Maxim Yuryevich Fomin[a] (25 April 1982 – 2 April 2023), better known as Vladlen Tatarsky,[b] was a Ukrainian-born Russian military blogger, convicted
bank robber, and participant in the
Russo-Ukrainian War.[1]
Fomin, who was born in 1982 in
Makiivka,
Donetsk Oblast, held Ukrainian and later Russian citizenship.[4] He was of
Tatar descent on the side of his mother, Ravilya Ibragimova.[5][6] In 2011, he was imprisoned in Ukraine for bank robbery.[4] While the
war in Donbas broke out, he broke out of prison and joined the military of the Russia-backed
Donetsk People's Republic.[4] Later, he was caught and eventually imprisoned again.[4]
Fomin was pardoned by
Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the Donetsk People's Republic, and was given the opportunity to fight against the Ukrainian army alongside the
Vostok Battalion during the war in Donbas.[7][4] His nom de guerre was "Professor".[8] After serving in the military, around 2017, he started blogging under the pseudonym
Vladlen Tatarsky.[4] The name is an allusion to both Lenin (
Vladimir Lenin)[9] and Russian satirist
Victor Pelevin's 1999 novel, Generation "П", where the name of the protagonist is Vavilen Tatarsky (Babylen Tatarsky in the English translation).[8][10] This Tatarsky is an advertising copywriter who is enlisted to write copy at an ad agency, where he adapts Western advertising to the "Russian mentality".[11]
Reflecting on the war in Donbas, Fomin wrote that "thousands of Russian officers" had served in the region since October 2014, thereby contradicting the official Russian position that the Russian Federation was not involved militarily in mainland Ukraine before 2022.[12] Tatarsky lived in
Moscow from 2019 until his death in 2023.[7]
Telegram channel
Tatarsky was a prominent figure among the Russian military bloggers, a group known for their uncompromising support of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[2] The popularity of his
Telegram significantly increased after the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, reaching over 560,000 by the time of his assassination. He was also invited to political shows on the state television.[8] Tatarsky was known for his hardline views, criticising Russian military commanders and
Vladimir Putin for being too soft in their approach.[2] The
Institute for the Study of War characterised him as a "prominent" military blogger, but not exceptionally so. While he maintained ties to the
Wagner Group and its founder
Yevgeny Prigozhin, he did not also alienate supporters of Vladimir Putin.[3]
In 2016 and 2017, Tatarsky's blogging was mostly interviews with field commanders and events on the front line, where he quite openly wrote about alcohol and drug abuse as well as looting among Russian soldiers in Donbas.[13] He may have introduced the term "
orcs" to describe fighters on both sides.[13] In 2022, he was invited to write for
RT and became a co-host with
Mikhail Zvinchuk ("Rybar") at
Vladimir Solovyov's analytical show "Rybar's Analysis". During that period his position became aligned with the official line of the Kremlin.[13] He was more optimistic than many other pro-Russian writers on Telegram—for example, he believed Russia could keep control of
Kherson.[13]
As a blogger, Tatarsky called for more attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure which would result in more Ukrainian casualties.[4] He regularly referred to Ukraine as a "terrorist state" and advocated for its defeat.[14] In one infamous video, he was recorded saying, "We'll defeat everyone, we'll kill everyone, we'll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be the way we like it." The video was recorded at the Kremlin, to which Tatarsky had been invited to attend Putin's announcement of "
partial mobilization" on 30 September 2022.[7] Tatarsky also produced
jihadist propaganda, likely also for the pro-war cause.[3]
Due to his views and involvement in the conflict, Tatarsky was sanctioned by Ukraine.[14] He was banned from entering the country for ten years, and any assets belonging to him that were found in Ukraine were confiscated.[14] Despite these sanctions, Tatarsky continued to promote his views and beliefs through his blog and social media channels.[14]
On 2 April 2023, Tatarsky was killed in an explosion while attending an event hosted at a café in Saint Petersburg as a guest speaker.[15] His death was caught on video.[16] Twenty-four others were injured, six of them critically, according to Russian authorities.[15] The café was reportedly owned by
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman with close ties to the Kremlin and head of the paramilitary
Wagner Group.[17][18] A Saint Petersburg resident, Darya Trepova, was considered a suspect by the
Investigative Committee of Russia.[19][20] According to investigators, she had brought to the café a box with a bust of Tatarsky, in which an explosive device was hidden.[20] On 3 April, she was arrested.[21][22]
Following the incident,
Margarita Simonyan,
Tina Kandelaki, and
Anton Krasovsky blamed Ukraine for the attack and called for retaliation.[7][23] Prigozhin suggested that Ukrainian state actors are not responsible, and Ukrainian
Mykhailo Podolyak attributed the bombing to Russia.[3] The
Institute for the Study of War assessed that the bombing may act as a warning to other Russian commentators to temper their criticism of the conduct of the war, or to intimidate Wagner-aligned actors who could pose threats to Putin, and may serve the Kremlin's goal of controlling the information space.[3]
Legacy
The day after his assassination, Putin posthumously awarded Tatarsky the Russian state
Order of Courage.[24]
^Günther, Hans (January 2013).
"Post-Soviet emptiness (Vladimir Makanin and Viktor Pelevin)". Journal of Eurasian Studies. 4 (1): 100–106.
doi:10.1016/j.euras.2012.10.001.
S2CID146352942. The hero of Viktor Pelevin's novel Generation 'P' (first edition 1999), former litterateur Vavilen Tatarskii, studied in the Literary Institute. As distinct from Petrovich in Underground, however, after the fall of Soviet power he becomes—in accordance with the carnivalesque relativism of postmodern poetics—an unbridled cynic. He changes literature into an advertising business and sees the task of the 'copywriter' and 'creator' as that of 'adapting Western advertising concepts to the mentality of the Russian consumer' (p. 33).5 His first name, Vavilen, is a composite of elements from 'Vasilii (Aksenov)' and 'Vladimir Il'ich Lenin.' However, he retroactively explains it by citing his father's enthusiasm for the myth of ancient Babylon; subsequently, he completely transitions to being called Vova or Vladimir. Thus the changes of the hero's name in this novel obviously reflect the transition from the Soviet era to the post-Soviet one.
^Clover, Charles (2022).
Black Wind, White Snow: Russia's New Nationalism.
Yale University Press. pp. 242–243.
ISBN978-0-300-26925-3.
Archived from the original on 2 April 2023. Retrieved 2 April 2023. The corruption and commercialization of the intelligentsia and their New Russian clients became a target for one of Russia's funniest satirists, Viktor Pelevin, whose 1999 breakout novel Generation P – which told the story of an advertising copywriter named Vladlen Tatarsky, who is recruited to work at an ad agency, adapting Western advertising to the 'Russian mentality' – best expressed this bewilderment at the transformation of the country into a consumer paradise. Indeed, in reality, for the average Muscovite the landscape of the capital had changed little in the half-decade since the end of communism – aside from the replacement of the dominating symbols of Soviet power (the statues of Lenin, Marx and Dzerzhinsky) with large billboards and neon-lit signs.