ST.PETERSBURG, Russia -- Prosecutors have asked a military court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg to sentence Darya Trepova, who is accused of being involved in the killing of prominent pro-Kremlin blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, to 28 years in prison on charges of terrorism and forgery.
An RFE/RL correspondent reported from the scene that the prosecutor also asked the court on January 19 to sentence Trepova's co-defendant, Dmitry Kasintsev, to 22 months in prison on a charge of sheltering a suspect, adding that the defendants must also pay 800,000 rubles (almost $10,000) each in fines.
Trepova, who pleaded not guilty to the terrorism charge and guilty to the charge of document forgery, was arrested after a blast in a restaurant in St. Petersburg on April 2, 2023, killed Tatarsky, whose real name was Maksim Fomin. Fifty-two people were wounded in the attack.
Russian media have said that Tatarsky was meeting with people when a woman presented him with a box containing a small bust of him that exploded.
Trepova said at the trial that she did not know that there was an explosive device in the bust.
Kasintsev, who is accused of providing Trepova with accommodation after the deadly blast, pleaded guilty to the charge of failure to report a crime but rejected the charge of covering up a crime.
The 26-year-old Trepova is charged with "a terrorist act with an organized group that caused intentional death."
In May, Russia's Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian citizen Yuriy Denisov, saying that he was suspected of organizing the deadly attack.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said at the time that Denisov and Trepova had decided to assassinate Tatarsky. The FSB also tried to link the killing to associates of imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
The FSB has not provided any evidence proving the allegations, and Navalny's aides have alleged the authorities were trying to link the anti-corruption crusader to the explosion to lay further criminal charges against him in the future.
The Ukrainian-born Tatarsky was known for his support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.