ST PETERSBURG, Russia
\nA young Russian woman was jailed for 27 years on Thursday for delivering a bomb that exploded in the hands of a pro-war military blogger last year and killed him on the spot.
\nDarya Trepova, 26, was convicted by a St. Petersburg court of terrorism, handling explosives and using forged documents in connection with the death of blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
\nShe showed no visible emotion in response to the sentence, which Russian media said was the harshest given to any woman in the country\u2019s modern history. Her defense team said they would appeal.
\nTatarsky was killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette in his likeness that Trepova had presented to him as a gift during a talk he was giving in a St. Petersburg cafe.
\nTrepova said she had been set up, and had thought the statuette contained a listening device, not a bomb.
\nShe told the trial she was acting under orders from a man in Ukraine whom she knew as \u201cGestalt\u201d (German for \u201cShape\u201c), who had been sending her money and instructions for several months before the cafe bombing.
\nRussia accused Ukraine immediately after the attack of organizing the murder of Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin. He was one of a group of prominent bloggers who have built up large online audiences as cheerleaders for Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, while sometimes criticizing its tactics.
\nSenior Ukrainian officials have neither claimed responsibility nor denied involvement in Tatarsky\u2019s death, with presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak describing it as \u201cinternal terrorism.\u201d
\nTrepova said she had gone along with Gestalt\u2019s instructions because she assumed the purpose of eavesdropping on Tatarsky was to find out more of what he knew about the war, which she opposed.
\n\u201cI feel great pain and shame that my gullibility and my naivety led to such catastrophic consequences. I didn\u2019t want to hurt anyone,\u201d she told the court earlier this week, speaking directly to people who were wounded in the bombing and who have claimed substantial amounts in compensation from her.
\n\u201cI feel especial pain and shame that a terrorist act was carried out by my own hands.\u201d
\nThe defense said Trepova too was a victim because, sitting only several meters from Tatarsky, she could herself have been killed or wounded.
\nThe prosecution argued that she had known about the bomb and \u201cacted deliberately with the aim of destabilising the Russian Federation and discrediting the special military operation\u201d \u2014 the official name for Moscow\u2019s war effort in Ukraine.
\nAfter the bomb went off, Trepova said she had panicked. Knowing that she risked arrest, she ignored an instruction from \u201cGestalt\u201d to head to the airport and catch a flight.
\nInstead she called her husband, who asked a friend of his called Dmitry Kasintsev to let her stay at his apartment that night. She was arrested there the following day.
\nKasintsev, 27, was sentenced on Thursday to one year and nine months for helping her to hide, despite testimony from Trepova that she had never met him before and he had nothing to do with the bomb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ST PETERSBURG, Russia A young Russian woman was jailed for 27 years on Thursday for delivering a bomb that exploded in the hands of a pro-war military blogger last year and killed him on the spot. Darya Trepova, 26, was convicted by a St. Petersburg court of terrorism, handling explosives and using forged documents in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-383133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n