Troops join regional force
DRC - South Sudanese soldiers arrived in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, an AFP journalist saw, joining a regional military force in the region wracked by the M23 rebellion. At least 45 soldiers touched down in the city of Goma in the late morning, with further contingents expected to arrive at later dates. The South Sudanese soldiers are part of the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) military force, which was created last June to stabilise eastern DRC. Much of the region is plagued by dozens of armed groups, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
RUSSIA - The female anti-war activist suspected of assassinating one of Vladimir Putin’s propagandists by carrying a statue laden with explosives into a cafe has been arrested.
Vladen Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was blown to pieces yesterday after Daria Trepova (26), reportedly entered the cafe in St Petersburg and handed him a small statue of himself that was reportedly laden with explosives.
Tatarsky (40), a staunch supporter of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, had been speaking at a political event at the Street Food No 1 cafe when the bomb exploded next to him, killing the propagandist and injuring 32 others.
Now, Russia’s Investigative Committee
said they had detained Trepova in a rented flat in St Petersburg on suspicion of carrying out the assassination. Speaking for the first time since her arrest, Trepova insisted she had been ‘set up’ and ‘was being used’.
It came after chilling video appeared to show Trepova, a St Petersburg resident who had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies, walking into the cafe carrying a box containing what may have been statuette containing 450g of TNT - just minutes before it exploded.
The Russian interior ministry had this morning put Trepova on Russia’s wanted list on suspicion of murdering Tatarsky after she fled from the scene - but she was arrested within hours of the arrest warrant being released.
Trepova’s partner, Dmitry Rylov - also in his 20s and a member of the so-called Russian Liberation Army -, insisted that she had been ‘set up’.
Rylov, who had previously been detained at anti-war rallies in Russia, said today: ‘I believe that my wife was set up. I am in full confidence that she would never be able to do something like that on her own volition.
‘Yes, with Daria we really do not support the war in Ukraine, but we believe that such actions are unacceptable.
‘‘I am 100 per cent sure that she would never have agreed to such a thing if she had known.’’
According to him, she ‘‘completely misunderstood the purpose’’ of the statuette she gave to Tatarsky.