WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Russian woman caught on video blowing up pro-Putin blogger gets record 27-year sentence
A female assassin caught on shocking video blowing up a pro-Putin war blogger in a crowded Russian café has been sentenced to a record 27 years in prison.
Russian Darya Trepova, 26, was slapped with the harshest sentence given to any woman in modern Russian history after being found guilty of terrorism, handling explosives and using forged documents to kill Vladlen Tatarsky.
She was captured on a now-viral video last April walking up to the blogger in a St. Petersburg café to give him a gilded bust of himself as he gave a talk on the war.
“Oh, what a handsome guy! Is that me?” exclaimed Tatarsky, 40, a popular military propagandist born Maxim Fomin.
He persuaded Trepova to stay, and she was seen holding her hands to her face just as the gift exploded, killing Tatarsky on the spot and leaving dozens injured.
The bomber maintained that she’d been set up, saying a shady Ukrainian handler who’d be sending her money and instructions for months had tricked her into thinking the bust only carried a listening device.
“I feel great pain and shame that my gullibility and my naivety led to such catastrophic consequences. I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she told the court earlier this week, saying she could have also been killed.
“I feel special pain and shame that a terrorist act was carried out by my own hands.”
The prosecution maintained that she had known about the bomb and “acted deliberately with the aim of destabilizing the Russian Federation and discrediting the special military operation,” the official name for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Russia swiftly blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies for orchestrating the death of Tatarsky, who was among the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee said the bombing was “planned by Ukrainian special services” and painted Trepova as an “active supporter” of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
After the bomb went off, Trepova said she had panicked. Instead of heading straight to the airport to get on a flight, as instructed by her Ukrainian handler, she called her husband, who asked a friend to let her spend the night at his apartment.
Trepova was arrested the following day and confessed to bringing the bust to Tatarsky.
Dmitry Kasintsev, 27, the friend who briefly sheltered Trepova, was sentenced Thursday to one year and nine months for his role in the ordeal — despite testimony that he had nothing to do with the bomb.
With Post wires
