ST. PETERSBURG. Jan 25 (Interfax) - The Second Western District Military Court ruled on Thursday to find Darya Trepova (on the Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service's list of terrorists and extremists) guilty in a blast at a St. Petersburg cafe, which killed military blogger Maxim Fomin, a.k.a. Vladlen Tatarsky, in April 2023.
The court ordered "a cumulative sentence of 27 years in a general security penitentiary and a fine of 600,000 rubles for the totality of crimes committed," Judge Timur Zhidkov said in pronouncing the ruling on Thursday.
The court also found Dmitry Kasintsev guilty of providing cover for Darya Trepova and sentenced him to "one year and nine months in a general security penitentiary," Judge Zhidkov said.
Trepova was found guilty of "an act of terrorism," "illegally handling explosive devices," and the "use of a knowingly false document with the aim of concealing another crime."
The investigation and the court concluded that Trepova handed Fomin an improvised bomb camouflaged as a plaster bust at a cafe on St. Petersburg's Universitetskaya Embankment on April 2, 2023. He died in the explosion, another 52 people were injured, and the cafe owner incurred significant material damage.
According to the Investigative Committee, the attack had been prepared in Ukraine over a long period of time, and the group of conspirators originally included Ukrainian journalist Roman Popkov, Ukrainian citizen Yury Denisov, and others.
The conspirators later brought Trepova on board. As follows from the case filings, she first got in touch with Popkov on a social network in March 2022. Preparations for the crime itself began in October 2022. Trepova received instructions from Popkov and an unidentified man from Kiev acting under the nickname Gestalt.
Before the explosion, Trepova had gained Fomin's confidence by visiting a number of his lectures in various cities under the guise of an Art Academy student named Anastasia. The organizers provided her with a forged driving license and a plaster bust of Tatarsky, where an explosive device equivalent to at least 400 grams of TNT had been planted.
As the investigators established, Trepova was aware of the explosives inside the bust. The Investigative Committee said this was evident, among other things, from Trepova's correspondence with her accomplice, traces of an explosive substance in the apartment she had rented, and witness testimony. Trepova herself denied that she had been aware of the bust's content when she spoke in court.
According to the case filings, on April 2, 2023, Trepova followed instructions from the assassination organizers and removed a small metal plate from the bust's underside, thus activating the explosive device, which her accomplices later set off remotely.
Following the blast, Trepova went to Kasintsev, who hid her from law enforcement officers in his apartment before she was found and detained.
The Investigative Committee said Popkov and Denisov were put on an international wanted list, and arrest warrants for them were issued. Other possible accomplices may also be identified.
The court based in St. Petersburg has been hearing the case since November 2023.
During the presentation of arguments, the prosecution asked the court to sentence Trepova to 28 years in a general security penitentiary and fine her 800,000 rubles and give Kasintsev one year and 10 months in a general security penitentiary.
Both defendants pleaded partially guilty. Trepova confessed to using a forged document, while Kasintsev challenged the qualification of his deeds and asked the court to qualify them as "omission to report a crime."
Trepova's defense lawyer Daniil Berman said her defense team would appeal the sentence.
"We consider the sentence to be unlawful and unsubstantiated. This is perhaps the cruelest sentence given to a woman in Russia over the entire history of contemporary justice. There were no grounds for that even if you presume hypothetically that Darya is guilty," Berman told journalists.
He admitted however that he and Trepova were "morally prepared for the decision."