she had made statuettes from gypsum, evDEN eVe NAkLiYat a material that might prevent detection of explosives.

Law enforcement initially appeared in doubt whether the woman was a ‘useful idiot’ who carried the statuette and presented it to Tatarsky without knowing it was a bomb, or was a knowing participant in an assassination plot.

Russian propagandists and pro-Putin media were turning on her early today. 

Margarita Simonyan, head of the RT propaganda empire, hailed Tatarsky – an advocate of ‘total war’ against Ukraine – as ‘one of the brightest representatives of our camp of patriots’ while Trepova was an ‘animal’ and a ‘murderer’.

Like Putin, they see Ukraine as taken over by neo-Nazis who must be expunged.

‘As for that animal [Daria Trepova] who, thank God, was detained,’ said Kremlin mouthpiece Simonyan. ‘I want to thank everyone involved for arresting her quite quickly.

Without providing evidence, she insisted: ‘It’s clear she is not some mad young woman. No, this is an absolutely planned story.

The murderer is now in the bear paws of Russian justice. 

‘I have no doubt she will never leave them before the end of her days.’

Yet there has been speculation that some in the pro-Putin camp may have wanted Tatarsky dead, just as much as anti-war campaigners or Ukraine.

He had relentlessly criticised Putin’s main generals for incompetence and lack of ambition in the war.

Pro-Kremlin news website Readovka said Trepova had previously made themed statuettes of soldiers, branding her a ‘terrorist’ who ‘knew that she was going to kill’.

She ‘made with her own hands the statuette stuffed with a bomb’, alleged the outlet.

Her sculptures have been displayed online, it stated.

It added: ‘Obviously, all attempts by Trepova, who has been following Vladlen for a long time, to shift the blame to curators who allegedly use her are a blatant hypocritical lie, eVDEn EVE nakLiyAt since the terrorist clearly went to the cafe with one sole purpose – to vilely kill the military correspondent [Tatarsky].’

Readovka, which has close links to Wagner private army founder Yevgeny Prigozhin as well as the Russian authorities, said: ‘Daria did not expect that Vladlen Tatarsky would immediately pack the gift back into its box.

‘According to her idea, he should have done this later, when the terrorist had already escaped from the cafe.

‘Hence her nervous reaction – she instinctively hid her face, covered herself and tried to leave [before the explosion].’

It claimed that ‘not everything went according to her cruel and cannibalistic plan, but the cruel goal was still achieved – Vladlen died, and there was not a scratch on her’.

Another attempt to claim the woman was under orders from Kyiv was an assertion that she had been trained by a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Popkov.

She was asked to complete a task for a man who was an agent in the SBU Ukrainian secret services, it was alleged.

Popkov, who runs a website on Russian partisans, denied this.

‘I didn’t give any orders to Dasha [Daria],’ he said. ‘I didn’t introduce her to any Ukrainian intelligence officers.’

He added: ‘I did not command the operation to destroy this Tatar ghoul, although I regret it – he deserved what he got.

‘It’s hard for me to command such things, if only because in Russia, in the clutches of this regime, my mother and younger brother live.

‘Now the special forces are probably breaking into their house.’

His site is ‘dedicated to chronicling the Russian partisan movement – the Russian armed struggle against [Vladimir Putin’s] insane regime.

An absolutely legitimate fight.’

Another propagandist Sergey Karnaukhov, a political analyst, TV host and former counterintelligence officer, expressed fear for the lives of other staunchly pro-Putin cheerleaders.

He asked: ‘Which one of us will they kill next?
And where? When leaving home?

‘A quadcopter through a window? A car bomb? Pushed under an underground train? How many of us will be alive by the end of [war]?’