A Russian court on Thursday sentenced a woman to 27 years in prison for delivering a bomb that killed an influential military blogger in a St. Petersburg cafe last year, a lengthy sentence that underscored the Kremlin’s efforts to deter violent opposition to its war in Ukraine.
The activist, Daria Trepova, 26, was convicted on charges of terrorism, illegal possession of explosives and document forgery.
She handed a statuette to the blogger, Maksim Fomin, who was known more popularly as Vladlen Tatarsky, as he gave a public talk in a cafe in April. Mr. Tatarsky was killed and others were injured at the event when a bomb inside the statuette exploded.
The prosecution had argued that Ms. Trepova knew about the explosive device in the statuette, which was in the blogger’s likeness.
While Ms. Trepova admitted bringing the statuette to the cafe, she told the court in St. Petersburg that she was just the messenger, according to Mediazona, a Russian news outlet. It reported that Ms. Trepova said she had been sent the statuette by a man from Ukraine who led her to believe it contained a listening and a tracking device.
“It is especially painful to me that a terrorist act was committed with my hands,” Ms. Trepova said in her final statement to the court, according to Mediazona, and asked for victims’ forgiveness.
A native of eastern Ukraine, Mr. Tatarsky was a leading member of a vocal and hawkish group of pro-invasion ultranationalist bloggers. While he had often criticized the way Russia’s military was prosecuting the war, he had not directly challenged the top brass or President Vladimir V. Putin.
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