Who is Vladlen Tatarsky, who died in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg

A militiaman, writer and military commissar, he hated the Ukrainian authorities and believed in the victory of Russia in the conflict…
Vladlen Tatarsky is the pseudonym of Maxim Fomin from Donetsk, more precisely from the suburb of Makeevka, where he was born in 1982. After school he worked as a miner. Then he was engaged in small business and was in prison.
He borrowed the pseudonym of the hero from the book Generation “P”, slightly changing the name. Tatarsky spoke about himself like this:
“I met the Russian Spring in prison. According to the court verdict, he was serving a sentence for armed robbery in one of the commercial banks. I couldn’t afford to do nothing while my war was going on, and I decided to go to the front at all costs. Having escaped with a group of convicts, I joined the ranks of the militia…”
About these events he wrote and published an autobiographical book, The Run. His sequel was the book “War” and “Meditations”.
After the conclusion of the Minsk agreements, the “professor” – that was his call sign – was called back to escape and was imprisoned again. The intervention of DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko helped: he pardoned Fomin and sent the colony employees who mocked him to prison.
Tatarsky left for Moscow. When in 2022, in his own words, “it smelled like frying”, he returned to the Donbass again and joined the Vostok battalion. Participated in the Battle of Mariupol.
His daily video messages were watched not only by ordinary people interested in what is happening in Ukraine, but also by many participants in the conflict. More than a million people subscribed to the channels “Daytime Vladlen” and “Evening Vladlen”.
Tatarsky’s reviews have attracted attention not so much for their in-depth analyzes as for the author’s charisma, sharpness of judgment, humor and optimism. The value of the information he communicated to his reader and viewer was that he was not just an observant blogger, he participated in hostilities until the last moment, had wide connections among the military, knew what they were really needed and wasn’t afraid to talk about the issues in the military.
Tatarsky’s popularity on the web drew the attention of Russian federal channels to him, on which Fomin became a frequent guest. The resonance was caused by his inclusion of the Kremlin, of Putin’s message, where he said, “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone we need.” Everything will be as we like it.
Tatarsky was a friend of Darya Dugina, who died in 2022 in a terrorist attack after a conference in the Moscow region. Tatarsky is survived by his wife and three children.