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 connection with the death of blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
She showed no visible emotion in response to the sentence, which Russian media said was the harshest given to any woman in the country’s modern history. Her defense team said they would appeal.
Tatarsky 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.
Trepova said she had been set up, and had thought the statuette contained a listening device, not a bomb.
She told the trial she was acting under orders from a man in Ukraine whom she knew as “Gestalt” (German for “Shape“), who had been sending her money and instructions for several months before the cafe bombing.
Russia 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’s war in Ukraine, while sometimes criticizing its tactics.
Senior Ukrainian officials have neither claimed responsibility nor denied involvement in Tatarsky’s death, with presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak describing it as “internal terrorism.”
Trepova said she had gone along with Gestalt’s 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.
“I feel great pain and shame that my gullibility and my naivety led to such catastrophic consequences. I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” 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.
“I feel especial pain and shame that a terrorist act was carried out by my own hands.”
The defense said Trepova too was a victim because, sitting only several meters from Tatarsky, she could herself have been killed or wounded.
The prosecution argued that she had known about the bomb and “acted deliberately with the aim of destabilising the Russian Federation and discrediting the special military operation” — the official name for Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
After the bomb went off, Trepova said she had panicked. Knowing that she risked arrest, she ignored an instruction from “Gestalt” to head to the airport and catch a flight.
Instead 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.
Kasintsev, 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.
Russian woman sentenced to 27 years for handing bomb to war blogger
https://arab.news/zxfny
Russian woman sentenced to 27 years for handing bomb to war blogger
- She showed no visible emotion in response to the sentence
- Trepova said she had been set up, and had thought the statuette contained a listening device, not a bomb
Greenland crisis boosts Danish apps designed to identify and help boycott US goods
- Boycott campaigns are usually short-lived and real change often requires an organized effort rather than individual consumers
COPENHAGEN: The makers of mobile apps designed to help shoppers identify and boycott American goods say they saw a surge of interest in Denmark and beyond after the recent flare-up in tensions over US President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland.
The creator of the “Made O’Meter” app, Ian Rosenfeldt, said he saw around 30,000 downloads of the free app in just three days at the height of the trans-Atlantic diplomatic crisis in late January out of more than 100,000 since it was launched in March.
Apps offer practical help
Rosenfeldt, who lives in Copenhagen and works in digital marketing, decided to create the app a year ago after joining a Facebook group of like-minded Danes hoping to boycott US goods.
“Many people were frustrated and thinking, ‘How do we actually do this in practical terms,’” the 53-year-old recalled. “If you use a bar code scanner, it’s difficult to see if a product is actually American or not, if it’s Danish or not. And if you don’t know that, you can’t really make a conscious choice.”
The latest version of “Made O’Meter” uses artificial intelligence to identify and analyze several products at a time, then recommend similar European-made alternatives. Users can set preferences, like “No USA-owned brands” or “Only EU-based brands.” The app claims over 95 percent accuracy.
“By using artificial intelligence, you can take an image of a product … and it can make a deep dive to go out and find the correct information about the product in many levels,” Rosenfeldt told The Associated Press during a demonstration at a Copenhagen grocery store. “This way, you have information that you can use to take decisions on what you think is right.”
‘Losing an ally’
After an initial surge of downloads when the app was launched, usage tailed off. Until last month, when Trump stepped up his rhetoric about the need for the US to acquire Greenland, a strategically important and mineral-rich Arctic island that is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Usage peaked Jan. 23, when there were almost 40,000 scans in one day, compared with 500 or so daily last summer. It has dropped back since but there were still around 5,000 a day this week, said Rosenfeldt, who noted “Made O’Meter” is used by over 20,000 people in Denmark but also by people in Germany, Spain, Italy, even Venezuela.
“It’s become much more personal,” said Rosenfeldt, who spoke of “losing an ally and a friend.”
Trump announced in January he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after he said a “framework” for a deal over access to mineral-rich Greenland was reached with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of that agreement have emerged.
The US began technical talks in late January to put together an Arctic security deal with Denmark and Greenland, which say sovereignty is not negotiable.
Rosenfeldt knows such boycotts won’t damage the US economy, but hopes to send a message to supermarkets and encourage greater reliance on European producers.
“Maybe we can send a signal and people will listen and we can make a change,” he added.
The protest may be largely symbolic
Another Danish app, “NonUSA,” topped 100,000 downloads at the beginning of February. One of its creators, 21-year-old Jonas Pipper, said there were over 25,000 downloads Jan. 21, when 526 product scans were performed in a minute at one point. Of the users, some 46,000 are in Denmark and around 10,000 in Germany.
“We noticed some users saying they felt like a little bit of the pressure was lifted off them,” Pipper said. “They feel like they kind of gained the power back in this situation.”
It’s questionable whether such apps will have much practical effect.
Christina Gravert, an associate professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen, said there are actually few US products on Danish grocery store shelves, “around 1 to 3 percent”. Nuts, wines and candy, for example. But there is widespread use of American technology in Denmark, from Apple iPhones to Microsoft Office tools.
“If you really want to have an impact, that’s where you should start,” she said.
Even “Made O’Meter” and “NonUSA” are downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.
Gravert, who specializes in behavioral economics, said such boycott campaigns are usually short-lived and real change often requires an organized effort rather than individual consumers.
“It can be interesting for big supermarket brands to say, OK, we’re not going to carry these products anymore because consumers don’t want to buy them,” she said. “If you think about large companies, this might have some type of impact on the import (they) do.”
On a recent morning, shoppers leaving one Copenhagen grocery store were divided.
“We do boycott, but we don’t know all the American goods. So, it’s mostly the well-known trademarks,” said Morten Nielsen, 68, a retired navy officer. “It’s a personal feeling … we feel we do something, I know we are not doing very much.”
“I love America, I love traveling in America,” said 63-year-old retiree Charlotte Fuglsang. “I don’t think we should protest that way.”
